A three-day meeting is scheduled to begin tomorrow in Toledo, Ohio, and is set to discuss the possibility of putting wind farms on the Great Lakes. The session is sponsored by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Environmental Protection Agency among other groups, and will include conversations about “how to protect birds, bats and fish from the windmills.”

According to the AP, wind farms on the Great Lakes would include “rows of windmills” that “would tower as high as 400 feet and float or stand in relatively shallow water.” Some opponents of wind farms point out the danger that the turbines can represent to migratory bird populations. Acton’s Anthony Bradley has noted that the Sierra Club calls wind towers “Cuisinarts of the air” (listen to related interview here).

The attractiveness of wind farms based on water rather than land has to do with the relatively greater strength of wind which sweeps over bodies of water. Walt Musial, a senior engineer and offshore programs leader for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, a U.S. Department of Energy contractor, said, “Offshore machines can make about twice as much as onshore.”

Other concerns relate to the high startup and capital costs involved in the construction of these projects, perceptions about the unpredictability and unreliability of wind power, and issues of visual pollution.