A cry for help. Destruction of cozumel starting in 2013

[alexunderpressure]

Well, in the ambient impact study it says the mills are capable of standing winds of 200 k/h, we have had winds much harder than that.

It is one of the issues, the danger of one of those falling down.

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[ggunn]

you have proof of this how? The twin wind generators on my former sailboat lived thru Dean in 2007 and remained intact.. Have you read and can provide further proof that the engineering reports back up your claim?

What I said.

I once took a seminar course on negotiating difficult situations. One point that was made is that loading up an argument with lots of unrelated objections is counterproductive and, counterintuitively, detrimental to your position. If you bring up 20 points and any one of them is unsubstantiated or thin, it weakens your whole argument; it's a "weakest link" scenario.

For starters, the subject of this thread, which alludes to the "destruction of Cozumel" is IMO hyperbolic and sensationalistic. Cozumel is not slated to be the site of H-bomb testing.

 

[alexunderpressure]

alex a lot of what you are saying does not make sense.. Recently I had reason to load Google Earth. I noticed a feature that put me back to 1960 photos... You might want to see what Solidaridad aka Playa looked like in 1960 and Cancun was nada.. Coz was a sleeping little nothing.


YOU need to weigh the impact of a wind farm, against the impact of all those people that keep coming to the entire coast line. All you do is point to a biased FB page, and some are not even on FB... or read spanish...
You arguments are all emotion based. How about providing us with more solid evidence.
When someone gives you a similar situation on Bonaire you just ignore because you do not want to believe that it could work, or so it appears.

I am not for or against the wind farm. I am pragmagtic in that you have two choices... one is fossil fuel that IS finite or the other that is completely renewable each day and has the ability to provide electricity.
All you environmentalists cannot have it both ways.. that is unless you would like to dismantle the entire dive industry that Cozumel thrives one, and thus delete your own job. I really don't think you have truly thought this through to a logical conclusion. It has finally reached an either or situtation.

You are fighting the Mexican government that has made a decision. I suspect the uphill battle is a waste. So try to mitigate the situation to the best advantage of Cozumel.
YMMV
'bella

notice NO one is screeching about the proposed bullet train from Playa to Merida and then the next leg would be merida to cancun to bring all those turistas to Chichen Itza... talk about impact on cities and the environment.. its why I rejected Merida to base myself out of..

I am no environmentalist, not at all, if this were a piece of solid rock I wouldnt mind, but understand, the island water suply (we are sitting in water, Cozumel has an intrcate water system under it) is at risk.

Now that I dont make sense, please read the links I posted, see the map on page 1 or two, 6000 hectares will be afected, read it, it´s not me making things up.

If you can post your opinion after reading them, tell me what you think.

 

[ggunn]

Well, in the ambient impact study it says the mills are capable of standing winds of 200 k/h, we have had winds much harder than that.

It is one of the issues, the danger of one of those falling down.

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200kph is about 120mph. Whatever ambient impact study you are referring to notwithstanding, I have serious doubts that the engineers designing this project have built their wind loading analysis based on a 120mph maximum wind speed.

 

[alexunderpressure]

Another point I forgot to mention that worries us is the danger of one of the mills blowing up in the dry season, creating a fire that can devastate the jungle, this year we had very few rain,

HURRICANE BAWBAG BLOWS UP WINDMILL - YouTube

Windmill Disaster - YouTube

is it really hard to understand that these things could be erected in the mainland, in the middle of nowhere, where the damage would be far less because it is continent and not a 35 mile long island with a very fragile ecosistem?

 

[Mike]

Another point I forgot to mention that worries us is the danger of one of the mills blowing up in the dry season, creating a fire that can devastate the jungle, this year we had very few rain,

HURRICANE BAWBAG BLOWS UP WINDMILL - YouTube

Windmill Disaster - YouTube

is it really hard to understand that these things could be erected in the mainland, in the middle of nowhere, where the damage would be far less because it is continent and not a 35 mile long island with a very fragile ecosistem?

First off aren't you concerned with the main lands jungles burning down?

Curious has the island jungles of Cozumel ever burned down from a lightening strike yet?

I am no environmentalist, not at all, if this were a piece of solid rock I wouldnt mind, but understand, the island water suply (we are sitting in water, Cozumel has an intrcate water system under it) is at risk.

Now that I dont make sense, please read the links I posted, see the map on page 1 or two, 6000 hectares will be afected, read it, it´s not me making things up.

If you can post your opinion after reading them, tell me what you think.

Wait till you guys eventually bump up against the real problem that's eventually coming your way, when you eventually start having clean water shortages from over use and over development of the island and stress on the limited water shed on the island, then the real fun is going to start! Guess who in that scenario will be the biggest water users? It will be your hotels and resorts. While the locals are conserving water and paying higher and higher costs for the smaller and smaller share of the water they use, the tourists will be taking 2 hour showers and the resorts will be running fountains, filling pools and irrigating green expanses of lawns and fairways on the gold course.

 

[alexunderpressure]

200kph is about 120mph. Whatever ambient impact study you are referring to notwithstanding, I have serious doubts that the engineers designing this project have built their wind loading analysis based on a 120mph maximum wind speed.

Of course you have serious doubts, so do we, and the 120 mph is there, in paper, we´ve seen it, we know it doesn´t make sense.

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Wait till you guys eventually bump up against the real problem that's eventually coming your way, when you eventually start having clean water shortages from over use of the limited water shed on the island, then the real fun is going to start! Guess who in that scenario will be the biggest water users? It will be your hotels and resorts. While the locals are conserving water and paying higher and higher costs for the smaller and smaller share of the water they use, the tourists will be taking 2 hour showers and running fountains and irrigating green expanses of lawns.

The only water we have is underground, if its gone nobody will have water, no showers for tourism , no fountains, nothing. many locals rely on wells for their water.

Many of the bottled water here (San Andres and Crystal come to mind) is taken from the ground, and bottled after treating it.

If the underwater suply is disrupted, then what? will we haul it from Yucatán?

 

[fire_diver]

Please show us the proof that these wind turbines are going to damage the water supply.

 

[ggunn]

Of course you have serious doubts, so do we, and the 120 mph is there, in paper, we´ve seen it, we know it doesn´t make sense.

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My doubts are about that paper you've seen. Large scale wind farms are very expensive pieces of hardware and I find it very hard to believe that either the customer or the design engineers would allow the system to be underengineered for wind loading. Never mind the environmental impact of a failure; the economic hit that the customer or the insurer would take just from the loss of the equipment would be horrendous. It's not conceivable to me that you've hit upon something which has not been considered by the engineering firm designing the project, far less the underwriters of the insuring entity. They have far more on the line than you do; I think that it is more likely that you have been misinformed.

It's possible that you are simply misinterpreting what you have seen. For example, the International Building Code directs me to design solar arrays in San Antonio which can withstand a three second wind gust of 90mph. That emphatically does NOT mean that I will design a system that will blow away at 91mph; my structural guy and I typically analyze the wind loading at 90mph and then build in a safety factor of 2 or 3. When we stamp a design that conforms to the 90mph requirement, in reality it is far more robust than that.

The 200kph number may simply mean that the site of the proposed wind farm is in a 200kph design zone, although personally I'd be surprised if it were that low. At any rate, my serious doubts are that the system would be built so that it would blow away in a 201kph wind. Nobody wants that.

 

[mstevens]

I can understand the environmental arguments, but not the beliefs that if you put a turbine on Cozumel it should power Cozumel.

If the turbines make my beaches ugly, create noise in my backyard, impact tourism that affects my local economy, put foundations into my extremely delicate local water supply, scare off nesting turtles from my beaches, and so on, I at least want them to reduce my power bill.

If there is no benefit to me whatsoever, why should I permit it? As a non-citizen property owner, I have no say. If I were a citizen, though, I'd be really up in arms over this.

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120 miles of roads would pave every inch of the island of Cozumel probably 5 times over!

Let's try to preserve our credibility, shall we?

The island is roughly 30 miles long. The surface area of the island is about 250 square miles. 120 miles of road would be 4 roads running the length of the island, which would not even pave a significant percentage of the surface. There are already far more than 120 miles of road on the island.

Unless you have 10-mile-wide roads in your part of the world, you're just making stuff up off the top of your head.

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Noise pollution??? From a windmill??

How much time have you spent living in close proximity to a wind turbine? They can be quite loud. A local resident installed a very small one at great expense and ended up taking it down because the noise was driving her nuts.

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If memory serves me, the cost of energy in Denmark is roughly 5x that in the US. What the cost of electricity on Coz as opposed to the US is, I have no idea.

The CFE tariffs are here. Cozumel is in tariff 1B.

Edit: The applicable region is "Sur y Penninsular".

Pricing is determined by consumption - exceeding a certain consumption raises the charge (for the entire bill, not just the overage) for 3 billing cycles, which is 6 months.

Edit: The high tariff, which is often imposed when there's air conditioning involved, is "DAC".

Fourth, we are all making a huge assumption. They actually plan to build it. Call me cynical, but this may be a grab for an expensive engineering contract for a project never intended to be completed.

This really seems to be a central point to me. Cozumel's recent history is rife with examples of grand projects that never took off. This one seems so speculative that I really have to think it's about something else. It's not as if Mexico is short on energy resources or as if there's any regional need for additional electricity generation.

I suspect there are "green energy" tax credits or some other benefit to private investors that is really the goal.