Citizens' Task Force on Wind Power - Maine

Help block federal rollback of Maine's law keeping ocean windmill wannabees at least ten miles offshore

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) has come to Maine and is determined to force the state to re-write its new state law protecting Maine commercial fishermen from windmills encroachment within ten miles of shore. Under the state law, the Maine Public Utilities Commission has issued an RFP for ocean wind, but ONLY for sites ten and more miles offshore.

If BOEMRE has its way, industrial windfarms will begin filling the view - as in these simulated windfarms 5 and more miles offshore) If you can spend a few minutes reading this post, browsing its links and emailing and telephoning the on the list below, you will help derail the rush by that agency to "expedite" windfarm leasing off the Maine coast.

FOLLOW THESE EASY STEPS TO PROTECT TWO MILLION ACRES OF MAINE HISTORIC FISHING GROUNDS:

* Click on the map here to see what fishing grounds would be exposed to wind mills if every location more than three miles out is threatened with being 'expedited". Click on a fishing ground on that map to learn its distance from shore. For frame of reference, Enoch's Shoal, the dot just below Mount Desert Island, is three miles from shore. If the feds have their way, every fishing ground further from shore than that will be open for exploitation, with monopole windmills pounded into the seafloor, a la the Cape Wind model on Horseshoe Shoal. The empty squares in the map are the deepwater offshore locations where the UMaineDeepCwind Consortium looks to set up its floating arrays of turbines over the next decade

* Read this one page pdf. It is an action alert and summary for the fishing industry on this state/federal ocean windmill issue.

* Read the 2 page draft federal/ State Offshore Energy Charter and related one page documents supplied by BOEMRE at the interagency meeting, These are the tools the federal agency is using to pressure Maine into abandoning its ten mile buffer against industrial wind and allowing offshore windmills as close as three miles from shore

NOW, BEFORE CLOSE OF BUSINESS FRIDAY IF AT ALL POSSIBLE!

Contact the following people. The ones with asterixes were at the September 14th interagency meeting. (full list of meeting participants here)

Tell them that for the reasons above, you want the Maine legislature to review the proposed federal/state charter before the state takes any action on it. Further, if the charter does get signed, you want the legislature to require hearings BEFORE any state agency provides maps to the federal agency surrendering fishing grounds between three and ten miles of the coast to the wind energy industry.

Contact them now. As many as possible. Otherwise the federal/state charter will be rushed through - and ocean wind turbines will be expedited!

* Governor Baldacci (207) 287-3531 Governor@maine.gov

* Karin Tilberg, Governor's Sr. Policy AdvisorK 207/287-353 Karin.Tilberg@maine.gov Baldacci's point person on the ocean wind issue

* Hannah Pingree Speaker of House. (207) 867-0966(h) RepHannah.Pingree@legislature.maine.gov Reps fishermen Aware of how angry people get about windpower. Won't put it before the fishermen.

* Senator Chris Rector 354-6571 cwrector@hotmail.com Marine Resources Committee - district is richest lobster ground in Maine. Very concerned and pro fishermen first.

* Representative Bruce MacDonald (207) 633-0570 (h) bmacdon@roadrunner.com His district is lower Midcoast Maine including islands heavily dependent on groundfishery, shrimp and scallop and lobster fisheries that would be threatened

* Aditi Mirani, Federal offshore wind coordinator for Maine. (703) 787-1752 Aditi.Mirani@boemre.gov Mirani just completed setting up the Maryland ocean wind task force Here is her powerpoint presentation from the Maryland interagency meeting. (Almost identical to the one at the Belfast meeting on September 14th)

* Also contact YOUR state legislators, and our federal delegation Snowe, Collins, Pingree and Michaud.

Tell them to make BOMRE back off. Tell them the Maine legislature worked hard last session to finalize LD 1810 to protect the state's commercial fishermen from windpower encroachment on their fishing grounds. Tell them it is wrong to let the federal government just walk in, throw out this Maine state law and re-open a more than a hundred fishing grounds to ocean windfarm leasing.

Tell them Instead let's have the Maine legislature and the fishermen take a hard look at the plan first. And reject the plan if its not good for the state. NO rush to judgement.

Friends, a few words go a long way. A quick e-note and voicemail to the above, especially if you cc the whole bunch together, will help drive action the way we want.

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U.S. Sen Angus King

THE UNTOLD STORY OF RECORD HILL WIND

The Untold Story of Record Hill Wind, continued

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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Sign up today and lend your voice and presence to the steadily rising tide that will soon sweep the scourge of useless and wretched turbines from our beloved Maine countryside. For many of us, our little pieces of paradise have been hard won. Did the carpetbaggers think they could simply steal them from us?

We have the facts on our side. We have the truth on our side. All we need now is YOU.

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

-- Mahatma Gandhi

"It's not whether you get knocked down: it's whether you get up."
Vince Lombardi

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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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