As an Iowan, I'm surprised we're not already the "wind capitol of the world". You can't throw a rock without hitting a turbine, especially along I-80 and I-35.
I live in the Des Moines metro and most of the turbines are in rural areas, so I can't really speak to living around them.
As for the few turbines in the urban areas, they're completely unnoticable. They're silent and just blend into the background.
The only thing I could maybe see as annoying is the red flashing lights they use to help aircraft see them at night. The flashing is at least synchronized so there isn't a constant twinkling effect.
>The only thing I could maybe see as annoying is the red flashing lights they use to help aircraft see them at night.
I'm also from Iowa. It's a really eerie effect driving through a wind farm in the pitch dark! I noticed it most recently on 80 near Newton when they put in a wind farm in the last couple years.
> Smallwood says about 100 eagles die each year due to impacts with the spinning blades on windmills.
> "Mr. Trump could not have arrived at his number (hundreds and hundreds) from any reliable source, unless he is referring to all eagles killed by industrial-scale wind turbines since they were installed in the early 1980s," Smallwood said. "Cumulatively over time, there have been hundreds of eagles killed, probably about 2,000."
The article goes on to say that larger, more modern turbines are more carefully sited to avoid eagle deaths, and that it's working.
“This is a big success story,” Thompson said. “Our goal was to have up to 10 nesting pairs in Iowa by the year 2000. Now we have at least 300 – maybe even 400.”
