Running The Surveyors Off
I'm part of an organization called Clark Mountain Sanctuary which is a conservation organization that's an abutter to the power line corridor in Greene. I'm also here speaking generally as a concerned citizen. First, I want to say that I'm really honored to be speaking with my fellow citizens here in this room who have done such incredible research to learn about the issues, research that none of us are paid to do and it appears that the folks that are paid to do it may not actually be doing that research, so I want to honor the people in the room who are doing what others are paying others to do. I want to say that this whole model of economic development that's represented here by these power lines is a bankrupt model of economic development. We are talking about a continuation of a long tradition of what some people might call colonialism here in Maine. This is a tradition of Maine being a place where we generate things and we generate resources and we ship them out of state for the profit of large corporations and a small group of wealthy elite. And this continues that tradition quite well.
When I look at the name of this hearing, the power reliability hearing, and I learn we have learned earlier that that is actually directly from CMP's proposal, it sounds to me like you just took some of CMP's propaganda and turned it into the name of the public hearing, so that makes me wonder who you are actually working for. I mean it's not it's not too hard to see that this actually is about shipping power out of state and it's not just about reliability for the people of Maine. So again, we know who pays you, but who are you actually working for? I've been to a lot of public hearings. It's clear to me that public hearings are not are very rarely if ever actually public listenings. It's not a democratic process to have appointed commissioners make decisions and not be accountable to the citizens. I just want to be clear about that. And I want to remind people in this room that if we are going to create democracy in this situation, we need to organize and we need to organize outside this room and we need to apply pressure in all kinds of different ways. There's a sign up sheet out on the table for people who want to get involved in that process. And I also just want to end with a quick little story. After the revolutionary war, the great proprietors from Massachusetts claimed that they owned Maine. Meanwhile, all kinds of Mainers were settling down and doing hard work to create farms here. And when the great proprietors sent their surveyors to Maine communities to try to evict people so they could continue that process of colonialism, these farmers in Lewiston and Greene and Leeds and other towns all along this power line corridor organized. And in the middle of the night, they dressed up in costumes and they ran the surveyors off. And I want to suggest that if this process continues like the runaway train that it looks like it's going to be, that we might want to learn a little bit from our predecessors. Thank you.
Note: Copies of these PUC transcripts are on file in the "Documents" section of this website and can be easily downloaded.
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Comment by Art Brigades on January 18, 2010 at 3:46pm
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I have two of these. Hope this is your size.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_ojWtyH7yPvw/SaQ9oi5-L6I/AAAAAAAAD98/V5-TF...
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Comment by Long Islander on January 18, 2010 at 3:34pm
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Civil is a prefix for disobedience.
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This is a difficult, but worthwhile topic. On the one hand, Big Wind holds huge advantages over us Liliputians. If we always bow to their tactics and play by their rules, they could run over us (and obviously have done so). So we exercize our free speech rights and might even offend some people in doing so. Who can blame us for being a little unruly? We are onto them and we know how horrifically they are pillaging our state.
By the same token, to break through the WAS (Wind Adoration Society) and into the public consciousness (including elected officials) we need to be factual, credible, etc. This usually connotes civil also. If we could figure out a practical way to allow our excellent, indispensible (and entertaining) blogging to continue -- while also having a "civil" face to put forward, we will be getting the best of both worlds, in my humble opinion. The two sites below are informative for us. Neither is nearly as involved as ours is. They are very civil, and businesslike, but one wonders where they go to let their hair down...
http://www.windtruth.org/index.html
http://www.nlralliance.org/who_we_are
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Comment by Lyle on January 18, 2010 at 12:06pm
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No I don't think anyone wants to censor anybody here. I think some people felt information was not easy to find. Of course there will always be disagreements on design. I don't think there was that much disagreement. People want to work together.
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Lyle..this is only corporate owned democracy. Have you heard certain ones don't want us writing to the SEC when we catch First Wind lies on their SEC report? Threatening to shut down this blog so we won't offend Augusta. Now who is worried about offending Augusta? Enough that we shouldn't write the SEC about obvious lies in First Wind's SEC report. I think that is one of the allegations that AG Cuomo has made against them in NY.
We should pay attention to the ones who discourage effective anti wind farm efforts. Look for motives for working against us.
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Thanks for the excerpt. That's what gets me ..the people paid tons of money to do the research don't do it and those of us that spend huge amounts of time researching these issues go unpaid but generally do a much better job..constrained obviously by lack of money.
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Sorry for the sloppy. My neighbor had a First Wind employee on her land , without telling her before hand what he was doing. This bothers all of us when people hunt or drive through property without first going to our doors to say hello. It just seemed like the First Wind people were naturally rude...no sense of getting along with people.
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Prior to the permitting of Stetson Mt. ..their people were all over our area. Almost like they knew they would be permitted before the hearings and everything. A particularly rude out of state surveyor was going all over people's property marking off with their little ribbons whose land would be taken for their power lines, some of the locals went behind him and took his little ribbons.
One neighbor's property in the bend of a curve was going to be particularly hard hit. ..as First Wind needed to go straight thru the curve, she complained to the company . They assured her it would never happen again. After our little meeting in the town hall with First Wind reps. , it became known that the project manager Matt Kearn was the one running all over the place, looking for property to steal.
The only thing that kept our road from being ruined by transmission lines ...as so many houses are old and right at the road was the fact that some of the wealthier pro wind farm people were also against the transmission lines going down our road.
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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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