John Foreman at the News-Gazette has been busy formulating The Wonders of Champaign County for awhile now, and in order to make the list more impressive, there is no requirement that the wonder actually be in Champaign County. The exact criterion, I believe, is that you be able to get there from Champaign County. With that important caveat, I have to nominate the wind farm going up east of Bloomington. I also have to thank Ed Scharlau for reminding me about the farm.
One of the most pleasurable aspects of being a lawyer in Champaign is going to the small courthouses that surround us. Last week I had the good fortune to appear in front of a fine jurist without the necessity of going through a metal detector. It is the only courthouse I know of where that is possible. The defendant, from whom I was collecting a smallish debt for a largish client, agreed to a judgment and payment arrangement and we recited it to the judge. When the judge finished handwriting the entry on the docket sheet he looked up at the defendant and said, "Are you working now, because I haven’t seen you at the grocery store lately."
That, for me, sums up a great day, so I was reluctant to return to my office right away. Instead, I headed west on Route 9 to see if I could find the windmills. As if they could be missed. Imagine they were building the Grand Coulee Dam thirty miles away and nobody ever saw or mentioned it. That’s what it’s like. I haven’t burdened myself with the facts, but I can tell you what I observed; about one hundred enormous towers each holding up a bus size turbine powered by blades that looked to be every bit of 150 feet in diameter. At their apogee, the blade tips appear to be over 400 feet in the air. About twenty percent of the windmills are operating, and their propellers took a lazy 4 seconds to turn around once. It looks very slow, but by my calculation the end of each propeller was going about 200 miles an hour.
So drive out there, and when you get to the first turbine, go south to the first county road heading west again and traverse the whole nine mile length of the complex. As you get closer to the end you will see some partly erected turbines accompanied by giant cranes.
What you don’t see is people. An occasional truck goes by on some mysterious mission, but the whole area is eerily quiet and empty. All in all, it is one of the most amazing things I have ever seen.
Think about this; on the next sunny weekend, plan a trip to Tobin’s Pizza in Bloomington (another Champaign County Wonder) by way of the most amazing secret billion dollar project you have ever seen.
John
Waste Some Gas, Save the Environment
Posted April 25th, 2007 at 10:16 AM by John Bramfeld
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Yea, but did you count the bird carcasses laying underneath the windmills? Also, as an attorney I'd like you to comment on the liability with these things. Was there a sign "Caution, windmill blades may be going faster than you think." or signs for planes, "Caution, windmill blades ahead."
I have also noticed the windmills on the interstate up to Wisconsin. I'm waiting for someone to paint over their pristine blades with something like "Good eats, this exit"
On a flight to Chicago Monday, we flew over the windmill farm. It was very impressive from the air. It takes up a tremendous span of acreage, but with a very small individual footprint.
I did notice however that the blades were spinning counter-clockwise, due to all the hot air coming South out of Chicago....