Every year since 1958, the West Texas town of Sweetwater has hosted the World’s Largest Rattlesnake Roundup, which is exactly what it sounds like. Thousands of the venomous ophidians are rooted out of their dens and brought to the Nolan County Coliseum to be gawked at, “milked,” and often beheaded and skinned. It started as a way for the region to rid itself of some of its least-welcome residents. Now community leaders wish they could do the same with several giant piles of scrap that have for too long been left to bake in the sun. But that’s proving to be much trickier than wrangling reptiles.
About forty miles west of Abilene on Interstate 20, Sweetwater has unwittingly become home to what is possibly the world’s largest collection of unwanted wind turbine blades. When forklifts deposited the first of these in a field behind the apartment complex where Pamala Meyer lives, on the west side of town, in 2017, she wasn’t initially bothered. But then the blades—between 150 and 200 feet in length and mostly made of composite materials such as fiberglass with a binding resin—kept coming. Each was cut into thirds, with each segment longer than a school bus. Thousands arrived over several years, eventually blanketing more than thirty acres, in stacks rising as high as basketball backboards. Every few dozen feet, a break among the stacks leads into an industrial hedge maze.
This will happen with solar panels too, as the government repays solar companies to replace their panels every 7 – 10 years. Solar companies will dump old panels as the cost to “recycle” them is over $25 per panel and does not include transportation.
sue everyone the company that made them, probably china, the government for promoting them, the company that deposited them there! so much for looking out for mother earth. climate change is BS, polluting our planet is not! these people are evil! anything for a $
It is just unbelievable that the plan doesn’t include 100% recycling and disposal.
It remjnds me of the millions of tons of tires in mountains across the country, waiting for a solution.