Does anyone know if the things are taxed and who gets the money "generated"?

All the effort to gather information about wind turbines in the lake and this is slipped in without any information provided to residents and customers? Please publish more information about the location of these turbines as soon as you can!

This makes infinitely more sense that ruining a significant portion of Lake Michigan.

And why couldn't Consumers invest in a local company to build said turbines? Lord knows we need jobs desperately in this area!!

Jeanne, if you'll note in the article, these turbines are on land, not in the lake. This is ideal. I think this is a great start, they already have the transmission and storage facilities so we'll see how it works. Give it a chance people.

I agree totally with TIM. Be American - BUY American. This country needs saving at a much higher urgency than energy does. If we keep going at the current rate, there will be no USA in 10 years. If that is the case - who cares about energy? Keep it in the USA.

All the land owners who signed on with consumers have the information. They offered me $50/acre to sign on and allow them to use my land if they need to, then $5 or $10/acre annually (if i remember correctly) if they don't build anythin on my property, but they retain the right to use my property for access or to build in the future for up to 15 years. If they built a monitoring station or windmill I would get more money, and a windmill would pay a percentage of the electricity it generates. However, since I only have ten acres and the foot print of the windmills is up to 80 acres, the most I could hope for would have been a fraction of that, plus the windmill has to be built one and a half times the hieght of it away from any dwellings which would further limit the possibility of it being built near me. Basically they were offering me peanuts to potentially destroy my property value. I am not against wind power, and have no issue with them building them near me, or prefferably in the lake, but I know anything hanging over a property like this "offer" MAY not bother some potential buyers, but definitely WILL bother other buyers. No matter where they get built, they are going to upset someone. So the real question is, which ones will provide the most benifit to the community. It seems like consumers has opted to offer the community as a whole nothing and offer the land owners a few peanuts without the land owners actually knowing what it will do to their land values.

Windmills will be like cell towers people with big parcels of land will have them put up but not by there homes. In stead place them by someone who ownes a small piece of land and get nothing for looking and living next to them. Stray voltage seems to be a big concern in areas where these windmills are put up,also. Check it out.

Do some further checking about wind turbines on Google. There are a number of stories and some studies indicating that people who live within two miles of a turbine experience head aches, nausea, difficulty sleeping and difficulty concentrating because of the low frequency "whomp, whomp" caused every time a blade rotates past the tower. If I lived within two miles of the proposed site, I would be very concerned.

Tim, there are no local companies that could build these turbines. There aren't even many American companies that could...perhaps GE is the only one. The US lags far behind Europe in this respect. However, several European companies have opened manufacturing facilities in the US, including Vestas, employing Americans to build their turbines. (Also, crane, concrete, electrical, and other local contractors will be employed to install the turbines.) It's the NIMBYism that I read from Americans regarding wind turbines that has caused the American renewable energy industries to lag behind the Europeans. I say, put them up! We have a good wind resource here and the transmission capability to handle the electricity. Let's embrace our potential for energy independence and progressiveness!

Hurray for wind power! It's time to get off of our dependence on non-renewable resources like oil and coal! This is great; and so will the offshore farm in Lake Michigan. The more the better!!!