Wind project stirs Buckfield residents

BUCKFIELD — A well-attended, one-hour informational meeting on wind turbines Thursday night was followed by a public hearing and a Planning Board meeting on the subject.

  Resident Jim Parker said he agreed that the wind turbines would increase the town's tax base and reduce taxes. However, he pointed out that in a few years the state would reduce the Revenue Sharing funds to the town because of the higher tax base. He said a home assessed at $100,000 would be taxed $143 less in 2010, but only $42 less in 2013. He questioned whether the savings were worth the problems wind turbines would bring to the town, especially since county taxes and school assessments would also increase based on the higher town valuation.

He showed videos of people living near the Mars Hill wind-power project and a similar project in Australia. In these videos people described the annoyance and physical ailments caused by the turbines. He described a turbine as "looking like the Washington monument with a propeller stuck on it" and said they were as tall as a 30-story office building.

Kean Project Engineering founder and President Kirk Nadeau, whose Turner company has proposed the installation of turbines on Streaked Mountain spoke of his vision for community wind projects.

"I want to see Maine folks benefit from Maine wind projects," Nadeau said. He said he wants to have small-scale wind-power projects, such as he is proposing — designed, built and owned by residents of Maine. He said he supports a policy to allow residents to buy the generated power directly from a community power company.

Nadeau said he believes such projects could strengthen small rural communities by increasing their tax bases and providing local revenue.

Kean Project Engineering met all legal requirements to place three 1.5-megawatt wind turbines on Streaked Mountain, but in an act of goodwill, the company delayed the project to let the town study it further.

The two presentations were followed by 45 minutes of public comment to the Planning Board on a draft wind turbine ordinance. The draft was based on an ordinance adopted by a town in Wisconsin. Buckfield Town Manager Glen Holmes pointed out that some of the material referenced in that ordinance was questionable.

Resident Eileen Hotham spoke in favor of the project, pointing out that residents needed a tax break.

Retired professor Charles Berg said he was "an engineer by training and preference," and pointed out that he liked technology. However, he said that there was "not enough evidence in the U.S. to support the push for turbines." He said there were no government studies on "what did the energy you take out of the wind do before you removed it." He pointed out that "when you build windmills it will inevitably change the character of land downstream."

There had been different views expressed on how far ice could be thrown from the blades. Berg cited at least one example where ice thrown from a turbine had destroyed a barn. He said he had done the calculations for the largest turbines, which have a tip speed of Mach 0.6 and can throw ice with the velocity of an 80-mm mortar.

At the Planning Board meeting that followed the public comment, officials decided to review the model ordinance line by line at the Sept. 21 meeting, set for 6:30 p.m. The document would then be sent to selectmen, who may bring it to a town meeting.