Land For Maine's Future?

Comment

Comment by Joanne Moore on March 13, 2010 at 1:20pm

Large corporate environmental groups take big donations from businesses that damage the environment. Remember when Carl Pope, Sierra Club head honcho allowed the club's logo be put on Clorox bleach? He was vilified at first but then the other environmental groups soon capitulated and now we have once respected champions of nature being nothing but stage props, hiding the sleazy reality with slogans and propaganda. I doubt if half of the subscribing membership realizes or, for that matter, cares. Belonging to an environmental group, to them, is a status symbol. I long ago stopped giving them money.
Their argument that we have to destroy a place in order to save it went out with Viet Nam. It is yesterday. But they wear blinders and surround themselves with like minded and never question. It is like a religion on crack.

Comment by Long Islander on March 13, 2010 at 12:53pm

The select large corporate environmental groups that have taken the side of big industrial wind will tell you the reason to destroy these places is to save the planet from global warming. That is the lynchpin of their argument. However, in Europe where wind has been extensively developed, no CO2 has been reduced and in some countries it has actually gone up. All of the Governor's (or is that governors'?) envisioned turbines, using NRCM's own figures, would avoid emissions equal to what only 1% of the Maine Woods sequester naturally. Since carbon capture can be increased by altering the harvest/regeneration cycle, a very small fine tuning in forestry practice should be explored. It is likely that if pragmatic, a relative tiny adjustment could increase carbon sequestration by a factor that is greater than what all the turbines could ever do. See: "Maine's Wind Goals, CO2 and the Forest" at http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/maines-wind-goals-co2-a...

Don't pave paradise. We have enough parking.

Comment by Joanne Moore on March 13, 2010 at 12:36pm

Brad, can I use some of these words this next Thursday? The list you give and the devastation -- I couldn't say it better. They need to be said in a public forum. Unless, you want to make those points yourself.

Comment by Brad Blake on March 13, 2010 at 12:12pm

Joanne, you are so right. Among the many arguments I make is how much Angus King & John Baldacci are hypocrites. During both of their administrations, they didn't miss opportunities for press releases, photography, and sound bites extolling the virtues of protecting Maine's "special places", "treasures", "natural resources". We spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the Fund for Land for Maine's Future (when including all the interest on the bonds!), often paying top dollar. Now, both men have set out to ruin what they once touted.

Yes, we protected many beautiful natural treasures, only now Angus King himself proposes two industrial wind sites that will ruin the viewshed of a number of those places, plus the Appalachian Trail. King's Record Hill project ruins views from the Mahoosuc Preserve, Rumford Whitecap, Tumbledown Mt. Patriot Renewables' proposed projects on Spruce Mt. in Woodstock, Col. Holman in Dixfield and Saddleback in Carthage all impact the same areas preserved with public funds. The Bigelow Preserve and Chain of Ponds Public Reserved Land has already been impacted by Trans Canada's Kibby Mt. project and now Trans Canada wants Sisk Mt. , right above Chain of Ponds. The worst project of all may be King's prposal for Stewart Mt and other ridges in Highland Plantation, as that one sits right on top of the Appalachian Trail---a Federal National Park unit---and right on the doorstep of the Bigelow Preserve.

Meanwhile, over in northeastern Maine, in the land I now refer to as FirstWindiana, if all the areas with met towers become wind sites, the hikers to the top of iconic Mt. Katahdin will see 400 foot high turbines in Mars Hill, Stetson Mt., Oakfield, Island Falls, Staceyville. Topsfield, Carroll, Passadumkeag Mt. and Lincoln Lakes. FirstWindiana will also ring the glorious Grand Lakes of Eastern Maine on every ridgeline to the north. The Passadumkeag project of Noble Environmental (arguably the worst of these wind developrs!) will sit right above remote Duck Lake and Nicatous Lake Public Reserved Land.

It is a tragedy that Baldacci has pushed wind development onto these truly unique natural treasures of Maine, ruining the very experience for which we spent to much public money. For piddling amounts of electricity we don't need, for no benefit to the state except a few construction jobs and property taxes. Shameful!

Comment by Brad Blake on March 13, 2010 at 11:43am

Long Islander, your last paragraph of your comment is very poignant to me. For many years, I delighted in introducing friends "from away" and even complete strangers who were friends of those friends to places I held dear--Mighty Katahdin, beautiful Bigleow, amazing Tumbledown and so many other natural treasures. I recount fond memories still today and hope that a few have passed on my zeal for these places to others. Now, that experience will be ruined.

I know I might never climb again to Baxter Peak as age takes its toll. It might be just as well. When the distant (and in some cases not so distant!) view will be industrial wind sprawl from Mars Hill to Greenville, it would break my heart.

Comment by Long Islander on March 13, 2010 at 11:11am

Assuming visibility, I'd think you could see a 400' tall tower over 15 miles away. I'm sure you could quickly figure this out through geometry. So that could mean a wind farm could impact a circular area with say a 30 mile diameter if not blocked by terrain. The area of a circle with a 30 mile diamter is about 700 square miles. If Baldacci gets to put up 1,800 turbines at say 30 per farm, that means sixty wind farms. Sixty wind farms x 700 square miles = 42,000 square miles. Of course you'd have to lower that number to subtract the duplication of areas covered by multiple wind farms.

That said, considering the state is about 35,000 square miles, you would see wind farms in MANY places if Baldacci's goal is ever attained.

I imagine many of the lands secured under Lands For Maine's Future include mountains. The higher up, the larger the area you survey.

You drive 10 hours to Maine from Megalopolis and then spend several hours climbing to the top of a mountain. Along the way you pass over polished pink granite, smell sweet balsam fir, are delighted by gregarious Gray Jays and your senses are more opened than they've been for months. You finally make it to the subarctic rock and krummholz and several industrial complexes jump into view. You apologize to the friends you have dragged up to the top and explain "these were never here before".