Electricy

There are many ways to produce electricity. The cleanest and most environmentally friendly way is hydroelectric. There are many existing dams in the state of Ohio (there are no natural occurring lakes in the state of Ohio) and most of them are not being used to produce electricity. The same can be said for the entire country. We need to enact legislation that will eliminate the red tape and high expense of getting a hydroelectric permit for an existing dam. The proposed adaptation of the dam would simply have to be reviewed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to ensure that the structural integrity of the dam was not being damaged. And even that would not be necessary for the smaller dams that farmers and homeowners have on their own property. If a dam already exists, there is no need to conduct an environmental impact study. This should definitely be done for locks on rivers. Fewer than half of the locks on the Ohio River within our district are being used to produce electricity. Those that are produce between 10 and 40 megawatts of power. That translates to enough electricity to supply 10,000 to 40,000 homes from each lock! Having a cheap, reliable, renewable source of electricity in our district would keep prices low for both residents and businesses alike. Cheap electric will help us attract new business to this area. For the good of our country, I would encourage this to be done for all locks in the country. If a government incentive program is need here, then we should require that the generators are built here in America, not just assembled here. That way we also create more U.S. jobs while creating sources of cheap, clean electricity!

I would vote to stop the tax credits (but allow tax breaks) for wind power, not because I don't believe your tax dollars should be spent on other people's personal power supplies, but because if they were economical, the private industries would be building them without a tax credit. This is how government messes up private enterprise. If something doesn't work, then private enterprise will dump it and search for something that does. But when the government is willing to pay for it, private enterprise continues to focus on the free, but inefficient, system and stops looking for a better system. This system is not reliable; it is ugly and noisy.

Solar power produced by solar cells is very inefficient and only works during daylight hours. Other power plants will still have to be online to produce energy for the night time. Since it takes days to get a power plant up and running, there is no benefit at all to these two systems--wind and solar. Again, it is a waste of time, energy, and your tax dollars.

I believe the greatest potential for solar energy would be to collect it outside the atmosphere (outer space) and beam it down to earth in microwave or some other form. Of course, this is beyond our current capabilities and would require a lot of research and development. We also need to continue creating cleaner ways to produce electricity using coal. But we need to do this without penalizing the coal industry and without raising electric rates.

If you agree with my views on energy, then help put me in the House of Representatives by donating some money to this campaign, telling your friends and neighbors about this website, and voting for me in the primary and general elections.