February 2018 Blog Posts (121)

LD 1810 (HP 1255)

"An Act To Amend the Laws Governing Expedited Permitting for Wind Energy Development"

Last House Action  LD 1810

2/6/2018 - Speaker laid before the House

On motion of Representative HERBIG of Belfast, the Bill was REFERRED to the Committee on ENERGY, UTILITIES AND…

Another factor in this economic equation is that states like Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island are providing subsidies to encourage renewable energy production. According to van Welie, that means that those clean energy projects will be able to “participate in the [energy] markets at artificially low prices,” giving them an advantage over fossil fuel and nuclear plants.…

The Energy, Utilities and Technology Committee, as usual, rolled over for their favorite lobbyists, NRCM, yesterday 2-27-18 , giving away the people's time to listen to a speaker giving a half-baked report commissioned by the NRCM about shutting down all privately owned biomass electric plants in the State.

The Report :

Economic Impact Assessment of Wood Chip Heat in Maine

Prepared for:

Natural Resources Council of Maine

Attn: Nick Bennett

3 Wade…

People must remember that Maine’s $6 billion tourism business is of paramount importance for the long term. Mainers cannot allow the scenic character of Route 27, from Eustis to the border, be ruined.

http://www.sunjournal.com/no-to-wind-power-projects/

BDN - The Maine Public Utilities Commission said Tuesday it would look into customer complaints about skyrocketing bills and poor service by Central Maine Power.

The regulatory agency will start by gathering information about CMP’s metering, billing and customer communications. In the so-called “summary investigation,” it will collect data on whether all issues with CMP’s new billing system have…

George Smith quotes Angus King's praise of the Maine mountains, as in that land form King has trashed with his wind turbine blight for the almighty dollar:

"As Senator Angus King writes in the forward, “The vistas are so wide, the colors so subtle, the forests so deep, that the urge to see for yourself will be pretty hard to resist.” Boy, Angus got that…

Note that this list contains multiple worksheets each with a slightly different view of the information. Specific Clients were identified as "Wind Related" based on judgment. Please let us know if any were missed or miscoded. I'm sure we missed some. Also, we probably could have coded every large Portland law firm as Wind Related but we didn't for this exercise given much of their work falls into areas other than wind.

Guess which Client (whom a lobbyist works for) has the…

Guidestar - the world's largest source of information on nonprofit organizations where you can sign up for a basic account free in just a minute or two and begin reading Form 990 for non-profits and possibly get a glimpse of where they are getting their money. When you read a 990, you might not see everything but sometimes they can be quite interesting.…

By Monique Aniel, Special to the BDN * February 25, 2011

Please stop your support for NRCM, the organization which pushed hard for this disaster to happen. If you do, maybe some of Maine’s mountains can be saved. Or at least let them know how misguided they have been.

But there is a strange twist to my story. I actually posted it on Lisa Puhlman’s blog on the NRCM website, along with two other individuals who…

Even though our LUPC (Land Use Planning Commission) recently rejected Nextera’s petition to expand the expedited permitting areas of Chain of Ponds, Seven Ponds, Alder Brook, Skinner, T5R6 and BKP WKR townships, I find it hard to believe CMP (Avangrid) and Nextera, the parasitic beneficiaries of the bust-up of Maine public utilities, will give up their attempts to continue their ruination of Maine’s scenic character.

As evidenced on Feb. 1, Democrats in the Legislature voted in…

This article talks about the possibility of rolling blackouts and huge price hikes on our electricity bills. It talks about conventional electricity plant closures and inadequate natural gas pipeline.

"As the nation shifts ever more of its power production to natural gas, areas such as Maine that can’t tap directly into the shale deposits where extraction is taking place across the country are dependent on an inadequate supply…

Speaking to the Offaly Independent this week, Mrs Cunningham says that the noise pollution from the turbines, one of the highest in Ireland, has made life intolerable.

“Every day since January 5, being in our hourse and yard has been just a living hell. It’s like living in Dublin Airport or like living beside a helicopter.

“We can’t sleep. I can’t sleep. You can’t go out in the yard, you have to listen to this noise constantly.”…

Chris O'Neil got in a good jab at the urban Maine support for the wind power sites that are devastating rural Maine in a quote contained in an AP story about rural Americans fighting the wind power scourge.



From the story:…

If Roseate Terns forage out 10-15 miles from nesting sites and their nesting colony on Eastern Egg Rock is just 5 miles away, then how could it ever safe to have a huge deadly 6MW wind turbines in their foraging habitat?  Even as close as mile (see below) away from these colonies?                                                                                                                                   As for the "rising seas"…

The company Jim Boyle refers to is Boyle Associates. When you go to their website, you see that among the clients they list are First Wind and CMP.  I believe Boyle was one of First Wind's expert witnesses for the Bowers project which of course failed but would have had devastating impacts on the world class downeast lakes area. 

http://www.boyleassociates.net/clients-projects/

I was never comfortable when…

https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-england-has-a-power-problem-1519390800?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=2

New England's  Green Ideology is killing it!

Kill RGGI or Be Killed By RGGI!

So more wind turbines increased use of oil…