Citizens' Task Force on Wind Power - Maine

Portland Phoenix revisits Angus King's Record Hill Wind Project controversy

The King wind saga: When Record Hill hit Capitol Hill

Author:David Carkhuff

It was a wind project that received federal funding based on the use of new technology to prevent turbulence, but the development certainly stirred up a political windstorm.

Eight years ago, then-former-governor, now U.S. Senator Angus King partnered with Rob Gardiner, the former president of the Maine Public Broadcasting Network, to form Independence Wind. What would follow would be a wind development that attracted fierce criticism from local critics as well as from a Republican committee and ultimately was built after King no longer was an owner.

Gordon R. Smith, attorney with Verrill Dana, a Portland law firm, helped King and Gardiner navigate the permitting process for Record Hill, the duo’s first project.

Independence Wind partnered with the new company, Record Hill Wind, as well as with Wagner Forest Management and other investors, to build wind turbines in Oxford County along the ridgelines of Record Hill, Flathead Mountain and Partridge Peak. King and Gardiner held a combined 10 percent share of Record Hill Wind, but both soon became lightning rods for criticism.

Steve Thurston, an opponent of wind power, sparred with the state over Record Hill back in 2011.

On Sept. 27, 2011, Thurston wrote to Assistant Attorney General Peggy Bensinger, who represented the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, challenging the way Record Hill was permitted.

“The draft permit contained the standard condition that financial capacity must be demonstrated prior to construction,” Thurston wrote. “In the final permit, issued 5 days later, the word ‘construction’ was replaced with ‘operation.’ … In my opinion RHW (Record Hill Wind) played a ‘moving shell game’ with DEP, and never had anything under any of the shells until it obtained the DOE loan guarantee. Why this circumvention of the law occurred remains an unanswered question today. Would the DEP make this same ‘mistake’ if the applicant had been other than Angus King and Robert Gardiner? Did Angus King and Robert Gardiner believe they were entitled to different treatment than the law required?”.......

Read the rest of the article here:

http://portlandphoenix.me/2015/06/17/features/the-king-wind-saga-wh...

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Comment by Eric A. Tuttle on October 25, 2015 at 1:02pm: Such has been the case with almost every interpretation of the constitution by the supreme court, where although it may be viewed as passing constitutionality, a law was never enacted to follow that ruling, but left to a practice based on an interpretation. Many laws of today, premised on an interpretation vs an enacted law, are not based on law, but opinion.

Comment by Eric A. Tuttle on October 25, 2015 at 12:59pm: The replacement of construction, with operation is but one example of tweaks that eventually become a permanent standard. One that becomes a continuing practice, later to be relayed to committees. Though never derived from or enacted into statute, at the beginning or since, if needed would be easily adopted at the bequest of the industry into such statutory changes.

A tweak here, and there, sometimes directly or indirectly through rule adoption and practice is how the corporations work to twist our statutes to their benefit.

Comment by Donna Amrita Davidge on June 18, 2015 at 11:45am: and ps Long Islander knows their stuff and could not have said it better..of course the media will not call themselves on their corruption so there you have it.,.

Comment by Donna Amrita Davidge on June 18, 2015 at 11:44am: maybe you have to create an account but it would be good if that was made clear (or not necessary to simply make a comment) before one takes time to think through and write down their comments only to be told you have to be logged in..sigh..thank you monique

Comment by Monique Aniel Thurston on June 18, 2015 at 11:03am: we have emailed the reporter regarding the commenting problem , he will be in touch with the tech person. we will keep you posted.

Comment by Long Islander on June 17, 2015 at 9:07pm: Congresswoman Chellie Pingree's letter in support of King's $102 million loan guarantee is far from innocent. Her husband, S. Donald Sussman started hedge fund D.E. Shaw, staking them $28 million and Shaw was the longtime half owner of First Wind where Angus King's son (Angus King III) to this day heads up mergers & acquisitions. http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/maine-has-its-own-the-d... For years, Sussman owned Maine Today Media, the largest media company in Maine and was a shameless shill for the wind industry, never once investigating the widespread fraud upon which it is built.

Comment by Donna Amrita Davidge on June 17, 2015 at 8:12pm: wind technology does not bring jobs to the area- they bring their own staff for everything..I wrote out a comment to the article but then it said I had to login so I gave up..sigh.

Comment by Kathy Sherman on June 17, 2015 at 6:42pm: I find the story linked on that Phoenix page to RE doable on conference at Baylor even more disconcerting -- especially the trillion dollar a year price tag former Google/now Stanford says is necessary for the conversion to our 'clean, green economy - he says we are only spending one quarter of that now. And Senator King blames beetle infestation on climate change (I blame it on deforestation and habitat fragmentation down in my area, along with invasive species from global imports and age of the trees).
I don't get the low figure for what floating offshore turbine would bring to Maine - seems like it must be more than $20,000,000 for 'thousands of jobs', but that's a minor quibble. The developers of the recently leased offshore MA wind zones consider floating turbine technology far too expensive.

I thought that the 'innovation' of the turbines was that they could handle the turbulence of winds in a marginal ridgetop setting in Maine, not that they 'prevent' turbulence (preventing it could be important in wind plantations on flat land with a more jam packed array if, big if, they somehow prevented 'wake losses'. I did not think wake losses/appropriate spacing had yet come on the radar yet back then.

Comment by Penny Gray on June 17, 2015 at 6:34pm: What was this "new technology to prevent turbulence" that landed Record Hill Wind the federal funding? What about the thirty million dollar grant this project received?

Comment by Donna Amrita Davidge on June 17, 2015 at 5:52pm: corruption from the bottom to the top as we know and twisting rules to fit their agenda:(

and getting away with it.. no one understands how this works better than monique and steve the experts...

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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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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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