When the Ohio Supreme Court recently gave the green light to a massive wind turbine project in Erie and Huron counties, it left those who have opposed the 71-turbine array, due to serious concerns about the potential harm to bald eagles and other wildlife, convinced the court had erred.
If this was the NFL, the wind farm opposition would be throwing the red challenge flag, indicating the officials got this call wrong.
“It is very frustrating that the court came up with this decision,” said Mark Shieldcastle, a retired biologist who spent much of his more than three decades with the Ohio Division of Wildlife directing the state's bald eagle recovery program and is widely regarded as the leading expert on bald eagles in Ohio.
The court decided that by issuing a permit to Firelands Wind LLC to construct the Emerson Creek Wind Farm, the Ohio Power Siting Board, the government entity that must approve such projects, had done nothing “unlawful or unreasonable.” The Ohio Power Siting Board issued a “certificate of environmental compatibility” for the project, despite the objections of 19 property owners and Black Swamp Bird Observatory, a conservation non-profit that has spent more than 30 years working to protect birds and their habitat.
Shieldcastle, who serves as the research director at Black Swamp, said the studies used by the wind energy parent company to create the perception that the impact on eagles, migrating warblers, other birds, and bats would be minimal, are seriously flawed. He contends that the OPSB should not accept data from inadequate and outdated research.
”But the court's ruling is not surprising at all, because I have been around government long enough to know how these things sometimes work,” Shieldcastle said. “We are not done — this is just the way the big wind power companies play the game. I think if it had been a qualified biologist making the decision on a permit for this project, we would have had a different answer.”
Kimberly Kaufman, executive director at Black Swamp, said that the wind turbine cluster proposed by the Emerson Creek Wind Farm threatens the millions of migratory birds that use a path through the region to reach their nesting grounds to the north, as well as presenting a dangerous obstacle for the population of bald eagles that nest in the area. She stressed that while alternative energy is certainly an important entity, major flyways are the worst place for wind turbine construction to take place.
“These turbines would be located directly in spring and fall migratory pathways of one of North America’s largest concentrations of birds and would threaten locally nesting bald eagles,” she said. Black Swamp has provided evidence and testimony related to these risks in a number of wind farm cases in Northwest Ohio, including the Icebreaker Wind Project proposed for Lake Erie.
“In spite of the court’s ruling, we maintain our position that Firelands Wind LLC. did not provide sufficient data to the OPSB for them to adequately determine the environmental impacts to these species,” Kaufman said.
Shieldcastle said the court needs to look at whether the Power Siting Board is doing its job in a thorough and precise manner, since part of its guidelines calls on the board to protect the environment and support sound energy policies.
The Ohio Power Siting Board, created in 1972 and originally known as the Ohio Power Siting Commission, has seven voting members and four non-voting members. The voting members include the chairman of the Public Utilities Commission, and the directors of the Ohio EPA and the departments of agriculture, development, health, and natural resources.
“I think we need to up the ante on the Power Siting Board's responsibilities,” Shieldcastle said. “The studies they are using are inadequate. The primary risk involved with these towers is to nocturnal migrating birds, and there are no studies on that, and the risk to bald eagles is significant.”
In her reaction to the court's ruling, Kaufman pointed out that the Siting Board is required, by law, to “…not grant a certificate for the construction, operation, and maintenance of a major utility facility, either as proposed or as modified by the board, unless it finds and determines the probable environmental impact.”
“This required criteria for certification was not met,” she said. “Equally alarming is that the OPSB and the Ohio Supreme Court chose to dismiss the presence of bald eagle nests within the footprint of the proposed facility. These nests were documented by local residents and our own bald eagle expert, but the court chose to rely wholly on the hired consultant’s survey instead.”
Shieldcastle said the wind power contingent argued in court that a bald eagle nest inside the planned turbine array was actually a red-tailed hawk nest.
“They ignored the presence of this nest, and called it a red-tailed hawk nest,” he said. “Their supposed experts could not even find the nest, but it's right there in the footprint of the wind farm.”
He said that as Ohio's bald eagle population has recovered from near extirpation — there were just four nesting pairs in the state in 1979 after environmental factors decimated their numbers — the birds have spread out across the state, with high concentrations in both Huron and Erie counties.
“I think that on the bald eagle issues, the board has punted and disregarded the state's responsibilities. Right now it appears that they are just rubber-stamping these things,” Shieldcastle said. “We are pushing close to 900 eagle nests statewide now, and that area has seen the biggest growth. If you put a circle around every bald eagle nest and protected those areas the way we should, it would wipe out about half of these wind farm permits — that is, if the law was followed.”
Shieldcastle said the debate over the proposed placement of vast networks of huge wind turbines in prime bald eagle habitat and in the corridors used by millions of migrating birds, often devolves into a battle of attrition.
“The wind power companies keep dragging it on, knowing that at some point you are going to get tired of banging your head against the wall and give up. And then, before you know it, they've got what they wanted,” he said. “But we will continue our efforts to protect bald eagles and migrating birds.”
First Published August 7, 2023, 2:41 p.m.
