Douglas Alexander: “in order to protect our Nation's most scenic areas, Senator Warner, the senior Senator from Virginia, and I are today…”

“in order to protect our Nation's most scenic areas, Senator Warner, the senior Senator from Virginia, and I are today introducing a revised version of the Environmentally Responsible Windpower Act of 2005. It will be introduced in the House of Representatives by Congressman John Duncan, a Republican, who is chairman of the Water Resources Subcommittee, and by Representative Bart Gordon, a Democrat, who is the ranking Democrat on the Science and Technology Committee. Senator Warner and I have listened to our colleagues, and we have made several changes in our initial bill to simplify it and to make it the kind of bill we hope all Senators will think makes good sense. What we have done is to simplify the local notification procedures and to more precisely protect scenic areas of the country without impacting the entire coastline. We have also removed a provision regarding military bases that was in our bill since that can be addressed in other legislation. Our revised bill would do three things: No. 1, to protect America's most scenic treasures, such as the Grand Canyon, the Statue of Liberty, and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and deny Federal subsidies for giant wind turbines within 20 miles of any national park, national military park, national seashore, national lakeshore, or 20 World Heritage sites in the United States. No.…”