There were so many inaccuracies and malicious statements in J. Dwight’s op-ed (“NRCM isn’t working in Maine’s best interest,” Feb. 14), that it was hard to know where to begin in responding. My initial thought was to ignore his relentless criticism of the Natural Resources Council of Maine, but I decided that the readers of the Sun Journal need to know just how off-base Mr. Dwight is.
I am a Bangor native, resident of Kingfield, registered Maine Guide, and long-time teacher at Skowhegan Regional Vocational Center. I also am NRCM’s board president, and proud of it.
Without NRCM’s work over the past 50 years, Maine’s environment would be in much worse shape. NRCM has helped clean up our rivers, reduce toxic pollution, and promote sustainable timber harvesting. Maine’s bottle bill and billboard ban wouldn’t exist if not for NRCM; nor would the Allagash Wilderness Waterway or Caribou-Speckled Wilderness area.
No wonder NRCM has received so many awards — from Down East magazine, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, National Wildlife Federation, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and many others.
Dwight ignores these accomplishments to rail instead against NRCM’s work in three areas: wind power, Plum Creek and hydropower. Yet, with each of these, NRCM is firmly grounded with the majority of Maine people.
A recent opinion survey showed that 90 percent of Maine residents support wind power to help strengthen Maine’s economy and reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. They are right. Nearly 300 Maine businesses have helped build the state’s current wind farms, and these projects already are generating enough clean energy annually to power 100,000 homes. This clean energy is displacing fossil fuels, contributing to our energy security and reducing air pollution.
Dwight’s claim that wind power will provide few tax revenues is just plain wrong. Maine’s approved wind projects will provide more than $75 million in tax payments to host communities over the next 20 years. For some small towns, this revenue may reduce property taxes by 60 percent or more.
Everyone agrees that wind power needs to be carefully sited, but we must move forward to reduce our over-reliance on oil, coal and natural gas.
Wind power is the fastest growing source of clean energy on the planet.
Dwight also is wrong about Plum Creek’s massive development around Moosehead Lake. Plum Creek was sent back to the drawing board three times by the outcry of Maine people, and because Plum Creek’s proposals repeatedly failed to meet legal standards. Rather than just opposing the plan, NRCM played a constructive role, hiring a land-use planning firm that worked with local residents to design an approach that would be better for local businesses and protect the Moosehead Lake region. Many features of NRCM’s alternative were included in Plum Creek’s final proposal.
As to rivers and hydropower, Dwight again is the one who is out of synch. The Penobscot River Restoration Project, which he maligns, is supported by communities all along the Penobscot River; Maine’s entire congressional delegation; multiple state and federal agencies; the hydropower company that owns the dams; plus countless anglers, business leaders, and local residents.
This project will open up more than 1,000 miles of upstream spawning habitat for sea-run fish, with no net loss in energy generation. Three dams will be decommissioned (two removed, the third equipped with an innovative fish bypass), while power generation will increase at six dams. The result will be a healthier river, with improved water quality and more abundant fish populations.
The Kennebec provides a great example of what can happen in the Penobscot. With the removal of two dams in the Kennebec, the river now has millions of migrating fish each spring — an outcome that has brought national recognition, a ringing endorsement from George Smith of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine, and support throughout the watershed.
If the Big-A dam had been built in the 1980s, as Dwight wishes, it would have drowned one of the most scenic river stretches in Maine and destroyed the nation’s finest landlocked salmon fishery. As a river guide on the Penobscot when that battle was brewing, I can only say this: “Thank goodness for NRCM.” The Big-A would have killed guiding businesses, including mine and deprived thousands of people of the incredible experience of paddling the West Branch. Today, when I paddle and fish the West Branch with my family, I know that we preserved a priceless resource for future generations.
The facts show that NRCM has been a champion for every Mainer who cares about the future of this state. Reducing our dependence on fossil fuels, protecting Maine’s treasured landscapes, and creating healthy rivers — these are important goals, and nobody has advanced them better than NRCM.
Bill Houston lives in Kingfield and currently serves as president of the board for the Natural Resources Council of Maine.
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After reading Mr. Houston's
After reading Mr. Houston's piece I had to go back and reread J. Dwight's op-ed, to see for myself the statements and criticism Houston characterized as 'malicious' and 'relentless'. I encourage readers to do the same. I saw nothing in Dwight's piece that would trigger such a defensive, angry response.
Mr. Houston: Make your case, but please, calm down if you expect anyone to listen.
To NRCM: I'd highly recommend you vet comments by your president prior to his sending them to the press.
--Lisa Linowes (www.windaction.org)
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Mr. Houston’s rebuttal based upon the NRCM’s past history has no relevance on their present actions. Their knowledge of wind power and the tangential issues is abominable. Asserting wind power tax payments will reduce community tax rates is myopic. Revenue sharing for schools is based upon state valuation of property values. The development of wind farms in these small communities substantially increases the tax base. Mars Hill has seen its tax base rise 76% since First Wind put in the turbines. The State’s projected FY2011 Revenue Sharing will reduce the Mars Hill school district funding by $303,000 over the previous year. So the big tax revenue increase for Mars Hill is becoming a myth. Every other town that gets a wind farm will feel the same pain.
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Mr. Huston,
You cannot continue to use NRCM's past accomplishments to justify the complete sellout of Plum Creek and what is about to happen to Maine's environment if the wind scam prevails. If it is true that most of Maine's citizens are for wind it is simply because they are not taking the time to educate themselves about the facts. When people do find out the truth there is a backlash against the wind developers who have lied and cheated their way into the towns that have, unfortunately for them and the land, been duped into letting them have their way. NRCM should be at the forefront of educating the Maine public about the facts about wind. I too was a proponent of wind for the same shallow, senseless, baseless, untruthful,and ignorant reasons that NRCM keeps spouting over and over again: foreign oil, CO2; we have to do something, etc. Your politics are unfortunately getting in the way of your thinking, your honesty, and sadly YOU HAVE SOLD OUT!!!!! our environment and Maine's people. That is truly a tragedy.
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For years, I cheered NRCM for their active role in advocating for protecting what we treasure about Maine. In recent years, there have been several issues on which I disagree with the organization.
There is one issue on which they are dead wrong and that is the destructive folly of industrial wind in Maine. They should be advocating against blasting away ridgelines and destroying fragile ecosystems to enable investors to send a tiny trickle of electricity down to Southern New England and reap massive subsidies in doing so. NRCM should be advocating to stop frangmentation of wildlife habitat and the disruption of life patterns of wildlife by the low frequency noise from wind turbines in the wilderness, when Maine receives no benefits. NRCM should be advocating renewal of sustainable forests instead of tens of thousands of acres of permanent clearcuts, with silt and herbicide residues washing into our streams and lakes, poisonong our fish and the loons, ospreys and eagles that eat contaminated fish.
In Lincoln Lakes, Dylan Voorhees brought NRCM's presentation to town where he was met with great opposition by Friends of Lincoln Lakes. He stated that NRCM had not taken a position on First Wind's Rollins Project and that he would take the local residents' concerns back to the office. One week later the weasel was back in Lincoln, providing a ringing NRCM endorsement of First Wind's project to the DEP. When I asked him if he had ever been north of Bangor before coming to Lincoln, he said he had been to Baxter Park. Never been to Mars Hill, never been to Stetson Mt. Never been to Lincoln. When he came for the two Lincoln meetings, both were at night in February. He had never seen nor had no knowledge of the 13 lakes nestled around Rollins Mt. and the ridges of Rocky Dundee. NRCM should be ashamed of advocating the destruction of parts of Maine that their staff don't even try to know!
It is this pig-headed advocacy of destructive industrial wind sprawl that causes me to condemn NRCM. If they have a concern about "global warming", "climate change" or whatever, there are numerous ways to address the issue. Destroying rural Maine's natural treasures should not be the mission of NRCM.
If NRCM wants to gain credibility, they should underwite a series of regional forums in the areas impacted by the heinous Expedited Wind Permitting statute and be willing to engage people who can present the real facts about industrial wind sprawl. At a minimum, the Board of Directors, Mr. Houston, should do a special meeting and have a discussion with members of the statewide coalition Citizens Task Force on Wind Power about this issue. It is obvious that NRCM is only considering the wind industry's propaganda.
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Bill Houston,
We hear the same bogus claims that you make for industrial wind from developers and politicians. Can you please back up your statements with real life examples?
Please explain in more detail your claims that wind power:
Will reduce our dependence on fossil fuels?
Will displace fossil fuels?
Will contribute to our energy security?
Will reduce air pollution?
As wind turbines have not shut down or curtailed fossil fuel generation or lowered emissions anywhere in the world, and oil is not used for generating much electricity, I am anxious to hear your answer to these questions and see actual examples you can cite to back up your grandiose claims.
So called environmental organizations like the NRC have become dependent on corporate funding as their policy positions on industrial wind clearly shows.
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Protecting Maine's treasured landscapes? Creating healthy rivers? In the past, yes. Now? Not so much.
How does blasting the tops of mountains and ridgelines, clearcutting vast areas of forest, dumping thousands of gallons of herbicides and erecting 400 plus foot turbines, visiable for miles and miles in every direction "protect" a treasured landscape?
How does causing silt and mudslides to clog up our waterways, the herbicide and oil leaks of the turbines create a healthy river?
If anything is out of "synch" it is Mr. Houston's thinking.
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Would you like to respond? Login or create a new account. You'll need to verify your account before you can respond.I would direct Mr. Houston to
I would direct Mr. Houston to a poll conducted by the Bangor Daily News which asked if one would want an industrial wind facility in their town. 2 out of 3 people responded "no".
The NRCM has endorsed 3 wind projects: Record Hill in Roxbury, Kibby Mountain and Stetson. These 3 projects were permitted during the initial wind onslaught upon Maine. Since then, much has been discovered about the " lightness of wind " and the vast destruction needed to accommodate them.
The NRCM has not endorsed any more projects since giving the green light to the above 3.
In a wind debate in Dixfield, a member of the NRCM emphasized tax benefits for this small town, which seems to me, to be more like throwing out a lure designed to capture support by creating visions of becoming rich with money. I thought the NRCM promoted the richness inherent with the unspoiled Maine landscape.
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