These Senators who are on the take and clearly working for Delmarva power are not only negatively impacting our quality of life, and breaking the law, but recent studies show that they are depriving the state of a robust source of new tourism revenue.
Although some may argue that a wind farm is not a tourist magnet, current studies show the contrary.
For example, California’s Palm Springs wind farm offers daily tours marketing their excursion as the
“Ultimate Power Trip” to almost 12,000 curious tourists every year. Denmark, the leading country in
the world using and exporting wind energy, experienced a 25-percent increase in tourism in or
around their wind power farms.Research also indicates that popular vacation locales around the world with wind farms have not experienced a loss in tourism. Instead, people who came to vacation were curious and eager to spend money visiting the wind-power sites, buying T-shirts and other souvenirs, as well as being photographed with the giants. On a local note, Atlantic County Executive Dennis Levinson touted that the wind farm is “Renewable, it’s clean, it’s the future… And if they don’t work, they’re a helluva tourist attraction.”
Atlantic City, differing from other sites around the country, has been quick to embrace the wind farm idea. Although many people are philosophically in favor of alternative and clean energy, the “not in my backyard” mentality became a problem in some areas. However, most AC residents and local politicians were quite excited about the wind farm project.
Anthony Cox, president of the Venice Park Civic Association, described the view from his neighborhood as “pretty cool.” Local real estate agents are also impressed by a recent study that concluded that property values of homes with views of wind turbines rose faster than those of nearby homes without such views.
Scotland has also looked into the non-energy related benefits of wind power. A study dealing with tourism in Argyll turned up some surprising results.
When asked whether the presence of wind farms had a positive or negative effect on their impression of Argyll as a place to visit, over half (55%) of respondents maintained that it had a generally or completely positive effect, while one in three were ambivalent (32%). Less than one in 10 (eight per cent) felt that it had a negative effect.
Most tourists (80%) say they would be interested in visiting a wind farm if it were opened to the public with a visitor centre, with over half (54%) saying they would be “very interested.”
Why we allow Copeland, McDowell and Deluca to continue to stick up for one business (Delmarva Power) at the expense of the rest of the Delaware business community is beyond me.