Quotes

It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment.

"Assuring clean air, land and water depends on all of us —citizens, industry and government —continuing to work together for a cleaner and greener Illinois."

"There is no real economic security, opportunity or quality of life for our citizens if we do not place a high priority on protecting the environment."

"The public policy of the State and the duty of each person is to provide and maintain a healthful environment for the benefit of this and future generations."

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.
Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."

The earth we abuse and the living things we kill will, in the end, take their revenge; for in exploiting their presence we are diminishing our future.

- Marya Mannes, More in Anger, 1958 -

In America today you can murder land for private profit. You can leave the corpse for all to see, and nobody calls the cops.

- Paul Brooks, The Pursuit of Wilderness, 1971 -

"Wind power does not respond to demand. It may or may not be there when needed.... We will therefore need as much other electricity sources with wind as we would without.... It is not just unnecessary but offensive to entertain industrial-scale development of the ridgelines, with strobe lights and noise and ecological degradation that far surpasses anything now on the mountains, for such obvious nonsense."

- Eric Rosenbloom in 'Obvious Nonsense', Vermont Guardian 1/7/06

The 63 turbines at Lee County's Mendota Hills Wind Farm have been spinning since November 2003 and have a capacity of 50.4 megawatts, enough to power approximately 15,000 homes IF they are operating at full capacity. Elroy Swope, 75, has four turbines on his Compton farm that are part of Mendota Hills project.

"I wouldn't do it again," Elroy Swope said. "It just didn't turn out the way it was supposed to."

Swope said he was told he would receive about $1,000 per year per windmill, but after one year, he has not received anywhere near $4,000. He declined to say how much he has been paid.

"Mr. Swope is a difficult person to keep happy," said Christopher, Moore, managing director of the Minneapolis, MN based developer Navitas Energy, Inc. Still, Moore acknowledged that farmers were not paid as much as they expected in 2004. "2004 was a poor wind year and because it was the first facility, the first part of the year was what I would call startup. We didn't get as much production as we hoped."

Last year was better, but Moore declined to provide statistics about the wind farm's production in 2005, and has not responded to multiple voice messages and e-mails requesting this information.