The dots that the media does not want to connect : My testimony to the EUT committee on LD 1513

My testimony to the EUT committee on LD 1315

Honorable Chairman, Co-chairman, Representatives and Senators of the Energy, Utility and Technology Committee.

My name is Monique Thurston, I am a member of the Thurston family which owns a four generation camp in Roxbury, Maine.
 
LD1315, is a wrong bill for the state of Maine and is a terrifying symbol of abuse of Maine residents for the benefit of an industry which is bent in destroying the State of Maine as we know it.
Why? Because it represents yet  another step in the direction of implementation of a law  LD 2283, the Expedited Wind Act of 2008 which has been fought by hundreds of Maine residents for more than half a decade  in this very same room and represent the worse case of cronyism this State has ever known. 
 
Wind power in Maine is a chess game, a chess game for those protected by multinational companies and allies in the current administration.  It is a game that took 20 years to design, a game that redefined new rules for state and federal agencies, reshaping their mandates of protecting America’s citizens and majestic lands into doing the exact opposite.  A game that put people’s rights and public health behind those of the wind industry and simply ignored the complaints of those disturbed by the maddening whoosh of turbines.
 
Wind power is a game that turns electricity, which is already expensive, into a thrice absurdly expensive commodity hurting the pocketbook of residential and business customers alike. First in the purchasing cost, second in the cost of subsidies necessary to support the inefficiency and unreliability of this industry and third in the ratepayer-funded new electrical transmission structures required to accommodate the thermal stresses of spurting wind generation.
 
Wind power is a game that sacrifices America ’s natural heritage for the profits of parasitic corporations adept at exploiting government policies, political correctness, guilty consciences of environmental organizations and fears about our environment.
 
In 2010 John Baldacci, now  Vice -Chairman of Avangrid was in a hurry. He badly wants to win at this wind power game. He saw the growing statewide opposition and the national economic conditions endangering his strategy. He saw his eight years as governor ending in five short months and fears a new administration with the common sense to put an end to the wastefulness of public spending, increased costs in electricity and human suffering.
 
John Baldacci designed the game when he proposed and signed a law, LD 2283, that removed all obstacles to the permanent disfigurement of hundreds miles of mountain ridges with thousands of wind turbines, twice the height of the tallest building in the state.  But along the way he got help.
 
His friend and chief counsel of three years, Kurt Adams, former chairman of the Public Utilities Commission and now a vice president of First Wind, helped convince the Legislature that wind power was a good game. They believed him and unanimously passed the governor’s law in 2008.
 
The law was called the “Expedited Wind Power Law” and was the result of the Governor’s Task Force on Wind Power, an exercise in ideological and environmental insanities that would set in motion sweeping and abhorrent land-use changes.
 
His other ally David Littell, commissioner of the Department of Environmental Protection, helped implement the governor’s law by giving permits to hungry developers without serious regard for the environment he was charged to protect. David Littell was an architect of and is implementing the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a sort of New England version of the now defunct federal cap and trade. That initiative was created at the time Maine was already a model in the use of renewables as sources of fuel for its electrical production. 
 
Now the game is changing. The law is in place but a growing opposition in the state, the country and the world is questioning and refuting the energy, economic and environmental premises of wind power.
 
Meanwhile, a $1.5 billion transmission project has recently been approved by the PUC, sold to the citizens as necessary to replace aging lines. It is now being described by the outgoing PUC chairman and Central Maine Power spokepersons as vital to the sale of wind power by a tiny few to Massachusetts and Connecticut — the real reason all along.
 
So the Governor  Baldacci kept moving his chess pieces. He  nominated Kurt Adams as a trustee of the board of the Maine University System and David Littell as the chairman of the PUC. The PUC is the agency giving permits to the building of transmission lines necessary to export wind power electrons. With David Littell as chairman, residents fighting against those new lines may just have a little bit more work to do,indeed ,later in 2012, David Littell, would vote for the Emera /First wind deal not because it was a good thing for the ratepayers but it was a good deal for First Wind who needed the cash infusion desperately. John Baldacci's plan worked perfectly.
 
The Maine university system has a sizable research program into development of the next generations of wind turbines. With Kurt Adams as a trustee, the agenda of the wind industry will be just a bit more secure.
 
If there is any hope for John Baldacci to cash in on his wind policies, he must keep the chess game moving so the game can go on and  be won.
 
With the bill proposed  in front of you, a new step in advancing John Baldacci's plan is taking shape - giving the right to Avangrid, aka Iberdola to build wind projects in Maine. It seems clear that he was the first choice to assume the position of Vice chairman of that company. 
 
For those of you who have sat through years of hearings questioning endlessly the rational behind the methodical destruction of Maine natural treasure , my letter will be very obvious , for other newer members of this committee , I urge you to connect the dots about a collusion between executive power and industry against the people of Maine .
 
Today the trust of American citizens in their government is at a all time low,, and while the word cronyism was probably unknown from 90 % of the American public 5 years ago , it is now a very hated buzzword.
 
Please do not add fuel to the fire by showing a new example of this malady coming from the beautiful state of Maine
 
Say NO to LD 1513 
 
Monique Thurston -Aniel, formerly of Mexico , Maine  is a  is a retired physician and past  co-chairwoman of the Citizens’ Task Force on Wind Powe

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Comment by Donna Amrita Davidge on February 1, 2016 at 9:23am

well done

Comment by alice mckay barnett on January 22, 2016 at 2:13pm

20130124-5017%20-%20Bangor%20Hydro%20Letter%20to%20FERC.pdf

explains Bangor Hydro and Larry Dumphey heard an associate of CMP say "WIND is one of our biggest customers."    How do we get the real information?  btw, when I inquired about the WIND and CMP, I was told it is "proprietary"  YUP

Comment by Thinklike A. Mountain on January 21, 2016 at 10:13am

If a wind project uses electricity from the grid which comes from burning dreaded natural gas, then how can wind farms make a claim of 100% clean and renewable? It sounds like a bald faced lie if their process requires outside electricity. It sounds like transparency is desperately needed as very little of their modus operandi was ever challenged as they rode into town on a wave of good will given they were saving the planet. There has now been enough bad experience that the wind law needs to be re-examined. If we don't do this, the Maine we know will be terribly disfigured.

Comment by Monique Aniel Thurston on January 19, 2016 at 7:03pm

How to get on EIA data  :

1) Go to the EIA website and get on the Electricity page;
2) Click on the Data icon. When the page completes loading there will be an icon on the lower right called “Power Plant Operating Data”;
3 Click on the blue “Power Plant Operating Data” and a new page will load;
4) Click on the blue “ZIP” file for the year you want. In a few seconds the screen will prompt for opening a file and click yes/OK;
5) Excel will load a file display with 2-3 files listed. Click on the file that says “6_7_NU_Source...”;
6) An Excel spreadsheet will load on your screen. Click “enable” to allow for editing. The data you are looking for is in columns I thru L (generation, purchases and consumption), followed by Retail Sales in column P. If you move your cursor to the first line of data (just below the column headings) you can then search or edit the data. I usually Custom Sort the data using 1st State and then 2nd Plant Name then scroll down to ME data after the data is sorted.
Comment by Pineo Girl on January 19, 2016 at 2:51pm

Bob That is correct -- Wind project consumption is a carefully guarded secret, as is the actual production of a wind project. The production information has to be reported to EIA, but frankly I find what is reported today to be suspect - With no way of determining. Alice Barnett indicated that wind projects buy power back to meet their power purchase agreements. That was shown to be true in FERC reports of power companies, until this year when reporting of retail users was changed ( by Emera for instance).

Comment by Long Islander on January 19, 2016 at 2:34pm

From September 2009 after then Governor John Baldacci returned to Maine from a European wind "trade mission" hosted by Iberdrola. This was also reported on by Matt Wickenheiser in the Press Herald with Baldacci noting he needed to look into changing the law so companies could own generation and transmission.

"Baldacci also says the state is planning to change local regulations to allow Spanish renewables giant Iberdrola Renovables to invest in wind farms there.

Iberdrola is unable to invest in generation because of the transmission and distribution assets it owns in the state through Central Maine Power; however, Baldacci says legislation being proposed in the state legislature would change the rules for renewable generation"
http://www.rechargenews.com/business_area/politics/article192595.ece
Comment by Bob Stone on January 19, 2016 at 2:26pm

So, the general public has no way of knowing what these wind farms are consuming in electricity for operations?

Comment by Pineo Girl on January 19, 2016 at 1:24pm

Yes - Nothing there of note largely because of Emera's restructuring  - And nothing of note with Iberdrola.

Comment by Monique Aniel Thurston on January 19, 2016 at 1:18pm

Pineo Girl

Did you receive the report ?

Comment by Pineo Girl on January 19, 2016 at 12:30pm

Alice - i had to write through the FOIA to get info from FERC about largest retail customers of Emera and Iberdrola - I had to write twice!! And then a tech support was assigned to send me the info.

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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