Wind Power Problems Ruffle Maryland Feathers

O’Malley to decide whether some wind turbine projects should be delayed until 2015

For Somerset County on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, a proposed wind farm with 25 towering turbines would mean hundreds of construction jobs and extra cash for struggling farmers. But just across the Chesapeake Bay in Southern Maryland is the Patuxent River Naval Air Station, home to a highly sensitive radar system that tests the stealthiness of fighter jets — and would be compromised by towering, whirling turbines.

After more than two years of meetings with military leaders, the wind farm developers thought they had reached a compromise: protect the radar capabilities by simply turning the turbines off during test flights.

Q: What kind of energy generation can you just shut off when the Navy wants to fly a plane?

A: An unimportant one. Unlike the coal and nuclear reactors that feed the majority of power to our region.

They didn’t expect that U.S. House Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) and a coalition of Southern Maryland lawmakers would circumvent the process, worried that the military was not doing enough to protect its “Pax River” assets.

In the final days of the recently concluded Maryland General Assembly session, lawmakers voted to delay all wind projects of a certain height within 46 miles of the base until June 2015 — effectively killing plans for the Great Bay Wind Center.

It's a curious bit of schadenfreude that the same liberal democrats who want us all on renewable energy are willing to kill a wind power facility for the sake of the dreaded U.S. military over the objections of the military itself!

Now Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) must decide whether to veto the legislation, as environmental groups are demanding, or allow it to become law. Activists warn that the measure could scare away wind developers and taint O’Malley’s reputation as a dedicated environmentalist as he contemplates a run for the White House.
. . .
A veto likely would anger Hoyer, whom the governor considers a friend and important political ally, as well as the progressive state lawmakers who have pushed through nearly all of O’Malley’s legislative priorities.

I love the blue on blue action; but it's about the only kind of politics that actually matters in Maryland.