Mainers Bribed and Gagged - "They all get rich while the townspeople get sick"
Please see the comments below from Alice McKay Barnett, Gary Campbell and Penny Gray.
Residents seek info on wind power project
..... “Also,” she said, “there are often economic benefits to the surrounding towns. There are payments to gas stations, stores and motels. There's a pretty significant indirect benefit to the uninvolved surrounding communities.”.......The Maine Land Use Planning Commission will hold a public hearing at 1 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 10, at the Bethel Inn to discuss the Milton Township petition......
http://www.sunjournal.com/news/oxford-hills-bethel/0001/11/30/pitts...
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Comment
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Comment by Long Islander on August 7, 2016 at 12:12pm
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Yes, the Bethel Inn in Bethel, a place where Angus King himself has lied to people about the virtues of wind.
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Comment by Eric A. Tuttle on August 7, 2016 at 12:09pm
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Bethel Inn ? In Bethel ?
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Unenforceable Contracts: What to Watch Out For
What kinds of contracts might not hold up in court?
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Comment by Gary Campbell on August 4, 2016 at 5:40pm
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Penny, Your friend might file a Freedom of Access demand. I used one successfully on the Town Clerk of Carroll Plt. It put her on alert and she was quite nervous when I showed up at her office. Sadly, I was told that they don't take minutes at all meetings and the ones where they discussed the Community Benefits Package was one of those. I understand from someone who was there that First Wind's Neil Kiely was outside the door on the phone to one of the members throughout the meetings. When it appeared the vote was not going FW's way, they would reschedule the meeting. Finally they met on a night when one of the 'trouble makers' was sick. They immediately voted in a friendly replacement, held the vote and gave FW got exactly what it wanted. Carroll Plt settled for First Wind's first and worst offer: the bare minimum required by law: $4000 per turbine per year.
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When creditors are not payed and financial promises unravel, wind company gag orders should be deemed invalid. How about some emergency legislation on this so that citizens and towns conned by the wind developers can speak the truth? The number of parties stiffed by wind developers is a problem that needs attention from state government without delay. Unless people can speak out, others will not learn of the dangers and end up getting conned themselves.
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Comment by Penny Gray on August 4, 2016 at 1:03pm
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"Tangible benefits" is nothing less than legalized bribery for us poor Mainers, the ones with the strong backs and weak minds. When I discussed the Saddleback project with the first selectman, he informed me that the decisions had already been made to allow the project and inferred that we common citizens weren't capable of making such important decisions. When he threatened this woman with discontinuing her road, she asked me what to do, what legal recourse was there? She couldn't afford a lawyer. I advised her to write a letter to the editor but as Gary mentioned below, that could set her up for domestic terrorizing. She lives alone. She also asked the first selectman to see the books so she could see what amount had been allocated for the maintenance of her road, and he said that was not allowed. Is this true? Why would the town's financial statements be off limits to the people of the town when they are printed each year in the town annual? It's good to know that there are public servants with integrity, however few and far between. This makes me want to move to Grand Lake Stream. The newspapers would probably never print letters to the editor that reveal the dark side of the wind industry. How do we make these stories public?
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Thanks for sharing that, Penny. We both know that is not an isolated incident. Back when LURC was holding its hearings for the first Bowers application, during the public session in the evening, the radiator hose on my SUV was cut. Then a resident of Lakeville tald me to my face that I'd better stop opposing the Bowers project because those poor people in Carroll Plt need the checks promised by First Wind and if I didn't stop, I might find my camp burned down. Then one morning I awoke to large a pile of wet garbage dumped on my dock. I know some who opposed the Rollins project had their tires slashed while in a meeting.
In Grand Lake Stream one of the selectmen was offered a bribe by First Wind ($25,000 - do anything you like with it). His response was to hold an emergency town meeting at which the townspeople voted UNANIMOUSLY to throw First Wind out of town! I wish more public servants had such integrity.
We need to encourage people to bring these stories forward. Make them public. The current Attorney General considers the the wind developers' bribery to be just the way things are done in Maine because we are so poor.
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Along the same lines of the wind industry strong arming the unsuspecting and brokering deals with drooling selectmen, I had a very disturbing conversation with a woman who lives in the town I abandoned after Patriot Renewables tore it apart with their controversial wind project on Saddleback Mountain. She lives on a hill overlooking the project, on a road that has been town maintained since it was built in the 1800's. All the residents living on that hill opposed the wind project. She was told by the first selectman that that road (well over a mile long and quite steep) was going to be discontinued when she spoke with him privately at the town office to complain that the road hadn't been maintained, ditched, graded or properly plowed for about as long as the project had been permitted. (Of course, the road where the first selectman lived has been fixed up and is in better shape than it's ever been.) The first selectman later told her, when she repeated his statement in front of all the selectmen at a town meeting, that he shouldn't have said that to her. Just an example of the ugly and punitive behaviors this corrupt industry instigates.
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"(Juliet Browne) said the town would receive, at a minimum, $4,000 per turbine per year for the life of the project, and the money granted is “often more, depending on the discussions.”
The discussions she's referring to are discussions with individual townspeople behind closed doors. The developer's advance people will arrive at their door in the evening with a pie and a smile. They ask "what can we do to get you to support the project?" If they aren't immediately thrown out, the homeowner will be offered new uniforms for the little league, a new van for the church, road repairs, donations or outright cash, whatever it takes, to get them to sign a letter of support (which has a gag clause). They then strong arm the citizen to convince other townspeople that if they don't settle for the minimum payment of $4000, the developer will go elsewhere. People fall for it, a project is built, the developer gets his Tax Increment Financing deal, his Fed loan guarantees, his Fed Production Tax Credit, and all those renewable credits to sell. If this wasn't incredibly lucrative for them, why would EverPower pay a very expensive attorney to answer the townspeople's questions? They all get rich while the townspeople get sick.
Just the fact that this newspaper doesn't know how to spell Juliet's name tells me these people are babes in the woods who have no idea who they're dealing with. This is a con that has played out across the State. DO NOT TRUST THEM!
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Comment by alice mckay barnett on August 2, 2016 at 5:10pm
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I have three questions. Who can answer or get answers? Please.
1. Do wind projects buy strips of power from ISO-NE to satisfy the Power Purchase Agreements?
2. Why are 3 WIND projects in Maine in top ten list of purchasers from Bangor Hydro?
3. Do you think dynamiting of head waters and leaching concrete pads will ensure a future of pure drinking water for the good of the public?
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Maine as Third World Country:
CMP Transmission Rate Skyrockets 19.6% Due to Wind Power
Click here to read how the Maine ratepayer has been sold down the river by the Angus King cabal.
Maine Center For Public Interest Reporting – Three Part Series: A CRITICAL LOOK AT MAINE’S WIND ACT
******** IF LINKS BELOW DON'T WORK, GOOGLE THEM*********
(excerpts) From Part 1 – On Maine’s Wind Law “Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine if the law’s goals were met." . – Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, August 2010 https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/From Part 2 – On Wind and Oil Yet using wind energy doesn’t lower dependence on imported foreign oil. That’s because the majority of imported oil in Maine is used for heating and transportation. And switching our dependence from foreign oil to Maine-produced electricity isn’t likely to happen very soon, says Bartlett. “Right now, people can’t switch to electric cars and heating – if they did, we’d be in trouble.” So was one of the fundamental premises of the task force false, or at least misleading?" https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-swept-task-force-set-the-rules/From Part 3 – On Wind-Required New Transmission Lines Finally, the building of enormous, high-voltage transmission lines that the regional electricity system operator says are required to move substantial amounts of wind power to markets south of Maine was never even discussed by the task force – an omission that Mills said will come to haunt the state.“If you try to put 2,500 or 3,000 megawatts in northern or eastern Maine – oh, my god, try to build the transmission!” said Mills. “It’s not just the towers, it’s the lines – that’s when I begin to think that the goal is a little farfetched.” https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/flaws-in-bill-like-skating-with-dull-skates/
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Hannah Pingree on the Maine expedited wind law
Hannah Pingree - Director of Maine's Office of Innovation and the Future
"Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine."
https://pinetreewatch.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/
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