Angus King on Maine tourism: "Compromising our environment is not only immoral, it's bad economics."

Comment

Comment by Penny Gray on September 1, 2017 at 1:10pm

Brad, that's an excellent photo of Bad Economics.  The integrity of Maine's environment has been compromised.

Comment by Brad Blake on August 30, 2017 at 11:06pm

Excellent Google satellite shot and commentary from Long Islander.  Here is a shot I took on Roxbury Pond.

Comment by Penny Gray on August 30, 2017 at 6:38pm

Could somebody please post the speech then Gov. King gave about the importance of protecting Maine's scenic assets?  I can't find it, but it's priceless.

Comment by Long Islander on August 30, 2017 at 6:20pm

Roxbury Pond is an incredibly beautiful and once tranquil mountain lake, also known as Ellis Pond. The 22 wind turbines which comprise Angus King's Record Hill wind project can be seen in the right of this satellite image. They can also be seen by the boaters, fishermen and hikers who have been coming to this small slice of heaven for generations. They look far worse in person. Yet the Maine expedited wind law made it a cinch for Mr. King to get this built. The pencil heads who craft, interpret and enforce these laws just don't consider 22 400' plus tall noisy wind turbines replete with blinking lights and ugly transmission as having scenic impact we need to worry about. That's because the wind industry wrote Governor Baldacci's expedited wind law. (Baldacci by the way was made vice chairman of Avangrid in December 2015, the nation's second largest wind company.) Beauty is apparently not in the eye of the generations of beholders who have made the annual pilgrimage to Roxbury Pond. With the heinous expedited wind law, beauty is in the eye of the bureaucrat. And it would seem the bureaucrat is either directly or indirectly in the pocket of the wind industry, flush with incredible amounts of cash. Thank you taxpayers. Thank you ratepayers.

Comment by Eric A. Tuttle on August 30, 2017 at 5:36pm

- Angus King -

"The Virginian Reject"

The Virginia Offshore Wind Development Authority was created by 2010 legislation.

The Virginia Offshore Wind Technology Advancement Project (VOWTAP) is a program to establish offshore wind farms in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Virginia. In May 2014, Dominion Virginia Power was awarded $47 million from the United States Department of Energy (DOE) to help fund the construction of a 12-megawatt demonstration project, consisting of two 6-megawatt offshore wind turbines. It intended to have them in full operation in 2017, but postponed the project since the single bid for construction was too high. Some exploratory boring off the coast has taken place.

Wind power in Virginia is in the early stages of development. In March 2015, Virginia became first state in the United States to receive a wind energy research lease to build and operate offshore wind turbines in federal waters.

At the end of 2016, Virginia had no utility scale wind farms and there were none under construction.

Comment by Thinklike A. Mountain on August 30, 2017 at 4:38pm

In the valley of the blind, the one eyed man is king. In the valley of the gullible, the insider man, with eyes and ears in every corridor of Washington, D.C. and Augusta is Angus King.  A transplant from a politically connected family inside the beltway, who landed in Maine in 1969 during the Vietnam War to work for Pine Tree Legal Assistance in Skowhegan earning him a draft deferment, Angus S. King has spent a career as a smooth operator using his silver tongue, insider know how and cunning to enrich himself - sometimes at the expense of the everyday Maine people who unwittingly supported and often continue to support a man that has not done them any favors. In the case of his Record Hill wind project, for which he received a $102 million Department of Energy loan guarantee, without which the project would likely not have been built, he despoiled a truly magnificent gem of a lake with his 22 giant flashing wind towers on a ridge which previously only knew the light of sunrise, sunset, the moon and the stars. And all the while he was backed by a mysterious shell company named Bayroot, (the name of a college drinking game). Eventually, when their $102 million federal loan guarantee was announced, Bayroot's identity was revealed - Yale University. Nothing like private profits when the public takes the risk, but that's how the insiders play the game. What's worse, they often play a role in creating the circumstances and laws which position them to be first on line when it's time to make a killing. Sometimes people become emboldened by their earlier successes so much that they get even more arrogant and this eventually leads to their undoing. I hope that Angus' arrogance in associating himself with these high peaks he once would have ruined reignites those who have been wronged and leads them to call for an investigation of King's Record Hill application, as well as whether he truly should have qualified for the $102 million DOE loan guarantee. That money was only for breakthrough technology. Did anything at Record Hill truly constitute breakthrough technology? We know that Congresswoman Chellie Pingree wrote a letter to Obama's DOE recommending he receive this innovative technology loan guarantee. Nice to have friends in high places. And we know that the Congresswoman was married to billionaire S. Donald Sussman who is the person that gave First Wind (now defunct) longtime owner D.E. Shaw its start by staking them $28 million dollars. And we know that Angus King's son, Angus King III, was head of mergers & acquisitions at First Wind, I believe at the time Record Hill happened. And we know that Sussman, the congresswoman's husband owned the largest media company in Maine, Maine Today Media, owner of the Portland Press Herald in Portland, the statewide Maine Sunday Telegram, the Kennebec Journal in Augusta and the Morning Sentinel in Waterville. And we know that Maine Today media has basically never seen a wind project it didn't like. In fact, when the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting ran the multipart series about Gov John Baldacci's PUC Commissioner Kurt Adam staking over $1 million in stock option from lead Maine wind developer First Wind, the Press Herald did not carry the series, although they often carry other articles by the non-partisan Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting. The Press Herald ran stories about the $1.4 billion CMP upgrade or Maine Power Reliability Project (MPRP), leaving readers with the impression it was needed to replace aging linesa and in anticipation of population growth. Neither was true. In fact it was done for "reliability" needed solely because without this $1.4 billion ratepayer gift, companies like First Wind would not be able to get its bottlenecked electrons to Massachusetts. The transmission lines were otherwise wholly adequate. No, this was none other than the ratepayer buying the shipping system for companies already awash in government subsidies and other benefits. Years later, the "need" for a new U.S. grid is everyday news and this time it's acknowledged that it's all to accommodate "Variable Renewable Energy" (VRE) - largely wind projects. The MPRP was sold to us with a big lie. It's got to be really great when the stars align for you in all these ways when you're an insider. To sum up, it seems to me that Angus King writing the foreword to High Peaks is a new low.

Comment by Brad Blake on August 30, 2017 at 1:21pm

The hypocrisy involved in King writing ANY comments regarding Maine's magnificent mountains is incredible.  What arrogance, when he is responsible for this view from Baldpate Mountain on the Appalachian Trail looking toward Mt. Blue.  My contempt for this man never waivers!

Comment by Penny Gray on August 30, 2017 at 1:01pm

Strange that the MAT land trust would take money from Kibby Wind/TransCanada, or maybe it's not so strange that they're promoting the industrialization of Maine's mountains through the TIF payment.  Money has that kind of power.