Bats And Windmills Prove Deadly Mix

THOMAS, W.Va. — Towering up to 228 feet above the Appalachian Mountain ridge, far above the tree line, windmills are lined up like marching aliens from War of the Worlds.

[an error occurred while processing this directive]Up close, they emit a high-pitched electrical hum. From a distance of a few hundred yards, their 115-foot blades make a steady whooshing sound as their tips cut through the air at up to 140 mph.

Owned by Juno Beach, Fla.-based FPL Energy, a sister company to Florida Power & Light Co., they are part of the national effort to develop diverse — and more environmentally friendly — sources of energy.

The problem is they're killing thousands of bats a year.

"I can appreciate that we need other energy sources," said Jane Burch, who lives in neighboring Grant County, W.Va., where a large wind farm has been proposed. "But I don't like the look of them, and I don't want them behind my property, and I don't like what they do with the bat kills."

The first wind turbines to generate electricity were erected about 25 years ago in California. But wind power capacity more than doubled from 2000 to 2004, and now turbines are found in 31 states.

Though wind still generates less than 1 percent of the nation's electricity, the Department of Energy has set a goal of raising that to at least 5 percent by 2020. To reach that goal, the American Wind Energy Association estimates it will require an increase from about 16,000 turbines nationwide now to more than 78,000 turbines then.

About 600 of those turbines are planned for West Virginia and Pennsylvania. If they are built, more than 50,000 bats a year could be killed in those two states alone, said Merlin D. Tuttle, founder and president of the Austin-based Bat Conservation International Inc.

He said there are no good estimates of how many bats would be killed nationwide if the association's projection of 78,000 turbines was reached, but he estimated it would be far higher than 50,000.

"They can't sustain that kind of kill rate," Tuttle said, noting that bats are among the slowest-reproducing mammals — generally one pup each year, although some species have two to four.

"Bats are just as important by night as birds are by day," he said. Indeed, bats play an important ecological role by eating mosquitoes and such crop-destroying insects as moths, locusts and grasshoppers.

Contrary to popular belief, bats have quite good vision. That vision is enhanced by a radar-like system known as "echolocation" which helps them "see" in the dark and enables them to zero in on insects as small as a gnat.

A study conducted at FPL's Mountaineer Wind Energy Center here this year indicated that its 44 turbines may have caused between 1,300 and 2,000 bat deaths in a six-week period. That study was led by Edward B. Arnett, a scientist with Bat Conservation International, and financed largely by the American Wind Energy Association and its 700 member companies.

During the study, one of the turbines at Mountaineer was out of service. It was the only turbine where no bat fatalities were recorded during the entire period.

That led bat enthusiasts to conclude bats are not colliding with stationary blades, they're being hit by moving blades, said Dan Boone, a wildlife biologist from Bowie, Md., who has joined the fight against new windmill farms on forested mountaintops.

Experts don't know why the mortality rate might be so much higher at wind facilities in the Appalachian Mountains than elsewhere in the country.

A Government Accountability Office report in September showed that at wind farms outside the Appalachians, fewer than one to four bats were killed each year per turbine. But Arnett said the GAO report summarized studies that may have focused mainly on birds and underestimated bat kills.

It's also unclear precisely why bats are killed by windmills. Among the theories are that the windmills are located in the bats' migratory path; that bats may be attracted by the turbines' humming sound, their flashing lights to warn aircraft, or their tall masts suitable for roosting, or that the short range of the bats' echolocation does not give them enough time to avoid the spinning blades.

The recent Mountaineer study has led to an impasse between bat conservationists and the wind power industry over what to do next.

Conservationists have called for further studies that would disengage some turbines on nights when the wind speed is low, and bats and their prey are more likely to fly.

The wind power industry has rejected that suggestion. It has proposed studies of deterrent measures such as acoustics to discourage bats from approaching the turbines.

"We don't think it makes a whole lot of sense to be focusing on a solution that potentially could reduce the amount of power that is generated and potentially put stress on the machines," said Steve Stengel, an FPL Energy spokesman.

"We think there needs to be a great deal of effort put into finding ways for bats and wind turbines to coexist," he said.

The wind power industry echoes the views of FPL Energy, according to Tom Gray, deputy executive director of the American Wind Energy Association.

Because wind power companies have been trying to produce energy more cheaply, any proposal that would reduce generating capacity and drive up costs would give the industry "heartburn," Gray said.

Acoustical deterrent efforts currently are in the design stage and may be tested in the laboratory by early next year, Arnett said. If preliminary investigations show promise, field tests might take place next year. FPL Energy has offered to allow some of its facilities to be used for such tests.

But Arnett and Boone noted that acoustic efforts to rid houses of bats rarely work, and said they do not believe sound deterrents would be effective in shielding turbines.

Emotions are running high along the Appalachian ridge as more wind farms are being considered.

Opponents argue that the facilities' not only kill bats and disturb other wildlife habitat but also are an eyesore, create noise pollution, startle livestock with the flickering of sunlight through the blades, decrease property values and could harm tourism on scenic mountain ridges.

"I can't say I would forever be against wind power, but as far as windmills on mountaintops, there ought to be more study before they just put up these windmills willy-nilly," said Burch, who is retired from the construction industry. "What happens if, in 10 years, wind energy is not working? Who is going to pay to bring them down? It's going to be the counties and the landowners."

William Smith, executive director of the Convention and Visitors Bureau and the Tucker County Chamber of Commerce, said the Mountaineer facility in his county has created a few jobs and brought in more money to local government.

The wind facilities also produce electricity for thousands of homes "without effluent, smoke, nuclear waste, fly ash and other sorts of materials that are associated with alternative forms of electrical generation," Smith said.

As for tourism, while the wind farms do not attract tourists to the area, Smith said those who come for the spectacular fall foliage and the winter skiing also show an interest in seeing the windmills.

"They're not attracting people, but they're an attraction once people have arrived," he said.

Don Walukas, former borough council president of Meyersdale, Pa., where FPL energy has another wind farm, said he is troubled by the expense of putting up windmills that produce relatively little power.

"I think we have gone through a lot of desecration of our ridge for something that is not worth it," he said. "I sit on my porch and I see those things. What if they have them all over the place? I'm not ready for that."

But Harold Nicholson, chairman of the Meyersdale Windpower Fund Committee — which allocates the roughly $13,000 a year FPL Energy gives to the community in lieu of taxes — said the windmills are "a low-cost, environmentally clean source of electrical power and I support anything that will provide electric power for now and future generations."

Nicholson, who previously managed a rural electrical cooperative in Garrett, Pa., said he used to give 30 to 40 tours a year on a wind farm there and never saw a dead bat.