LEWISBURG — A Lewisburg man admonished Greenbrier County commissioners Tuesday night for not opposing the proposed Beech Ridge windmill project and said the governing body is playing “Russian roulette” with the future tax base of the county.

“It seems to me that you, elected commissioners, had your minds made up about this project before the residents were properly informed,” Rufus Cox, who owns property near the proposed windmill turbine site in northern Greenbrier County, said. “Should you have dug for more information and taken the pulse of this county more accurately before rendering your opinion?”

Cox said he was involved with the anti-windmill group Mountain Communities for Responsible Energy, but was speaking solely as a concerned citizen and on behalf of other concerned citizens and not specifically for any group.

“By supporting this project, the commission is playing Russian roulette with the future tax base of this county,” Cox said. “But this is just a side issue with us because this project will be playing havoc with our lives.”

Cox also made a not so subtle hint that commissioners up for re-election may pay at the polls for not opposing the turbine project.

“The people of this county will remember the actions of this commission long after the next election,” he said. “Moreover, if this industrial wind factory is built, we will remember their actions every time we look up and see this monstrous corporate scourge across our beautiful mountains.”

Cox, a carpenter and contractor, spoke during the public comment period of the meeting and Commissioners Betty Crookshanks, Brad Tuckwiller and Lowell Rose did not respond to his statement. After the meeting, Tuckwiller and Crookshanks said the lack of zoning laws in the county prohibits the commission from intervening in the situation.

“There aren’t any ordinances to prevent the windmills from coming in, so there is nothing we can do about this,” Crookshanks, president of the commission, said. “We only have personal opinions as to the windmill.”

Tuckwiller took it one step further and said he had seen windmills in Tennessee and found them unobtrusive.

“I still have concerns, but my concerns are outweighed by the fact it is on private property owned by Mead Westvaco and there is no zoning in that area. It’s a very remote area and 95 percent of the people opposed to this will never see them,” Tuckwiller said. “I went to the mountaintops in Tennessee and stood inside the windmills. That’s the only place I found the noise to be offensive.”

In other action, Crookshanks retained her position as president of the commission by a 2-1 vote. Rose initially nominated Tuckwiller for the position, but Tuckwiller nominated Crookshanks. When the vote came to the floor, Tuckwiller voted for Crookshanks and Crookshanks voted for herself. Rose voted against Crookshanks.

Also, 911 director Rusty Harvey told commissioners his office dispatched 17,150 calls for 2005, an average of 47 calls per day. During that time, Harvey said, dispatched calls increased by 4.5 percent.

— E-mail: cgiggenbach@register-herald.com