Bangor Daily News: Group takes stand against wind power

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Comment by Jim Wiegand on May 2, 2015 at 3:18pm

While some in government, private and educational entities are working diligently to bring large-scale wind turbines to Maine, a newly formed group of concerned residents, forced to live with the impacts from this industrial invasion, say the promises being made to Maine people are too good to be true. They also warn that scrutiny of the careful wording used for these promises are actually a promise of nothing.  

  

In the name of wind energy development those in government, private and educational entities working on behalf of corporate interests, have been battering Maine residents with trickery, fraud, propaganda, and corruption. These attacking entities are being manipulated from highly organized terrorist camps based outside the State of Maine. Some are even located outside America.  

 

It's as if a malicious Green Malware virus has infected the people and State of Maine.  The Citizens Task Force on Wind Power is dedicated to eradicating this highly infectious malware.  

Comment by Brad Blake on May 1, 2015 at 11:35pm

A trip down "Memory Lane".  Everything that was stated by us that day in the Hall of Flags in the State Capitol remains true.  Here is my statement at the news conference and sadly, the only thing I got wrong was the size of future turbines which now are proposed for up to 570 ft:

Citizens Task Force on Wind Power

Press Conference, November 9, 2009

Remarks by Brad Blake of Friends of Lincoln Lakes

 

 

My name is Brad Blake.  I live in Cape Elizabeth, but I was born and raised in Lincoln.  In my 20’s, I lived near Bethel, in the heart of Maine’s mountains. I know and love rural Maine as a result of my life experiences.  I come here today due to my concern over poor public policy that will irrevocably destroy rural Maine and the qualities that draw people to the rural parts of our beloved state.

 

My introduction to wind energy on industrial or utility scale came eight years ago.  When traveling in Devon, in England, coming to the top of a hill in the moors, before me lay an incredible sight.  Dozens of utility scale wind turbines.  My initial impression was “Wow”!  “Awesome”!  I thought, isn’t that neat that they are getting “free” energy from the wind.  Shortly thereafter, we had lunch at a local pub and I asked the local people about the wind turbines.  Nobody there had anything good to say about them.

 

Back home, my curiosity led me to investigate industrial scale wind.  My experience was like peeling an onion.  What I perceived on the outside was far different than what was beneath.  The more I peeled the layers, the more was revealed.  The more I learned about industrial scale wind, the more I saw what was an incredibly slick lobbying, marketing, and misinformation campaign positioning wind as the panacea for issues relating to energy and climate change. 

 

The forces which stand to profit from the proliferation of industrial wind essentially co-opted the public’s awareness of climate change issues for their own gain.  This campaign has resulted in public policy and legislation that has set up subsidies, outright grants, favorable tax code, and favorable regulatory rules to prop up an industry that would not exist without these measures.

 

Nowhere is this more dramatic than in Maine, where the Governor and legislative leaders have rammed through legislation to favor the wind industry without adequate public policy debate.  We are rushing to support industrial wind development with no heed to far reaching consequences.  We are proliferating wind turbines that produce a trickle of unreliable electricity in a state that already produces much more electricity that we consume or will consume in the lifetimes of those gathered here. 

 

When First Wind proposed its “Rollins Project” in my home region of the Lincoln Lakes, I decided to take action.  The Rollins Project has 40 turbines, with a nameplate capacity of 60 MW.  The project is slated for an area that the US Energy Information Office map indicates has poor potential for wind generation.  Thus, the project in reality will produce 12 to 15 MW of unpredictable, unreliable electricity.  To create this pittance of power, First Wind will blast away seven miles of ridgelines and clear-cut more than a thousand acres of forest.  The clear-cut areas not only include turbine pad sites, but the access roads and 20 miles of new powerline.  The sites on the ridges will be either graveled over or kept from re-growth by spraying herbicides.  In Lincoln Lakes, the silt and herbicide residues will end up in 13 lakes and ponds nestled at the base of the ridges and into the watersheds of three major rivers.

 

The rush to support the wind industry in Maine resulted in goals for installed capacity for land based wind energy being 2700 MW by 2020.  Using Rollins in Lincoln Lakes as a typical industrial wind site, this will mean at least 40 more sprawling sites in rural Maine.  Forty more Rollins size projects means more than 300 miles of ridgelines blasted away to erect 1,800 wind turbines.  It means up to 50,000 acres of permanent clear cuts and an inestimable web of miles and miles of new powerlines.  It is also the sole reason why the huge expansion of 345kv powerlines proposed in CMP’s “Power Reliability Program” would be needed.

 

Look at the map of rural Maine.  Forty more sprawling industrial wind sites will surround special places like Mt. Katahdin, the Bigelow Preserve, and dozens of the Public Reserved Lands the state has purchased with Land for Maine’s Future Fund from Nicatous Lake in Washington County to Tumbledown Mt. and the Mahoosucs in the Western Maine Mountains with hundreds of 300 to 400 foot industrial wind turbines.  If the state’s misguided goal is reached, there will hardly be a viewshed not sullied by wind turbines topped with blinking aviation lights 24/7.  Is this the “Quality of Place”, “the way life should be”, the brand for rural Maine we want?  I say no and it is the reason why I am here today with dozens of other concerned citizens.  Stop the proliferation of industrial wind turbines. Halt the destruction of our natural resources and desecration of rural Maine.  Expose the bad public policy and change it so we leave a better heritage than a vast wasteland of industrial wind turbines and tangle of powerlines throughout rural Maine.