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Yesterday I wrote about how wind park planners and the city councilmen who recklessly approve them may be held personally liable for damage to health that they cause, primarily through infrasound. With locals wind parks, too often crony deals are involved and legitimate opposition gets brushed aside or squashed. The result is often a select few end up lining their pockets while the rest are left to suffer.

A few days ago the German language NWZ mobil here reported on a heated wind park controversy that is boiling over in northwest Germany, writing that “state attorneys are now opening investigations on the profiteers of big money wind energy and how planned wind parks are dividing communities“.

The NWZ mobil writes:

Wind energy makes some rich, the others sick, as tensions peak at the North Sea coast.”

The controversy swirls around opposition to a planned wind park expansion near the home of Wolfgang Mänzel in the village Stedesdorf.

NWZ mobil reports Mänzel at first was enthusiastic about wind parks near in his community, and even invested in the nearby “Citizens’ Wind Park Stedesdorf” nearby, with the hopes of reaping returns. But all that has since changed.

The returns on the investment have been disappointing and investors such as Mänzel have since realized that the business opportunity was never meant to make them rich at all, but rather was set up “to help raise the acceptance for wind energy out in the countryside by using financial incentives,” The NWZ mobil writes. In reality the terms of the investment scheme were all along designed to make a select group of planners and councilmen rich, but not the small investors.

Its no surprise that in Stedesdorf those really profiting the most are now trying to expand the wind park by another 5 turbines. But Wolfgang Mänzel and others feel they were misled by some of the councilmen. It turns out three of the them have a direct stake in the expansion project and stand to profit even more handsomely. Now there are growing accusations of corruption and the town stands bitterly divided amid a thickening atmosphere of distrust and deep suspicion.

The NWZ mobil writes that wind energy critics and opponents now live in an atmospheres of threats and hostility. The NWZ mobil reports:

Wind energy is a multi-million euro business: high state subsidies, guaranteed for years, paid for by the power consumers. Wind energy is in part a criminal business. Not only local politicians are profiting. The mafia launders money by investing in wind parks.”

To protest the seemingly self-serving projects, in October 2015 Mänzel and others founded a citizens initiative against the wind park expansion, and published an open letter to make the affair more public. The recent accusations of corruption have since led to authorities launching an investigation of the “Stedesdorf Wind Park”.

The NWZ reports:

At the state prosecutor’s office in Osnabruck, two anonymous reports of wrongdoing have been filed at the end of January against five partners. Now the state attorney’s office in Celle is investigating for possible bribes to parliamentarians.”

Welcome to the real world of German “green energy”.

In the meantime there has been some good news. NDR television here reports that the additional 5 turbines that had been planned to be added have been overwhelmingly rejected by local citizens, with 80% voting against them – though the vote is non-binding.