Wind Turbines--Landfill Disaster

What good is wind power here in California?  When the wind blows, they shut the power off.

But what about the rest of the country?  Isn't wind the cleanest, least polluting form of energy generation there is, free of adverse effects?  Uh, no:

But the upgrades for Iowa’s growing wind industry, which is already among the nation’s largest, are creating some unexpected challenges.

MidAmerican’s retired blades, destined for the Butler County Landfill near David City, Nebraska, about 130 miles away, are among hundreds that will land in dumps across Iowa and the nation. Critics of wind energy say the blades’ march to a landfill weakens the industry’s claim it’s an environmentally friendly source of energy.

“This clean, green energy is not so clean and not so green,” says Julie Kuntz, who opposes a Worth County wind project. “It’s just more waste going in our landfills"...

He acknowledges, though, that disposing of the blades is a challenge. Wind energy generation, now topping 100 gigawatts nationally, will create 1 million tons of fiberglass and other composite waste, said Laird, director of the National Wind Technology Center at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado.

“The scale of the issue is quite large,” said Laird, whose group is working to develop new blade materials that will enable reuse. “It’s quite a bit of material. And it’s a larger sustainability issue. We would like everything that’s manufactured to be reusable or recyclable"...

Landfill operators thought the composite blades, cut in 40-foot or larger sections, could be readily crushed and compacted. “But blades are so strong — because they need to be strong to do their job — they just don’t break,” said Amie Davidson, an Iowa Department of Natural Resources solid waste supervisor.

“Sometimes pieces fly off and damage equipment” in the compacting process, she said. “Landfills are really struggling to manage them, and they just decide they can’t accept them.”

So far, only one facility in north Iowa is taking the blades, while other landfills are assessing whether they will.

Bill Rowland, president of the Iowa Society of Solid Waste Operations, said he’s unsure “we as a society” considered what would happen to the blades as older turbines are repowered.

“There wasn’t a plan in place to say, ‘How are we going to recycle these?’ ‘How are we going to reduce the impact on landfills?’” said Rowland, director of the Landfill of North Iowa near Clear Lake...

The difficulty in reusing blades adds to the complaints opponents make against wind energy. Some who live near the turbines complain that low-frequency noise and light flickering from the blades make them ill. And the spinning blades can kill migrating birds and bats.

Blade disposal is “just one of many factors we’re concerned about,” said Kuntz, the Worth County wind farm opponent.

Expensive boondoggles designed solely to line someone's pockets.