First Wind celebrates Oakfield windpower project groundbreaking

Comment

Comment by Donna Amrita Davidge on September 26, 2014 at 10:09pm

for her to call the UMPI a windmill shows she does not know her rhetoric..an industrial machine is a TURBINE>

Comment by Donna Amrita Davidge on September 26, 2014 at 10:08pm

Brad is the best- I spoke to a group today called maine woods and they were very receptive at least- I mentioned this group and when  professor from Unity approached me I said Brad was the one who knows the facts..why is the press not showing this?

awful as it is to see it needs to be known..http://stopthesethings.com/2014/09/22/bird-carcass-count-proves-agl...

below is what I wrote Ms Lynds.

Dear Ms Linds- I did not arrange to be at the meeting in Oakfield because we did not know about it until the day before- and I had teaching obligations at 11:15 I could not change- just because no one showed from our group protect our lakes does not mean we have changed our minds- and first wind never legally got the second permit which you fail to mention in your articles- your piece was a puff piece pro wind article.
I agree. We still hold strong against this wrongful manipulative decision- Brad Blake knows the facts- it seems arrogant to suggest you would not contact the head of the state organization opposing wind power who knows the facts on every project and appeal in the State.

Comment by Donald Moore on September 26, 2014 at 10:39am

Thank you Brad for that excellent come back. Your dedication, articulate, factual and concise reply requires Ms. Lyndsay to summarize and publish what you presented her!
Don

Comment by Art Brigades on September 26, 2014 at 10:33am

Nicely said, Mr. Blake. The Powers Trust put up a good fight years ago, but they signed off with First Wind long before the fight was over, and the principal closed his Houlton business and moved out of town.  You can bet as part of his contract he is beholden to the Good Neighbor (gag) clause, hence why the reporter got no reply from him.

Comment by Brad Blake on September 26, 2014 at 12:46am

Reporter Jen Lynds responded to my email, which I posted here yesterday.  Here is her response and mine right back to her.  Folks, we all need to confront reporters who are obviously being used as a mouthpiece by the wind industry.  Here is her email back to me:

From: Jennifer Lynds

To: Brad Blake

Sent: Thursday, September 25, 2014 5:04 PM

Subject: Re: No integrity

Hi Mr Blake,

I am sorry you found the article a "puff piece." My colleague, Nick Sambides Jr, is an excellent reporter and photographer, but he doesn't cover Aroostook County. I have covered The County for the last 11 years and have followed the Oakfield Windmill project since its inception, attending long Board of Selectmens meetings and public hearings at the Oakfield Community Center.

I conducted some research on your task force and it appears that you are based in Cape Elizabeth, so I am sorry, I would not have contacted you for my article even if I had your number. 

I would not ask someone from Cape Elizabeth what they thought about a new windmill going up in Oakfield when a land trust that has opposed the project, the Martha A. Powers Land Trust, exists right here. Their opposition was mentioned in the article, as was a link to a story I did on their suing to try and stop the project from going forward. A land trust representative did not return a request for comment by the time we went to press, and no one from the trust was there picketing at the event yesterday, or passing out leaflets contesting First Wind, the windmill project, etc. There was no opposition to the windmill project from their group at all. 

Also, last summer I did an article on a group called Protect Our Lakes, another Island Falls group that was opposing the windmill and trying to raise money to fight it. Again, no representatives from their organization were there yesterday picketing, passing out leaflets, objecting to the project. It was a peaceful event with a big barbecue, people were happy, just as the town manager described. People were taking tours of the wind farm, accepting free hats and pens, and no one was "hating on" First Wind.

If someone from your group had been there and come up to me and expressed opposition, I would have mentioned it.

I also have done several articles about the UMPI windmill, where they admitted they had a "frustrating" seven months, where they had to call in contractors b/c the blades weren't spinning, where they had fallen short in energy savings the first year, etc. In May 2015, I will pitch the idea to my editor about doing a follow up article to see how much savings UMPI has seen in their windmill after 5 years. 

The link to the Protect Our Lakes article is included. 

http://bangordailynews.com/2013/08/18/news/aroostook/island-falls-f...

Again, I'm sorry my article did not meet your approval, Jen Lynds

My Response:

Ms. Lynds, I thank you for responding to me; however, I find your explanation a bit underwhelming.  I stand by everything I said in my original email.  A common practice of First Wind is to keep planning for these events closely held, putting word out at the last minute.  Unlike First Wind, which finds ways to infiltrate groups to find out their tactics (We have proof of this), the citizens' group have little way of knowing First Wind's plans.  Making two calls at the last minute to get feedback isn't being aggressive at getting a full story.  FMM and CTFWP are state-wide organizations.  I am a founding member of CTFWP and, had you done any homework besides an observation that I was from Cape Elizabeth, you would know that 1)  I am a native of Lincoln and fought the Rollins project as leader of Friends of Lincoln Lakes and 2) have represented our citizens' group all over the state of Maine, as Chris O'Neill of FMM also has done.  The Home Page of CTFWP is obvious that it is about all of Maine and right now, photos of the Oakfield destruction are right there on the Home Page.  To say that you wouldn't contact us is like saying you wouldn't contact Sportsman's Alliance of Maine about moose hunting season because it is based in Augusta or Maine Audubon about migratory birds in Aroostook County because they are based in Falmouth.  That is absurd!

 

Since most of our citizen activists work, it is unrealistic when we have just a few days notice to organize a presence at an event and, again, it is simply lazy reporting to rely on two call-backs from people--you don't know their availability--or hope that someone walks up to you at an event at which opponents are surely not welcome.  A reporter with integrity would say, in order to bring some balance to this story, who else might I reach?  Citizens' groups can't pay a John Lamontagne to spoon-feed reporters talking points.  But if you covered the public meetings of the Oakfield wind project, you should have had a number of names and phone numbers of people who spoke  out against the project.  I know I collect these at every meeting I attend.

 

We citizen activists who oppose wind power know First Wind's talking points and your piece was laden with them.  Every one of them can be challenged and refuted.  If you are simply incorporating them into your story, which is obvious, and not asking hard questions to test the veracity of those talking points, then that represents poor journalism.  If you read comments posted to wind power articles, you would glean from those posts a lot of facts that counter the First Wind propaganda and could easily formulate questions to probe for the truth.  The article for which you provide the link is a prime example.  You can read my comments as "blueyes1119".  If you have the "wind beat" in Aroostook County, then you are going to be busy, as there are plans and prospects for many more wind projects.  There are powerful forces and nefarious maneuvering taking place out of public scrutiny, an on-going legacy of the campaign to turn rural Maine over to the wind industry that started with electricity "de-regulation" that forced our local utilities PSC, BH, & CMP to divest of their generating facilities, leading to Baldacci's stacked deck farce Governors Task Force on Wind Power and ramming LD 2283 through an unsuspecting and unquestioning Legislature in the frenetic waning hours of the short session in April 2008.  If a complicit and complacent Maine media does no diligence in raising tough questions or digging in to the multiplicity of issues surrounding the wind industry, then we will see our state destroyed.

 

Brad Blake

 

Comment by Donna Amrita Davidge on September 25, 2014 at 9:43pm

could not have said it better Mike..

Comment by Mike DiCenso on September 25, 2014 at 9:29pm

I wonder if any Oakfield windsprawl supporters  noticed all the power goes to Mass? Gee, Mass sure is happy they do not have to build turbines in their own state when Mainers will foolishly take them.

Comment by Donna Amrita Davidge on September 25, 2014 at 9:17pm

as Candy said when we kayaked Mattawamkeag today..Obama was raised in Chicago- he has no sense of the outdoors if he could sign off to the wind industry to kill as many eagles as they want for 30 years..that is an atrocious thing for one year, let alone 30.

Comment by Mike DiCenso on September 25, 2014 at 9:13pm

They must be celebrating their fattening bank accounts. Anyone who loves the outdoors is rightly horrified at windsprawl.

Comment by Donna Amrita Davidge on September 25, 2014 at 6:17pm

thank God so many stood up against first wind in their comments and for our hard fight against them..Candy and I spent 5 hours kayaking on Mattawamkeag today and my guests always exclaim at how amazing the lakes are compared to much more well known getaways than mine- we saw eagles and herons soaring..geese and duck too..this is an awful thing to call a celebration as all of us know..keep posting comments on BDN and thanks Brad tho i did not see yours there..you are the best!

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