Worst Case Scenario: Imagining a Spill at Somerset Wind Farm

I have a friend named Bob W. and he is the most well-balanced person I have known. Whenever change or uncertainty are afoot, he'd ask people, "What's the worst thing that could happen? What would that look like?" Then he'd suggest ways to handle the worst-case scenario, and generally people had a better handle on things after they talked with Bob.

Which makes me wonder. Suppose for a moment we weren't fracking Marcellus Shale, and we weren't drilling for oil 5000 feet underwater. Suppose we were doing something other than drilling. What would be different?

• We wouldn't have 40-foot flames shooting out of the ground in Moundsville WV
• We wouldn't have a well blowout that spewed natural gas and 35,000 gallons of toxic drilling fluid in Clearfield County.
• We wouldn't have an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico where we can't even stop the leak until August, at the earliest.

Suppose we had windfarms instead of oil wells and fracking operations. But let's not rush into it; let's consider the downside. What's the worst that could happen, as Bob would ask, if we used windfarms instead of drilling for oil? What would that look like?

The worst that could happen, I suggest, is that the wind farm could have an unprecedented spill.

What would the Post Gazette look like the morning after the worst-case scenario came to pass, and we had a "spill event" at the Somerset Wind Farm?




Hat Tip: here, here, and here.