2 Responses to “Helicopter Main”

1. kzin
   November 10th, 2010 @ 6:15 pm

   Helicopter maintenance and repair.

2. Some Facts
   April 11th, 2011 @ 6:16 pm

   The routes over the Palo Duro Canyon were actually more expensive in the end.

   Short routes over the Canyon proposed by PBS&J were eliminated by the PUC because they cut diagonally across property lines for the entire length of the route and violated PUC guidelines. They should never have been proposed.

   Longer routes that complied with PUC guidelines that crossed the canyon were comparable in length and price to the northern route and probably would have likely exceeded the cost of the northern route due to engineering constraints. There may also have been helicopter maintenance costs. In addition, they had the most visual impact on the State Park area.

   Also, if a Canyon route had been chosen, 30 to 50 miles of the northern route would have still been built, charged back to the ratepayers, to access the wind farms in Deaf Smith, Oldham and Carson Counties that will be built on the northern route and need to interconnect with the line. This would have substantially increased the cost to the ratepayers in the end.

   Lastly, it is completely unnecessary to cross the Canyon with these lines. All of the ERCOT's capacity for wind could easily have been developed without crisscrossing over the Palo Duro Canyon.

   So why advocate for the unnecessary destruction of one of our state's greatest treasures? People who want to defend these areas are not environmentalists, per se, but people who appreciate remarkable geologic wonders, natural beauty, natural habitats, a natural place to hike, an extraordinary view. Do people just not want to have any natural recreational areas to preserve for the future? No appreciation left for the environment, natural beauty or geologic wonders, at all?

   It's like a salivating, slobbery Pavlov's dog knocking over the china cabinet, scrambling over the dinner table, spreading broken dishes and scraping muddy footprints all over the furniture and floor, to get to his bowl full of the newest brand of dog food in the utility room. Why not place the bowl by the dog and feed the dog outside, for posterity's sake?