In June, the Sierra Club filed suit against Donald Rumsfeld and the U.S. Department of Defense for blocking the construction of new wind power plants on the grounds that they interfered with the various Department of Defense facilities.
In order to operate and construct a windmill in the U.S., the Federal Aviation Administration must deem that the installation is not a hazard to air navigation. The Federal Aviation Administration is interpreting DOD's “Interim Windmill Policy” to mean that it cannot approve any wind projects “within radar line of sight.”
One of the delayed wind farms would have been the nation's largest source of wind energy, generating enough electricity to power 120,000 homes in the Chicago area.
Also in June, Senators Russ Feingold, Dick Durbin, Herb Kohl, Kent Conrad, Byron Dorgan, and Barack Obama wrote a letter to the Department of Defense and the Federal Aviation Administration requesting that they stop unnecessarily obstructing the construction of clean, renewable energy sources.
More recently, the DOD released a study in which it stated that it would work with wind power plants to help make them work, instead of blocking construction completely. The DOD report calls for additional research and development to improve methods to mitigate windmills' impact on military radar.
While the report appears to downplay the effectiveness of current mitigation measures, it importantly concludes that efforts must be taken “to allow for construction of wind turbines while maintaining defense readiness capabilities.”
