Long Islander's Blog – September 2016 Archive (16)

n 2008, Maine’s Legislature passed the Wind Energy Act, which established state policy around wind farm developments. Some areas of the policy were left more open than others, and the state gave the Maine Department of Environmental Protection authority to set more specific rules in the future.

“The new rules will provide us more guidance when we review an application” for a proposed wind development, said Mark Bergeron, director of the Department of Environmental Protection’s Bureau…

Maine's environment as we know it stands to be tremendously and irreversibly despoiled by he New England Clean Energy RFP, which ultimately arises from the corrupt windpower-owned state legislatures in Mass-Ct-RI. Their timetable, published earlier this year, specifies that all contracts were to be executed by today, 9/22/16.…

The wind spinmeisters spin away as they attempt to convince us that their project is inevitable and resistance is futile - and as they try and signal to investors and other constituencies that "there is nothing here to see, just keep moving". 

The bigger they are the harder they fall - seen a wooly mammoth lately?

"The transmission connections would be in areas that “were not designed or…

As Gary Campbell wrote the other day "I can't overstate how important this meeting will be. It will shape how DEP evaluates & decides wind permits for years to come. You'd better believe every wind developer, wind lawyer, construction crew, hack, crony and wind shill will be there!"…

Time to start communicating with groups trying to protect the night sky.

The eighth Acadia Night Sky Festival will run Thursday, Sept. 22, through Sunday, Sept. 25, with a full schedule of events planned throughout Mount Desert Island.......Kicking off the popular star party this year, Chad Moore, founder of the National Park Service’s Dark Skies Team, will be giving a presentation from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 24,…

Ex-Governor Baldacci, the father of the heinous Maine wind law is of course Vice-Chair of subsidy-seeker Avangrid, the second largest wind company in America. As Maine falls prey to foreign interlopers, is Mr. Baldacci patting himself on the back for his incredible fore$ight? 

John Baldacci's ascendance to Vice Chair of Iberdrola's Avangrid was announced quietly in a mid-December 2016 SEC filing (FORM…

As the National Park Service meets its neighbors in the area east of Katahdin, hopefully they become aware of those neighbors who would like to welcome in scores of mammoth 500-600' tall flashing industrial wind turbines which would surely despoil views from the new monument as well as from Baxter State Park.…

These projects are in various stages of development. In Maine, Somerset Wind is a 26-turbine proposal near Moosehead Lake that’s rated at 85 megawatts. It has no permits, but according to SunEdison’s submission in the New England Clean Energy RFP, it’s “one of the most attractive sites in the Northeast for its combination of scale and quality of wind resource.”...........

In June, Pattern Energy Group…

In an open letter to the newly created Katahdin Woods & Waters National Monument (KWWNM) to the east of Katahdin and Baxter State Park, BSP Director Jensen Bissell has expressed his concerns about the new monument's effect on views from Baxter State Park. Specifically, Jensen writes he is "particularly concerned with the addition of significant structures that may be visible from Katahdin, and from the impact of night lighting in the currently very night-sky-friendly area east of the…

Green technologies are not yet proved, affordable, or deployable—but even if they were, it would still take them generations to solve our environmental problems

By Vaclav Smil

"Night lighting and buildings that interfere with Baxter’s viewshed also should be avoided, Bissell wrote". 

If a small visitor center in the national monument impacts the Baxter State Park viewshed, what about the 500' + tall wind turbines planned for just a few miles east of the monument? They would be far more visible than a small building and would impair views in both Baxter State Park and the national monument.…

The article seems to candy coat wind energy, never mentioning wind's huge problems including massive transmission costs, lack of grid scale electricity storage, lack of dispatchability, highly destructive environmental impacts, highly deleterious human impacts, harm to wildlife, future decommissioning nightmares, loss of property values, transmogrification of viewsheds, community divisiveness, diversion of attention from true energy research and growing worldwide opposition to wind…

He added that if he wins the election he would use an executive order to stop new projects. Such a moratorium would likely last for as long as Scott remains in office..........Other concerns discussed at the gathering included the project’s impact on property values, wildlife, water runoff, turbine noise and more. Numerous residents noted that the rocky landscape would carry sound to more homes. Others said the use of renewable energy credits would cancel out any green benefits to the…

Please see Dan McKay's comment below.

"The Maine DEP is proposing a rule change in the tangible benefit section "Evidence of a power purchase agreement or other agreement to distribute the electricity."  This would open the door to revealing how Maine is being used to comply with other state laws while corrupting the state's landscape......................................" (See Comment section)

Aroostook County: Power Purchasing Agreement for Number Nine Wind…

Even as Rhode Island makes history as the first U.S. state with an offshore wind farm, its people are not so fond of wind turbines sprouting up on land near where they live......Rhode Island is tiny and densely populated. And people who like the idea of wind energy in the abstract rarely want it near their own backyards, …