Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Idaho - YOUR federal lands are for sale

All those Blinking Red Lights..
Like some Super Collider silently effecting your Axis.
Turning you into someone with the Mindset that lives in Massinsanity..
Maybe like someone who went to BU and is amazed on how a Garbage Disposal works ..

A few of these at 1/2 acre each is a LONG way from 73,000 acres and 350 miles of roads. That's what they're saying for the Lava Ridge project.

Something else - sage grouse. The feds say they're endangered but they're building these massive projects right on top of sage grouse habitat.

What is BLM proposing to allow for multiple uses around the turbines?

The Feds subsidize wind mill and solar panels construction. The power company has to build the network to get that "cheap clean energy" to it's customer's but they don't get any subsidizes. That cost gets passed on to it's customers.

I finally found my note about the Federal energy subsidies for electricity:

Green energy $101.32 per megawatt hour.

Fossil fuels $1.12 per megawatt hour (gas/oil $0.39, coal $073).

Green energy is going to destroy our economy!

I’d like to hear more about “virtual storage” of electricity.

Good more spare parts and metal to sale.

I worked for an electric utility for 34 yrs. They started filling our mountain tops with these around 15 yrs ago. From the time they started until I retired 5 yrs ago, I asked every senior supervisor I had a chance to speak to, if they even broke even and paid for themselves. Not one gave a yes. Danced around the question like a politician, but not one said yes. And the ruined our fuggin mountains

Agreed. The best places for wind or solar is where they don't interfere with other land uses.

a quick way to take hunting land away . can't shoot around a windmill

This is so funny, nobody gonna do a darn thing about it cept vent on the forum.

I'd much rather see them subsidies than implement a carbon tax like Argentina, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Denmark, the European Union (27 countries), Japan, Kazakhstan, Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, the UK, and Ukraine have.

That Jackpot solar project in Idaho will operate at $21.75 per megawatt hour/2.2¢ per kilowatt hour, one of the most efficient in the country.

As long as they keep building solar and wind projects, we can fight the need for a carbon tax.

The new combined cycle gas plants cut emissions by half of your typical coal plant but a carbon tax would lessen the value of building those.

It's government land. They can do whatever they want with it.

I was impressed to drive by a number of ranches in north Texas last fall for a whitetail hunt that had cotton growing, pump jacks pumping and wind turbines spinning. All on the same property. I am sure they were hunted as well.

If the project is in Southern Idaho, it makes little difference how arable the soil appears to be. It takes irrigation water to grow crops in the arid west.

The soil in question is currently BLM. That means it was never homesteaded...........because there was no water available to grow crops. Most river systems in Idaho are already fully developed to store and divert all available water to existing farmlands. There is none available to send to arid BLM grounds, nor do we wish the Feds to sell the Federal land if water were available.

That natural grazing you refer to is cheat grass. It is an annual which germinates in April and dries up and goes to seed in early July in the best of years, often in June. It is of very low actual dry matter (calories), and even lower nutritional value. Though it will sustain a limited number of ungulates for a short duration.

In the desert, without water, it makes zero difference whether you build on soil, or on barren lava rock. Neither will grow a crop.

As to the impact of the wind farm on grazing by domestic animals or wildlife, whatever grass which presently grows in the area will continue to grow around the wind farms.

I dislike looking at wind turbines as much as anybody. And if the powers that be had closed the gates on this nation in 1970 when we achieved zero population growth, we would not need them.

But since the economy of this nation, and the federal government is just a giant ponzi scheme which dies without growth. The feds keep importing immigrants at unsustainable rates. Thus finding new sources of electricity is of paramount importance. The leftists have demonized nukes and coal. Hydro is equated with Satan himself. That only leaves solar and wind for the foreseeable future.

As much as we hate the sight of wind farms, they are an absolute necessity to national security until the politics in this nation gets reversed.

Personally, I think wind farms are a wise choice for lands of limited production. And they fit well with the ideal of multiple use.

If transmission lines must be built, then some environmental groups will likely challenge and shut it down.

Had a potential geo-thermal system in our Alvord Basin shut down over that very issue several years ago.

That white stuff is steam.

I did NOT verify your math, but I will accept it EXACTLY as you stated...

Point being...

In 2022 most people will not... or CANNOT do the hard math... and immediately go to the "emotional" opinion (i.e. "I love Green"... or "I hate Green").

People have been TAUGHT that their emotions are more important than math/economics.

Horse chit in every way...

All of nature and all that is truly real is based on resource/economics FACTS.

"Green math" is really dumb... every time I have dug into the retails/done the math.

BUT people get a warm fuzzy... just like taking a Rona shot/booster to "feel" safe.

That it is, rising from the cooling towers, the low laying dark haze on the horizon is that nifty particulate matter, also known as particle pollution which includes the tiny particles of fly ash and dust that are expelled from coal-burning power plants from sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen oxides (NOx) and ammonia (NH3).

Live about 15 air miles from one.

The Salmon Falls and Lava Ridge projects benefit no one except the politicians that are receiving money for trying to push this through and southern California and Nevada that gets the power generated.
The power doesn't stay in Idaho. Literally it will only create 10s of jobs. It diminishes grazing that already the BLM and Forest Service has been cutting back for years. In turn creating fire fuel in the hot summer months. Try fighting a wild land fire amongst 1000 ft tall pinwheels.
Above someone mentioned cheat grass, yes there is a lot of cheat grass along with other native grasses. Cattle can do very well on cheat grass if grazed at the correct time and it's been proven in it reduces fire fuel load.
With reduced grazing, also reduces the amount of water hauled in by ranchers to water cattle this also reduces water for wild life that uses those tanks. Just because the land isn't turned into usable farm land it doesn't mean it doesn't create income or provide a life for others, wildlife included. The sage grouse being "endangered", follow cattle from allotment to allotment.

There has been a big local push back and voices have been heard. Last Thursday Twin Falls County commissioners opposed the Salmon Falls project. Lincoln County commissioners are expected to do the same.