The track record of DEP answering questions from their "Public Comment Meetings" is sketchy, at best.  Vague answers, dismissive tones to answers, wind industry talking points for answers, dodging answers by referring questions to other entities such as the PUC.  Commissioner Aho acknowledged at the July 12 meeting in Greenbush that she stated to CTFWP members Monique Aniel, Steve Thurston, and me that there is a "New Tone" being set regarding how DEP handles wind power applications.  Could it be that Quantum needs more time because DEP is finally putting the onus on the wind developer to provide real answers?  Below is a photo of Passadumkeag Mt. taken from near my family's homestead in Lee, followed by the written submission of my presentation at the July 12 meeting:

Testimony by Bradbury Blake

Re:  Application for Passadumkeag Wind Park

July 14, 2012; Greenbush, Maine

Good evening, Commissioner Aho and DEP staff.  My name is Bradbury Blake and I live in Cape Elizabeth.  I start tonight by sharing a very personal story.  I was born and raised in Lincoln and as a kid, I rambled all over this country with my beloved grandfather, hunting, fishing, camping, and picking blueberries.  I love this country, the eastern edge of the magnificent Downeast Grand Lakes region.  My great-great-great grandfather was one of the original settlers of Lee and I always loved the view from the old farmstead.  Looking between the ridges and across Bill Green Pond, it seemed like an endless series of verdant rolling ridges.  Now that view includes the southern-most array of Rollins Wind turbines in Rocky Dundee.  Beyond, is the easternmost end of Passadumkeag Mountain.  If you approve this project, every turbine, 80 feet taller than the Rollins turbines, will completely ruin the view

This leads to my first point, cumulative impact.  The Rollins project sprawls across seven miles of ridges.  It has a looming or distant presence everywhere you go in Lincoln Lakes.  Beyond Lincoln are Stetson Mt, Jimmey Mt. and Owl Mt.  All covered with wind turbines.  People at places like Upper & Lower Hot Brook Pond have the similar ruined view as Lincoln Lakes.  A dear friend who couldn’t be here tonight asked me to mention that his land on a hill used to have a spectacular view of Mt. Katahdin, but now they look at the turbines of Stetson II.  And now we see Passadumkeag Mountain being sacrificed to the thieves who are in the wind business not to produce electricity, but to take advantage of a scam to reap taxpayer subsidies and RECs.  There are met towers up all over the northeastern part of Maine, from Greenland Ridge above East Grand Lake to Kelly Hill in Stacyville and Mt. Chase, close by the boundary of Baxter State Park.  How much of the “Quality of Place’, identified by the 2007 Brookings Institute Report as Maine’s greatest asset, does one region have to sacrifice for a favored industry that isn’t about generating electricity or offsetting pollutant, but is about reaping taxpayer subsidies and selling REC’s.  I urge you to conclude that destroying Passadumkeag Mt. for this wind project is a cumulative impact that is unacceptable.  Where does this ruination of a region end?  I say it ends here by saying “NO” to this project.

On June 5, I was one of the participants at a meeting with you and three of your key staff.  I thank you for meeting with representatives of the citizens and listening for the first time ever since the heinous wind law was passed.  In that meeting, we provided a great deal of feedback as to the frustrations of local residents: they feel they are not being heard and they are not being treated fairly in the process.  An example of this is people taking time from their lives to speak at DEP “Public Comment Meetings”, but having the three-minute rule imposed.  Is this what our democracy has come to?  The draft for this project is cloaked in the mantle of saying the statute forces approval and the citizens really don’t have a say?  Do we have a “3 minute democracy” for citizens?

At the end of the June 5^th meeting, you assured us that you are setting a “New Tone” in the department relating to wind power permitting.  When I read the draft analysis, I could

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only see the citations to the statute and conclude, it is the same old whitewash.  Whatever the wind company has written is Gospel and there has been little critique done by staff, that what was expressed at the first public meeting was never received serious consideration.  Yet when you look at the LURC process regarding the Bowers Mt. Application last year, LURC granted a hearing, something DEP has stubbornly refused to do.  DEP has consistently said no hearing because there has been no credible evidence of technical information presented to warrant a hearing.  That attitude doesn’t even give the citizens an opportunity to pull together the resources to challenge a wind application.  Yet LURC listened and for the first time citizens had the opportunity to present sworn expert witnesses and, more importantly, cross-examine the wind industry representatives.  The result: a wind power application was denied for the first time ever in Maine.  If the DEP staff will not cross-examine the wind industry, at least give the citizens the chance.

Even given the perceived constraints of the wind statute, the DEP cannot turn its back on the mission to protect Maine’s environment.  How is allowing craters to be blasted into the mountain that are up to 30 feet deep and a quarter acre in size protecting the environment?  How is allowing blasting and leveling for two acres around each turbine protecting the environment?  How is building wide, crushed rock roads to move massive components up a mountain considered environmental protection?  How is allowing industrialization with audible noise and low frequency sound waves disrupting wildlife considered environmental protection?  How is putting blades that kill birds, low frequency sound that causes barotraumas with bats and the extensive wildlife habitat fragmentation protecting the environment?  How is the permanent loss of a thousand acres of carbon sequestering trees and the use of herbicides to prevent re-growth protecting the environment?  We have seen ridge after ridge destroyed by industrial wind site development with the DEP never answering these questions.  It is time that DEP sets a “New Tone” by living up to its mission!  Instead of taking the easy way out by saying you are just implementing the statute, take the courageous and moral stand that wind power is premised on falsehood and the citizens of the state who you hear from tonight tell the truth about wind power and why this project must not be approved.

Here are other questions that we, the citizens, demand answers to regarding this project.  First is the issue of transmission.  DEP has a track record of approving wind projects when there are transmission problems.  Stetson Mt. had overloaded the capacity of Bangor Hydro’s Line 61 to the extent that Brookfield threatened to sue.  Yet DEP approved Rollins before there was expanded capacity on this line.  Even as the $1.4 billion MPRP is being constructed, ISO-New England has warned FERC that capacity payments will not be made in 2014 due to the bottleneck below Orrington.  With the restriction of thermal loading on this new line on days when there are adequate wind conditions to produce wind power at or near capacity, it is unwise and irresponsible to approve yet another wind project that may cause overload.  It is irresponsible and bad economics to continue to approve wind generators that will cause another MPRP to be built.  The first of many rate increases attributable to grid expansion was just announced.  Since Maine already produces some 40% more electricity than it consumes and it come

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from reliable sources that produce base load and base load following electricity, it makes no sense to approve yet another environmentally degrading source of unpredictable, unreliable, grid-disrupting power that is relegated to surplus in the next-day delivery planning of the grid operator.  For this reason alone, you must not approve the Passadumkeag project.

The second question is the reliance on the integrity of the scenic consultants and boaters/hikers surveys regarding wind power projects.  These are always done with the poor context that the wind industry and the zealots pushing this industry as ideology have had 20 years to place images of wind power as something positive and turbines being a religious icon of being “Green”.  It is only when people dig below the superficiality of such propaganda that they discover that wind turbines are not so “green” and they have a huge, environmentally damaging footprint, especially when measured per MW output.  The arcane financial considerations keep most people from understanding that wind turbines are bad economics and very costly to both taxpayers and ratepayers.  So surveys that are done are unscientific and, if people were provided with other facts regarding wind turbines, they may be far less accepting of the impact.

Assessing scenic impacts has been contentious in every DEP public comment meeting.  Even the DEP’s scenic consultant, James Palmer, has found it confounding and confusing.  Concerning Kibby, Mr. Palmer stated, “the reliability of procedures  [for determining scenic impact] is not well established through empirical evaluation.  What research exists suggests that the reliability of professional assessments is comparable to, but not higher than public assessments of scenic quality.”  Thus, who knows better about scenic quality and scenic value than those citizens who live and recreate in the Passadumkeag Mt. Region?

Third, the DEP itself sets out three factors in evaluating impact:

1)      Landscape compatibility—whether the proposed activity differs significantly from its existing surroundings and context from which they are viewed.  I beg you, is not industrializing a mountain ridgeline with 459-foot towers with aviation lights incompatible?

2)      Scale contrast—the size and scope of the proposed activity given its specific location within the view shed.  How can erecting turbines that are the size of Boston skyscrapers be considered in scale with the forest of Maine?  The 459-foot tall turbines are more than half as tall as the tallest building in New England, the 790-foot John Hancock tower in Boston.

3)      Spatial dominance—the degree to which an activity dominates the landscape composition.  Isn’t a sprawling industrial site on the ridgeline dominating in an incompatible way? 

In closing, it is time for the DEP to do its job of protecting the environment.  It is time for the DEP to listen to the local people who are impacted by wind power development who

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not only do not want such development affecting them, but also understand the farce that is represented by this application.  It is time to say wind power development is destructive.  It is time to recognize the need for more industrial wind power is not supported in any way by evidence rather than perpetuate the myths and false assumptions that were the premise for the wind act.  Deny this Passadumkeag Mt. project and future projects that come before DEP by recognizing the horrendous cumulative impact of the proliferation of this industrial activity in rural, undeveloped regions. 

Bradbury D. Blake

25 Westminster Terrace

Cape Elizabeth, Maine 04107

207-773-4252

bblake02@maine.rr.com

Representing Citizens’ Task Force on Wind Power

The long ridgeline in the distance is Passadumkeag Mt., taken from turbine #38 of First Wind's "Rollins Wind" project on a Rocky Dundee ridge in Burlington, Maine.  Will every major ridge in the northeastern uplands of Maine be destroyed to erect useless wind turbines?  As I ask in the testimony above, what will be the cumulative impact of this bad policy?