Day 1 Windmills and Such

The first day of the coal project and of course we go to view an alternate sources of energy. We saw the Parson Windmills located on Backbone Mountain.  These are not the windmills that Don Quixote jousted with but instead these are monsterous modern windmills.  The first things you see is how tall the windmills are and how slow the blades seem to be moving.  The blades may seem to be going slow on this day they rotated 17 times per minute.  When the blades rotate 17 times per minute it means the outside of the blade is going 141 mph. No wonder birds sometimes hit them.  People sometimes complain that windmills on a mountain are an eyesore, but instead they seem beautiful in their own way.  They are very simple and modern looking so that they do not take away from the scenery and the size of the windmills are awesome especially when you get close to them.

     Next we were off to Thomas a mining town founded by Henry Gasaway Davis. This area had at one time been covered by virgin forest before 1880 as had been 2/3 of West Virginia.  By 1910 most of these virgin forests were gone.  Thomas's natural environment and waterways were devastated by the mining. A big problem was caused by the pyrite in the area that produces hydrchloric acod when mixed with water.  Tomorrow we will observe how the land and water have recovered or not recovered.