Putting wind and solar on formerly contaminated sites
Could the use of “brownfields” reduce the conflicts over the placement of these land-expansive uses?
Contamination transformation. Contaminated sites being used to house wind farms, solar arrays and geothermal power plants. Mother Nature Network. By Jessica A. Knoblauch
It appears there is a lot of land in this category and many are near existing transmission lines.

Ralph Maughan
Dr. Ralph Maughan is professor emeritus of political science at Idaho State University. He has been a Western Watersheds Project Board Member off and on for many years, and also its President. For many years he produced Ralph Maughan's Wolf Report. He was a founder of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. He and Jackie Johnson Maughan wrote three editions of "Hiking Idaho." He also wrote "Beyond the Tetons" and "Backpacking Wyoming's Teton and Washakie Wilderness." He created and is the administrator of The Wildlife News.
6 Responses to Putting wind and solar on formerly contaminated sites
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This sounds so much better than Mountain Top Destruction industrial wind – like the horrendous China Mountain project designed to destroy Idaho and send power south to Las Vegas so that NV can claim “renewable” energy is being use. Destroying intact wild lands is the furtherest thing from “renewable”.
kt, you mean like this? Good thing us Utahn’s still have our coal burning plants for our own juice.
http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_13758356
“”The power is being purchased by the Southern California Public Power Authority, an agency comprising 12 municipal utilities and an irrigation company. Phyllis Currie, general manager of Pasadena Water and Power, said the power will help the city meet its goal of obtaining 44 percent of its power from renewable sources by 2020, which is 10 percent more than will be required by state government by that date.
“I want to tell our customers when they turn their lights on they have [Utahns] to thank,” said Currie.”””
I hadn’t even heard about the Milford Project.
How much of that power is being lost enroute to CA?
Which desert Range is it on?
I agree with this proposal wholeheartedly, and would add that there is no reason why every rooftop, every parking lot, every mall and factory and big box store cannot be fitted with solar. Line the railways, line the roadways, take every visually insignificant predisturbed area and solarize it. That would quickly give us 10,000’s of square miles of panels, easily enough to provide virtually all of our electrical needs and then some.
“That would quickly give us 10,000’s of square miles of panels, easily enough to provide virtually all of our electrical needs and then some.”
And dispersing the sources of power would make it much less vulnerable to attacks, and reduce the amount of people affected by outages.
“And dispersing the sources of power would make it much less vulnerable to attacks, and reduce the amount of people affected by outages.”
Yeah, but then a big utility or corporation can’t control the electrical production…