CLEVELAND - After nearly 20 years of discussion, Lake Erie's wind turbine project will get the green light, just as long as the six turbines are not a threat to migrating birds and bats.
The U.S.'s first ever freshwater wind turbine project has all but been approved by The Ohio Power Siting Board, provided that the Lake Erie Energy Development Co., or LEEDCO, can meet nearly three dozen conditions.
Those conditions include: the installation of collision detectors to determine whether birds and bats are running into the spinning blades; the monitoring plan must be able to detect and track directional movement and altitude of individual 10-gram and larger vertebrates, while, at the same time, suppressing false detection's from insects, wave clutter, and weather.
Despite all this, LEEDCO says construction is tentatively set to begin in 2021.
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