by jboullion | Mar 8, 2011 | Uncategorized
From an article by Tony Walter in the Green Bay Press-Gazette:
GLENMORE — The Glenmore Town Board voted Monday to wait 60 days before voting on a permit request to have seven wind turbines built in the town.
In an emotion-filled meeting that at one point had Town Chairman Don Kittell call in police officers when residents began chanting and shouting, the board reversed an earlier vote to approve the permits.
Mark Dick of Cenergy, a subsidiary of Pennsylvania-based CG Power Solutions that is seeking to erect the turbines, said the board’s delay on a decision was based on emotion and opinion, not law.
“You’re asking the Town Board to violate law,” Dick told the more than 100 residents who crowded into the Glenmore Community Center. “You might as well as ask them to outlaw smoking.”
The board voted quickly at the meeting’s outset to approve the permits, with Kittell and Supervisor Kriss Schmidt supporting it and Supervisor Ron Nowak opposing it. Kittell argued that the board was simply following the law that required it to honor a conditional use permit that went into effect before the town changed its wind turbine ordinance last year.
But residents reacted angrily, chanting, “No permits,” then “change your vote,” prompting Kittell to call for police support.
“The people are trying to get out of hand,” Kittell said on his cell phone. One Wisconsin State Patrol officer and two Brown County Sheriff’s Department officers showed up 15 minutes later.
And from a story on Green Bay Fox 11 News: :
TOWN OF GLENMORE – An emotional outburst from some Brown County residents causes a town board to go against an original vote on a wind project.
The town of Glenmore board met Monday night and voted on the building permit proposed by CG Power Solutions to build seven turbines.
The board initially voted 2 to 1 in favor of the permits.
About 75 residents were at the meeting and then voiced their opinion.
After the outcry, the board chairman called for police assistance and briefly closed the meeting.
He later reopened it, and held an open forum.
Glenmore residents and officials from the wind turbine company spoke.
The board then voted to delay the vote on the permits for 60 days until it can be further reviewed by the state.
by jboullion | Mar 7, 2011 | Uncategorized
From an editorial in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
Even if you never use a bus and would never think of getting on a commuter train, the current bleak prospects for mass transit systems in Wisconsin should matter to you.
Transit moves people to jobs, it eases congestion on city streets and freeways and it gives people another transportation option. That’s important, especially now as drivers are faced with rising gasoline prices and roadwork that is shutting down lanes on freeways and major highways.
The Legislature and Gov. Scott Walker need to rethink their approach to transit and make sure that Wisconsin’s systems remain healthy, especially for those who need it for work, school and shopping. Businesses such as Bucyrus International and Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co. rely on transit. New businesses and young professionals look to modern transit as the sign of a healthy and vibrant community.
What’s in the works moves Wisconsin in the opposite direction and could damage transit systems across the state beyond repair.
Consider:
• Walker’s budget would slice transit aids in the first year of the biennium and provide no alternative dedicated local funding source to help meet already financially troubled systems.
• The budget shifts transit aids from the segregated and protected transportation fund to the general fund, where transit systems would have to compete with myriad services for scarce dollars. Walker argues that the gasoline tax that largely supplies the transportation fund is a user fee paid for by drivers and should be used only on those roads that drivers use.
But mass transit helps ease pressure on those roads and gives drivers other choices, as Steve Hiniker of 1000 Friends of Wisconsin, points out. Buses are a vital form of transportation.
• Because Walker’s budget-repair bill would eliminate most collective bargaining with public employees, federal aid, which is dependent on workers being able to bargain, would be jeopardized for mid-size transit systems such as Appleton’s.
• A separate bill in the Legislature would kill regional transit authorities that were created in recent years to help regions strengthen and support local transit systems. Rep. Robin Vos (R-Rochester), a co-sponsor of the bill, told us the RTAs were put together badly and he’d like to repeal them and start over with an honest policy debate. We’d prefer leaving them in place and making adjustments where needed so that regions can start now to build what they need.
• Walker’s budget bill freezes local tax levy increases, meaning that even if a community wanted to spend more on transit, it couldn’t.
by jboullion | Mar 4, 2011 | Uncategorized
From an article by Mike Ivey in The Capital Times:
If you like burning fossil fuels – hey, aren’t those Koch brothers in the pipeline business? – then you’ll love Gov. Walker’s proposed budget.
The 1,345-pager takes a whack at scores of environmental efforts, from nixing the state Office of Energy Independence to actually encouraging state vehicles to use more gasoline.
Seriously, you can’t make this stuff up. And with pump prices marching toward $4 a gallon, you wonder if any thought went into the long-term fiscal impacts.
But here’s the skinny.
Walker wants to eliminate the Office of Energy Independence, which works to reduce the state’s annual energy bill. Launched by Gov. Doyle in 2007, it has 10 staffers and an office at 201 W. Washington Ave.
Since Wisconsin has no coal, natural gas or oil reserves, its citizens send over $20 billion out of state every year to Wyoming, the Gulf of Mexico and the Middle East evil-doers who hate America.
The OEI was designed to work with the biofuels industry, renewable energy markets and alternative energy researchers here at home.
Instead, Walker wants the Department of Administration to develop a “cost-effective, balanced, reliable, and environmentally-responsible energy strategy to promote economic growth.” As in growth for the oil and gas guys?
The state has also been operating under a directive that by 2015 it reduce gasoline use by at least 50 percent from 2006 levels. Walker wants to eliminate the requirement and drop the reduction goal to 20 percent.
by jboullion | Mar 1, 2011 | Uncategorized
For immediate release:
March 1, 2011
More information
Michael Vickerman
Executive Director
608.255.4044
mvickerman@renewwisconsin.org
(Madison) – The wind industry in Wisconsin suffered a serious setback when a joint legislative panel voted to suspend the wind siting rule promulgated by the Public Service Commission (PSC) in December, according to RENEW Wisconsin, a statewide renewable energy advocacy group.
The five-to-two vote tracked along party lines, with all five votes to suspend coming from Republican members of the Joint Committee for Review of Administrative Rules (JCRAR).
Many companies involved in windpower supported the PSC’s rule as a workable compromise that would have created a stable and predictable permitting environment for all wind energy systems regulated by local governments. The rule, which was scheduled to take effect today, would have fulfilled the Legislature’s intent to create uniform siting regulations to replace what had become a restrictive hodgepodge of local requirements.
“The committee gave the state of Wisconsin a black eye that, in the view of the wind industry, will linger well into the future,” Vickerman said.
“The suspension rolls the wind permitting environment back to the dark days when wind project developers routinely faced arbitrary and ever-shifting local regulations – the kind of chaos that will hasten their departure from Wisconsin to more business-friendly states.”
“As of today, Wisconsin utilities have placed more megawatts of wind capacity in neighboring states than in Wisconsin. As indicated in the following table, importing wind generation from other states deprives Wisconsin of a valuable source of employment, income for rural residents, and property tax relief,” said Vickerman.
The figures compiled by RENEW show that the 219 utility-owned wind turbines that will be operational by January 1, 2012, will yield nearly $2.7 million per year in potential property tax relief for towns and counties hosting wind projects. All told, these projects will be responsible for nearly 300,000 construction-related job-hours.
“We have a hard time foreseeing in-state utility-scale wind development going forward without statewide siting standards.”
“It’s a shame to see the end of bipartisanship that led to the passage of the rule requirement in 2009. What we are seeing here is a breakdown of governance that will rob the state of one of its brightest economic hopes for the future,” Vickerman said.
Click on table to enlarge.
RENEW Wisconsin is an independent, nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization that acts as a catalyst to advance a sustainable energy future through public policy and private sector initiatives. More information on RENEW’s Web site at www.renewwisconsin.org.
by jboullion | Feb 28, 2011 | Uncategorized
From an article by Tom Content in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
Wisconsin’s first solar panel factory has opened in the Menomonee River Valley, on the site of stockyards that contributed to the city’s leadership in the meatpacking and processing industries more than 100 years ago.
Later this year, solar panels will go up on the roof of the building that replaced the stockyards, and the panels will be made downstairs in Steve Ostrenga’s factory.
Privately held Helios USA started making robots this month, using an automated production line to build high-efficiency solar panels. The goal: to help put an emerging, 21st-century industry on the map in the state.
That’s what excited Patrick Shaw of Cudahy about working at the plant, he said during a recent tour of the W. Canal St. factory.
“I wanted to get into the green field,” said Shaw, a former Marine. “All you hear about is how that’s up and coming.” Then he attended a veterans job fair where Helios was recruiting employees.
“Six months later, here I am,” Shaw said.
Production started this month after five weeks of 12-hour days getting the first manufacturing line ready.
Workers installed robots that largely automate the manufacturing process and began test production earlier this month. Finished panels sit in stacks in an area of the plant where future production lines are planned.
A ribbon-cutting at the plant is scheduled for Monday.
During the plant tour, Shaw showed pride in having helped set up the robots.
“They said people’s kids could name the robots,” Shaw said. Pointing to one hoisting a nearly complete panel, he added, “My 4-year-old named that one Buzz Lightyear.”
Shaw is one of 17 workers who, after working to open the plant, began operating its first production line two weeks ago. Ostrenga hopes to nearly triple employment by the end of the year.
