While the Shore debates wind turbines, Pennsylvania’s have been spinning for two decades

Every time a wind turbine’s blade whooshes around on Dave Dombek’s Northeastern Pennsylvania property, he makes a little money that helps secure some peace of mind.

Dombek, a meteorologist in the State College area, and his family own a combined 550 acres in rural Wyoming County. When the state’s largest wind farm was proposed there over a decade ago, planners with BP Energy sought to erect four of the 88 turbines on his property. The family signed a contract and now receive “tens of thousands” of dollars per year because of it, Dombek said, helping to pay property taxes and maintenance fees.

“Without that, we probably would have had to sell off some parcels of the land,” Dombek told The Inquirer.

Pennsylvania is home to more than two dozen wind farms, both large and small, on private property. While none were met with the level of controversy seen in New Jersey’s offshore wind plans in recent years, some Pennsylvania projects have seen significant pushback for the same environmental and aesthetic concerns.

Some Pennsylvania projects never materialized at all. That wasn’t the case with the Mehoopany Wind Farm in Wyoming County, according to one elected official there.

“We have no issues with it whatsoever. I’ve never heard a complaint about it,” said county commissioner Ernie King. “I have a friend who drinks his coffee outside every morning just to look at them.”

Financial incentives aside, Pennsylvania’s wind turbine farms generate enough energy to power 350,000 homes, according to the state’s Department of Environmental Protection.

In New Jersey, Danish offshore wind developer Ørsted’s wind farms were going to be built far off the coast, in the Atlantic Ocean, and would have generated power for 1 million homes. The project, backed by N.J. Gov. Phil Murphy, faced blowback from elected officials, Shore residents, second-home owners, and fishermen for years. Some complained about the view, whether the turbines would be visible from the beach, and how it would affect tourism. Others believed early sonar mapping for the projects was killing whales and dolphins.

There were songs written, thousands of signs staked into lawns, and protests along the surf. During a crowded, raucous meeting about the project in Wildwood in March, one opponent said the sight of the turbines affected him physically.

“I can only look for about five to six seconds,” he said.

On Oct. 31, Ørsted pulled the plug on the project, citing economic reasons. However, some proponents blamed “an ugly and deceitful public relations campaign by partisan Republican mouthpieces with ties to big oil.”

New Pennsylvania wind projects have slowed significantly in recent years, but mostly for logistical reasons. The bulk of the state’s new turbines were built in the first decade of the new millennium, and many of those turbines across the state are being replaced with newer, more efficient models.

“Many of the windiest locations have already been developed, which may be a factor in this decline,” Michael Sell of Saint Francis University’s Institute for Energy told The Inquirer.

Pennsylvanians have had concerns about wind energy, and many coalesced around the group Save Our Allegheny Ridges, or SOAR, which aims to “protect forested ridges in Pennsylvania.” The group’s president, Laura Jackson, a retired science teacher, said she started the group in 2005 to help protect birds and bats and said she attended multiple meetings and conferences to educate herself on wind energy.

“I had to do something,” she said.

Given that Pennsylvanians live much closer to the actual turbines, Jackson was also concerned with the potential health effects of their sound and even “infrasound,” something humans can feel but not hear. Opponents believe infrasound can cause sleep disturbances, but studies have found no evidence of that.

Jackson said the group has helped protect forested ridges in 23 townships “under threat of wind development.”

SOAR’s website details zoning issues surrounding wind projects, including property setback parameters, noise levels, and how historic preservation guidelines can be used to combat turbines from an aesthetic angle.

“Wind developers do acknowledge that industrial wind turbines on Pennsylvania mountains are hard to hide. Some people think the turbines are beautiful, others think they are eyesores,” the group wrote on its site.

Jackson said her group, a nonprofit, is funded solely through donations from residents.

One project, called Anthracite Ridge in Schuylkill County, faced pushback by military leaders at local bases, Jackson said, along with environmental groups like the Hawk Migration Association of North America. There’s a looming battle, she said, over turbines in Lake Erie.

When Bethlehem Authority, the financial arm of the City of Bethlehem’s water system, expressed interest in building turbines on land it owned in Penn Forest Township, Carbon County, in 2016, SOAR got involved and galvanized the local opposition.

A drawn-out court battle ensued over zoning ordinances, and in 2022, Atlantic Winds LLC, the developer, pulled out.

“It was grueling,” Stephen Repasch, director of the Bethlehem Authority, told The Inquirer.

Repasch said energy produced by a wind farm would be sold to the highest bidder and that revenue would be used for maintenance and improvements to the water system.

“We’re hoping to move forward with another developer,” he said.

If that’s the case, Jackson said SOAR would push back for residents who oppose the plan.

In Tyrone, Blair County, there were concerns in 2008 that the Sandy Ridge Wind Farm, which is operational, could harm migratory birds. Most studies that looked at bird mortality and wind turbines are over a decade old, but in 2021 the American Bird Conservancy estimated that more than 600,000 are killed yearly.

Today, the Sandy Ridge wind farm is expanding and local officials tout the revenue it brings in.

“I think they’re beautiful and majestic,” Tyrone Mayor Bill Latchford told the Daily Herald last year.

For King, in Wyoming County, the turbines are also a welcome sight.

“In a situation like this, where you’re doing an environmental good, I just don’t understand the problem,” he said.