Greenwood ponders future wind policy
Greenwood ponders future wind policy
Greenwood selectmen and Planning Board officials recently discussed ideas for a proposed wind power ordinance to be crafted for a vote next year.
Plans originally called for an ordinance proposal from the Planning Board for next month’s annual town meeting, but selectmen earlier this month decided to postpone it to allow more research and to study Woodstock’s recently-approved wind ordinance.
Planning Board Chair Dave Brainard and Vice-Chair Larry Merloni offered some thoughts on how to proceed.
Merloni expressed concern that an ordinance that is too restrictive might prompt lawsuits from a wind company wanting to develop a project.
Woodstock’s ordinance requires a one-mile setback from neighboring property lines to minimize noise, which is the most common wind turbine-related complaint. Merloni said setbacks of that magnitude could be “a recipe for disaster.”
Instead, he suggested putting responsibility for negative impacts on the developer in the permitting process.
Greenwood, he said, should “look at this regulation aspect from the side that says, ‘You’re coming in to set up a commercial wind farm, and here’s our site plan and rules. Here’s information – come back and tell us how you will deal with it if it becomes an issue with people in the community you’re going to affect,’ and then back and forth, and come up with an informed decision on our part to grant or not grant, based on what they tell us, instead of writing up rules that most probably would become so restrictive that they will seek to overturn the rules.”
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Comment by Art Lindgren on May 2, 2013 at 7:53pm
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It would seem Merloni is bought by the wind industry. He says "and then back and forth, and come up with an informed decision on our part to grant or not grant,". Woodstock's 1 mile setback is already an informed decision. They spent untold hours informing themselves on the subject. They learned that the ONLY remedy for turbine noise is distance, and you can't change that after the turbines are up. So Woodstock has said not to put them up unless they're at least a mile back. That is very informed. Merloni needs to inform himself of the info already out there and available and perhaps should take a stab at living under a turbine (using his own money - at stake by owning the house) and then to have his fate subject to the "wisdom" of wind industry and also the townsfolk who don't live under the turbines and also think the town will be financially better off than without the turbines. No one really knows this guy, of course, and I certainly don't. But his arguments sound an awful lot like the wind industry has gotten to him first. It sounds like he's got some property near people's homes that he'd like to have developed and to collect the rent from wind turbines on it, and that a 1-mile setback would ruin his "opportunity" to ruin other people's lives.
I hope I'm wrong on this, Mr. Merloni, but what I've described is right from the playbook. We've seen it over and over again, and it sure sounds like you're doing your part in the play.
Art Lindgren
from Under the Turbines on Vinalhaven
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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