Featured Story Archives - Checks and Balances Project

HB 6 prevents OVEC from replacing old coal-fired plants with anything better

2024-02-18

The utilities that share ownership of the Ohio Valley Electric Corp. (OVEC) have closed all or some of the units at 28 coal-fired power plants since 2010, citing environmental concerns, high costs and age as some of the reasons for their closing, a Checks & Balances Project analysis shows. The closures removed at least 22,527… Read more »

Resource Fuels owner filed no lobbying reports despite pushing for HB 6

2023-12-13

The Boich Companies filed Ohio forms claiming they conducted no lobbying from 2017 through 2019, even though court records show their officials were intimately involved in the passage of HB 6, the law requiring state ratepayers to bail out two coal-fired power plants. Boich’s lobbying reports are another facet of the company’s stealth campaign to… Read more »

Thomas will amend misleading disclosures, remains mum about $3 million in travel

2023-04-17

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas says he will amend his financial disclosure forms to account for a 2014 real estate deal involving billionaire Harlan Crow that he failed to report, but he still has said nothing about the more than $3 million in luxury travel he has accepted from Crow. ProPublica reported April 6 that… Read more »

Detailed report debunks claim that wind turbines hurt property values

2022-09-7

For years, opponents of wind energy have cited claims that the presence of turbines in an area causes property values to drop. Checks and Balances Project (C&BP) has reported that these claims are false. Now a detailed report in the Greenville Daily News of Michigan has shown that property values in areas with wind turbines… Read more »

Opposition to wind forces Michigan employers to look elsewhere for renewable energy

2022-07-11

By the end of this year, Michigan companies will produce 3,544 megawatts of renewable energy, state statistics show, from an assortment of sources, including 38 wind farms that generate the vast majority of that electricity. Yet, many large Michigan employers seeking to power their facilities with renewable energy are now having to turn to out-of-state… Read more »

Wind Energy Opponents Are Costing Michigan Landowners, Local Governments Over $200M

2022-06-6

Often lost in the debate in rural Michigan communities about whether to host a wind farm is the cost to saying “no.” That’s why Checks and Balances Project investigated just how much communities and landowners stand to lose over the projected 20-year life span of wind projects in their areas. Our research concluded that five… Read more »

Wind Opponent’s Claims of Economic Ruin Upended by Facts

2022-03-23

During a rally last month in Montcalm County, Mich., Dave Stevens told protesters that the last four years of his life have been “the worst of my life” since the approval of a wind project near his home of Mt. Haley Township in Midland County. “It’s only going to get worse,” Stevens told the crowd… Read more »

Claims That Wind Farms Lower Property Values Undercut by Real Estate Data

2022-03-10

UPDATED with new information on livestock feed lot: A common complaint of anti-wind activists is that wind farms decrease the property values for landowners near them. Those complaints were echoed again at a Feb. 5 rally in Trufant, Mich., in which speakers claimed that wind turbines drove down property values. “Absolutely they can hurt your… Read more »

As Anti-Wind Zoning Ordinances Spread Across Michigan, Ordinances’ Language Varies Little

2021-11-10

A series of virtually identical zoning ordinances that restrict the development of wind farms has spread across parts of rural Michigan, a Checks and Balances Project analysis shows. Two of the three ordinances were drafted with the help of the Grand Rapids-based law firm Foster Swift Collins & Smith, whose partner Michael Homier is part… Read more »

Despite Opponent Arguments, Wind Energy Fills Sails In Huron County

2021-08-23

ELKTON, Mich. – So pervasive is the misinformation surrounding wind farms in rural Michigan that when Robert Krohn developed lung cancer, some of his neighbors who have known him for years said he probably got it from the 17 windmills Krohn has on his 1,400-acre farm. “It ain’t from the windmills,” the soft-spoken 77-year-old lifetime… Read more »

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