Wind?

With my grandmother's illness and death, I've made several trips to Central Illinois over the past few weeks. The drive there and back is not especially scenic, consisting mostly of corn and soybean fields. In order to at least look at different fields, I've varied my trips to include taking Illinois 49 for part of the way.

Illinois 49 runs through western Vermilion County, passing through the not-even-a-wide-spot-on-the-road town of Hope, south of Rankin. Hope is at the southern end of the California Ridge Wind Farm, a 200 megawatt collection of giant wind turbines. (For those not of Central Illinois, the "ridge" in question is really just a gentle swelling of land maybe 100 feet above the plain.)

I personally find the wind turbines pretty, and visually soothing. At least some of the locals don't, and several homes sprout signs of varying degrees of professionalism advertising FairWindEnergy.org, a web site detailing the problems of living near a wind turbine. This site seems to want the turbines to be sited farther away from houses, claiming evils from ice chunks flung from turbine blades (possible, I guess) to infrasonic harm to humans (???).

Now, having driven through the area, it's as close as Central Illinois gets to being uninhabited. Nor do any of the turbines look especially close to one of the handful of houses, and my understanding is that the actual property owners are renting out the land that the turbines sit on. But then I don't have a dog in this fight - I just drive through the area.

The whole concept is proof that no matter what one wants to do, somebody else will object to it.