The hospitality and tourism industry has been strangely silent about the impending devastation to Maine's "Quality of Place" at the hands of the wind industry. Ms. Gray's thoughtful piece hopefully is the first cry in what will become a load roar from tourism dependent businesses throughout the state.
The Harraseekett Inn is one of the most prestigous hotels in the state, and was named one of the top 500 hotels in the world by Travel and Leisure magazine in 2010. When the Harraseekett Inn talks, the legislature should listen.
A bill calling for a moratorium on wind development has been proposed by Rep. Larry Dunfee. Putting the brakes on wind power in Maine's mountains until the impacts that were ignored by the former governor and his expedited wind law can be fully examined is the right thing to do. Please call you legislators and tell them to support the wind power moratorium bill.
How is it possible to exaggerate the negative effects of the cumulative impact of 2700 MW of wind turbines? To reach this goal will require anywhere from 1400 to 1800 monstrous, strobe lit, arm waving machines towering over 360 miles of Maine's precious wild mountain landscapes. And its not like the wind industry will stop at 2700 MW. At that point all resistance will have disappeared and mountains will continue to be assaulted until every possible ridge is occupied by turbines.
Maine as we know it is on the verge of being destroyed by the wind industry, and people who think this is the right thing to do are either in bed with the industry, care only about paltry short term benefits without a second thought to the value of Maine's majestic mountains, or are simply ignorant of the facts and believe that wind turbines will solve some make believe crisis.
While Maine is saving the planet with 2700 MW of wind power, China will build 750,000 MW of coal burning power plants, importing much of the coal from the US. That fact should hit people like a 2x4 upside the head if they would only stop and think about it for two seconds. Maine is flushing itself down the toilet with wind power.
The wind turbine invasion will undoubtedly come to be seen as the worst mistake in Maine's history unless immediate steps are taken to stop it. Saddleback is just one of dozens of projects announced for the western mountains.
Turbines are planned for Roxbury, Byron, Rumford, Dixfield, Canton, Woodstock, Temple, Sumner, Buckfield, Newry, Bethel, Reddington, Sisk Mountain, Highland Plantation, Bingham, Lexington, Moscow. The state is under seige by the wind industry, thanks to former governor Baldacci and his genuflecting legislature. The current administration and newly elected legislature are well positioned to listen to the valid arguments of wind power opponents.
Citizens must make themselves heard over the din of wind power's false prophets - the power brokers who have masterminded this fiasco - Angus King being a prime example. Likewise, NRCM has abandoned its mission to protect Maine's environment and now talks illogically and hypocritically about supporting the wind industry while safeguarding Maine's "Quality of Place". NRCM, you can't have it both ways.
This is very troubling on a number of counts. DEP rules require that evidence of financing must be demonstrated in the application. The evidence submitted, and relied upon by the DEP in granting the permit, has been shown by King and Gardiner's statements and actions to be apparently inaccurate. This is a serious matter, because by signing the DEP application the applicant swears that the information submitted is true.
Furthermore, the draft permit issued by the DEP contained a standard condition stating that evidence of financing must be demonstrated prior to the commencement of construction. When the final permit was issued 5 days later, someone had changed the word "construction" to "operation", meaning the project could be constructed without satisfying the clear requirements of the law.
This improper condition gave King and Gardiner the ability to begin construction in 2009, making them eligible for a 30% rebate on the entire cost of the project under the federal stimulus program, a no-strings attached gift to King and Gardiner from the US taxpayer that would be worth $40 million. When this conflict in the language of the permit was pointed out to DEP, no one admitted responsibility for this language change, other than an admission of a "drafting error".
There is nothing in the record to indicate who requested this change or why this change was agreed to. When the DEP was forced to admit that an improper condition was included in the permit, they asked King and Gardiner to submit evidence of financing. In response, King and Gardiner submitted a letter from a Chicago bank called Northern Trust, indicating that Bayroot, the majority partner in the Record Hill Wind project, had sufficient funds on deposit to build the project, but that the money was not committed to the project and could be withdrawn at any time.
When appellants challenged this letter, King and Gardiner agreed to shut down construction, and to provide additional evidence of financial capacity prior to resuming - which has not occurred .
With the news that King and Gardiner have now applied for a federal loan guarantee, it is clear that no committment to finance this project has ever existed. One of the conditions of the loan guarantee program is that without the guarantee the project could not be built.
By Steve Thurston, unverified — Fri, 09/03/2010 - 08:53
Not only will Maine share in the cost of CMP's $1.5 billion dollar upgrade, according to the ISO chief Maine will also share in the cost of $12 billion in upgrades throughout the ISO-NE grid to allow the constantly fluctuating output of wind turbines in Maine, Massachussetts, New Hampshire and Vermont to be fed into the grid. Transmission lines must accommodate 100% of the nameplate capacity of wind generators, even though the turbines rarely produce at 100%, and average only 25% of their potential. This "overbuilding" of transmission is a massive hidden cost of wind power that is intentionally ignored by the wind industry. Not one wind developer testified about the MPRP during the PUC proceeding. They didn't have to. The fix was already in, thanks to mandates from the Governor's Expedited Wind Law, and other legislation passed in recent years which rewards wind power at the expense of the rate payer.
CMP is guaranteed a 12% rate of return on the MPRP transmission investment by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Rates for delivery of electricity are going to soar, because demand for electricity is flat due to the slow motion economy. Meanwhile wind generators need massive subsidies to cover the cost of putting turbines built in foreign countries on top of Maine's ridges (far from the load centers that drive demand). At the moment the grid is purchasing electricity for $44 per MW in the day ahead market (google ISO LMP Map). The cost of mountain top wind generated electricity is well over $100 per MW, not counting transmission upgrades. Taxpayers make up this difference in subsidies. The enormity of the wind power scam is almost incomprehensible, but for anyone who takes a few minutes to peel the layers, this onion is rotten to the core.
By Steve Thurston, unverified — Sun, 08/22/2010 - 10:06
D Wilson, blaming Len Greany for the business climate in Maine does not respond to his questions. Wind power opponents are not "the same people" who took a position on any of the issues you mention. They are people who have taken the time to understand that wind power is a taxpayer scam promoted by big business and unthinking government. Naomi Shalit's recent three part series accurately described how this happened in Maine.
Despite the assurances from Angus King that his turbines will replace fossil fuel generation on a one to one basis, the truth is the grid cannot even make use of the electricity these things generate due to their wild swings in output from one minute to the next. Until there is grid scale storage which these uncontrolled generators can feed into, the grid will ignore wind turbines when planning for day ahead capacity, and will rely on the controllable generators to provide the reliable response to predictable demand that FERC rules require. You might as well build ferris wheels on the mountains (which you would probably be in favor if it created a few jobs). People who blindly trust the wind industry's propaganda need to do more homework.
The towns that have adopted responsible turbine ordinances, Montville, Jackson, Dixmont, and many others using the benefit of a moratorium to study the issue such as Dixfield, have done so to avoid being the victims of improper siting of these monstrous machines. Why should Rumford become the next Mars Hill, Freedom, Vinalhaven, and now Upper Hot Brook Lake at Stetson II? The wind ordinance committee should be commended for doing a great job of researching this issue.
Saying we should produce all of our energy here is like saying we should produce all of our oranges here. On second thought, if we get the US taxpayers to help pay to build and heat the greenhouses....why not?
Seriously, wind power is not a good use of tax dollars. $5 billion in subsidies will be required to install Baldacci's dream (nightmare actually) of 2700 MW, but 2700 MW of wind, at a 25% capacity factor, will only provide about 4% of the 16,000 MW electricity used by the NE grid on an average day. Wind power is nothing more than a symbolic feel good gesture in terms of our use of electricity.
If that same $5 billion was used for energy improvments to Maine homes it would equal about $10,000 per household. Imagine how many jobs that woulld create! Imagine how much foreign oil could be saved.
As it is, there are no programs in place that match the aggressive push for wind power. Angus King likes to say that wind power is not the silver bullet, it is like a silver shotgun pellet. But where are the other pellets? 95% of all renewable energy subsidies are going to wind power. Compared to the spending of our children's and grandchildren's borrowed tax dollars to deploy useless wind turbines built overseas, which actually increase the use of fossil fuels and emissions due to the stop and go inefficiency required to regulate the erratic output, conservation and efficiency programs - which everyone agrees are the most cost effective ways to reduce fossil fuel consumption - get almost nothing.
By Steve Thurston, unverified — Tue, 08/17/2010 - 15:24
In addition to the map, another key component of the wind law, for which there is no explanation, is the use of a 20 year old report entitled "Maines Finest Lakes". This is a partially completed report that has been gathering dust at the State Planning Office since it was created back in the 80s. No one on the Task Force seems to know who was responsible for its inlcusion in the Wind Law, but if you proposing a wind project near a lake or pond which is one of the 66 lakes that was given a score of "outstanding" for scenic beauty, the proximity of turbines requires a more careful analysis. If you are not on the list, the visual impact of turbines cannot even be considered by the DEP in its review. A serious problem with the use of this report is that, by its own admission, due to time and money, some criteria in the report were never completed and many ponds are not even scored in the scenic category. Such is the case with Roxbury Pond, a jewel of a lake which far exceeds the criteria by which the scenic inventory of a pond was supposed to be judged. Rob Gardiner, partner with Angus King in the Record Hill wind project in Roxbury, was director of NRCM when the report was created. He is credited as a participant on a similar report done at about the same time called Maine's Wildland Rivers Assessment Gardiner already had his wind measurement towers up in Roxbury, a mile away from Roxbury Pond, when the wind law was being created by the Governor's Task Force on Wind Power. He testified to the Task Force (his testimony is available on the Task Force website) that visual impact of turbines on the character of the area should not be an issue for review. Is it possible that Gardiner dusted off his copy of Maine's Finest Lakes, noticed that Roxbury Pond was not on the list of the 66 finest lakes, and then suggested that the report be used in the law, virtually guaranteeing that his project would be bulletproof from objections to the intrusion of 22 turbines on the panoramic beauty of the vistas from Roxbury Pond? We may never know, because there is no record of how that report got included in the law.
In clearing Adams of wrong doing, AG Mills said that the PUC has no jurisdiction over wind power. She could not be more wrong. While head of the PUC Kurt Adams presented numerous reports to the legislature and regulatory agencies recommending strategies for encouraging the sacrifice of Maine's treasured mountains for the benefit of the wind industry. These recommendations became laws that removed 50 years of environmental protections and reversed decades of hard fought conservation efforts involving hundreds of millions of private and public dollars. What AG Mills could have truthfully said is that while head of the PUC Kurt Adams paved the way for the wind "gold rush" that threatens every ridgeline in the state, and that First Wind merely rewarded Adams for a job well done by giving him a job that tripled his salary and promised him millions more in future benefits. Assuming First Wind survives its current fiscal problems no one should be surprised if Baldacci joins Adams as Vice President when he leaves office.
Baldacci should introduce emergency legislation to rename Maine from "Vacation Land" to "Industrial Waste Land". 2700 megawatts of land based wind turbines by the year 2020 will require 1800 1.5 MW turbines, the most popular model in use in Maine, made by GE, owner of NBC, CNBC, MSNBC (notice all the subliminal messages showing slowly spinning turbines in wide open grasslands on those channels?). Do you think GE might have a lobbyist or two in Washington? How about 150?
Roxbury is the tip of the iceberg. There are 50 wind projects the size of Roxbury on the wind industry's drawing boards. There will not be a horizon from Buckfield to Quebec that is not dominated by monstrous arm waving machines.
As Mr. Dwight says, our grandchildren are footing the bill for this unprecedented assault on Maine's landscape. If only the money being used to subsidize wind power in Maine were instead spent on Conservation and Efficiency programs. Each household in Maine would be eligible for $14,000 in incentives for insulation, new windows, a 95% efficient gas boiler to replace the 60% efficient oil fired dinosaur in most basements. The savings in foreign oil for home heating could easily reach 50% with such simple, cost effective improvements.
Instead, we are destroying Maine with thousands of wind turbines, hundreds of miles of 35' wide roads blasted across fragile mountain ecosystems, and hundreds of miles of new transmission corridors to remote turbine projects. When the goal of 2700 MW is reached the combined total of the electricity from all these turbines will only generate about 4% of the daily demand of the New England grid, not when the grid needs it, and often times replacing existing renewable electricity already in place. So much for saving the planet.
Is there any doubt about where Baldacci sees his next job? His former chief of staff and former head of the PUC Kurt Adams is now VP at First Wind. I bet he will put in a good word for his former boss.
Jon Abrecht - for info on the risks you face from turbines nearby I suggest you go to windturbinesyndrome.com If there is any conspiracy at work, it is the conspiracy to steal your tax dollars by the wind industry. 2/3 of the cost of these projects is paid with subsidies which will equal $14,000 per household in Maine by the time the goal established by the Governor's Emergency Wind Law is reached which will put 1800 turbines on 360 miles of Maine's mountain ridges. Think how you could reduce your energy costs if the government gave you $14,000. Wind power is the worst mistake Maine has ever made. Meanwhile we're more concerned about military training flights. Go figure.
This editorial reads like it was written by Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde.
On the one hand you applaud the rejection or a resolution that "would have encouraged government to perform independent studies of possible health effects of turbines, and "refine" energy generation and policy to mitigate them" while on the other you say say this "If the MMA should resolve anything, it should be this: Dismissing possible health effects of turbines would be foolhardy, without examination first, and that studies should be done as soon as possible." Both statements are in agreement. Where is your argument?
Drs. Aniel and Nissenbaum are attempting to get the MMA to do exactly as you suggest - recommend government study the already widely recognized health effects of turbines. If Maine Health Dept director Dora Mills had an ounce of compassion for the people of Mars Hill and Freedom whose lives and health have been severely impacted by turbines and the people in rural Maine that are at risk of the same fate, she would not be advocating for building turbines as fast as possible.
Why do you discredit the doctors who are actually showing care and concern by applauding the MMA's decision to ignore them? One thing is clear. The MMA needs to reconsider their decision and do exactly as you suggest. Study the health effects of turbines as soon as possible because to do otherwise is foolhardy.
It is ironic that Gov. Baldacci has intervened with the National Guard about training flights and yet he ignores the huge catastrophe that awaits western Maine from the construction of thousands of wind turbines throughout the mountains. Roxbury, Rumford, Dixfield, Carthage, Sumner, Buckfield, Byron, have all been announced as proposed sites for turbines in western Maine. These first projects are only the tip of the iceberg of the scores of projects that will be required to reach the goal established by the legislature for 2700 megawatts of wind turbines by 2020. There will be turbines on every horizon. Noise from low level flights might be annoying, but wind turbines actually make people sick. See windturbinesyndrome.org for the evidence.
The tax dollars that will be used to subsidize wind power in Maine amount to about $14,000 per household. By contrast, Maine's annual budget for conservation and efficiency is about $15 per household. Imagine what you could do to reduce your consumption of heating oil or wood if you were given $14,000 for basement or attic insulation, storm windows, or an improved heating system, and get a tax credit or cash to pay for it? Wind power is a subsidy-driven scam being perpetrated by powerful political and industrial forces but it has nothing to do with climate change, or reductions in fossil fuel use. Credit the wind industry with a successful propaganda campaign which has swayed public opinion. People who do their homework quickly realize this truth.
The threat posed by wind power makes low level flights disappear from the radar screen in my opinion. See wind-power-problems.org for more information.
The important point of this editorial is that for the moment at least, we seem to be entering a cooling phase. This summer's weather in Maine is not proof of that. Rapid ice melting in the Arctic is not evidence to the contrary. WORLD WIDE temperatures are declining. Antarctic Ice (where 90% of the worlds ice is found) is increasing at a rapid rate. For all we know we could be entering another period of glaciation. The warming periods between glaciations typically last for about 12,000 years. The glaciers that covered Maine began receding about 12,000 years ago. We are still living within the greater "ice age" called the Holocene Age, and no one knows when it will end. Civilization has benefited from the warming trend over the past 12,000 years. When the ice comes back, it will be here for a hundred thousand years if history repeats itself.
Global warming fears have driven public policy decisions that reward industries like wind power that claim to have an impact on climate change by reducing fossil fuel burning to generate electricity. Those claims are false and the public policy that supports them with obscene amounts of subsidies is misguided at best and corrupt at worst.
The scars left by Angus King's wind turbine construction will be there until the next glaciers scrape the tops off the mountains and redefine Maine's landscape. That may happen sooner than later.
Publicwerks,
The bigger picture may off shore wind power some day. 95% of Maine's wind resource lies offshore, within 20 miles of the major population centers where the power is needed. When offshore wind power can compete with other forms of baseload generation it will happen. That is not the case today. Wind generated electricity is ridiculously expensive compared to the value of the electricity produced.
Today the bigger picture, which we are ignoring at our peril while we build useless wind farms on undeveloped ridges in remote areas, is conservation and efficiency. The money being used to subsidize big wind is wasted. If this money was spent on conservation and efficiency it would actually provide a 2 to 1 return on the investment and Mainer's would have the chance to greatly reduce their consumption of foreign oil. I'm not a fan of giant subsidies that rely on deficit spending, but if we are going to spend my granddaughters money, I'd rather see it spent on something that actually will make a difference.
Steve Thurston
It costs over $100 per MW to generate electricity with mountain top wind projects. Electricity is selling for about $35 per MW in the real time market. The difference is made up in subsidies not available to baseload generators who provide the power we cannot do without (in fact these generators are penalized so that wind farms can get renewable energy credits). In Maine wind power will more often replace existing biomass and hydro, not natural gas, because wind is typically available at night and in the winter when demand is lowest and is being met by existing renewables. It will take over 1500 turbines to accomplish the goal of 2700 MW by 2020. Over 360 miles of mountain ridges will be required. At a 25% capacity factor (the factor used by ISO NE for capacity payments (more subsidies) for wind farms, 2700 MW will provide 675 MW of electricity to the grid which averages 16,000 MW on an average day or about 4% of grid demand. Even if wind power reduced fossil fuel consumption is it worth it to pay 3 times the current cost of electricity for wind power that makes very little difference to the operation of the grid? If the subsidies being directed at wind power were instead directed at conservation and efficiency projects which would benefit the people of Maine, each household would be eligible for about $14,000 in incentives for insulation, more efficient heating systems, etc. We don't need wind power. We need to reduce foreign oil consumption used for heating. Anyone who thinks wind power is good for Maine has simply not done their homework.
If only the nation, or the world for that matter, had a sensible energy policy to start with. Energy policy in the US is driven by corporate interests, not the interests of the citizens. That is why 90% of energy subsidies are directed toward outrageously expensive, uncontrollable wind power, when every study done shows that the most cost effective immediate solution to our reliance on foreign oil and fossil fuels in general is massive conservation and efficiency programs.
If the subsidies targeted for 2700 MW of wind power by 2020 were instead directed toward C and E, every household in Maine would be eligible for approximately $14,000 in incentives for insulation, heating system upgrades, storm windows, and more fuel efficient vehicles. Instead we get thousands of turbines on Maine's mountain ridges, effectively destroying forever the sense of place that was recently found by the Brookings Institute to be Maine's most important asset. All of these turbines will generate about 4% of the electricity used by the New England grid on an average day. Why are we doing this? Because Angus King sees himself as the Lawrence of Arabia of Wind and Gov. Baldacci has been sucked into the idea that his legacy will be "the renewable energy governor". With such political power being wielded the wind industry had no trouble monopolizing the Task Force and drafting legislation that removed all barriers to rapid disfigurement of Maine's western mountain landscapes. Citizens are left with little more than pitchforks to defend themselves and their communities against this brutal assault. State and federal governments do not have solutions to our energy problems - they are standing in the way, and destroying Maine's most precious asset at the same time.
Kevin,
Cutting and pasting from the wind industry's web site does not address my arguments. AWEA is the mouthpiece for an industry that is a glutton for tax subsidies. Why are you seeing all those ads for GE turbines on NBC, MSNBC, and CNBC? Because GE owns NBC. Tax money spent on wind turbines is a misuse of our tax dollars. It needs to to be spent on reducing consumption, not on very expensive, but unreliable and essentially redundant wind turbines.
If you lived near turbines many many years ago as you say, you did not live near turbines anywhere as large and as noisy as modern turbines. They have doubled in size in the last 10 years. Try living at Mars Hill today.
Steve Thurston
I wish you were right Bill. You are wrong on both counts. People living near turbines, like the folks on Mars Hill, frequently were in favor of turbines before they were installed, for the same reasons you are - getting us off foreign oil, clean and green, the wind is free, etc. It was not until their lives were impacted by the noise that their opinions changed. Unlike living near the predictable sounds of airports, train stations, highways, wind turbines produce random, low frequency un-synchronized pulses of high energy that some humans cannot adjust to. People living in rural Maine live there for a reason. If they wanted to live near airports or train stations they would. They like hearing the stillness of the night, the call of the loon, the morning chorus of birds. There is no justification for imposing intolerable nighttime turbine noise on these communities.
Virtually none of the electricity in this country is generated with oil, domestic or foreign. Oil is used for heating and transportation. To reduce reliance on foreign oil we need to reduce consumption. That requires conservation and efficiency programs that have some meat on their bones.
Wind power is a scam. It costs over $100 per MW to generate electricity with turbines. Electricity sells for about $35 in the wholesale grid market. The difference is subsidized by tax payers and rate payers. If the money spent subsidizing wind power was spent, where it should be, on conservation and efficiency incentives for Maine families and businesses, there would be a substantial reduction in the use of heating oil in Maine. It will cost about $6.9 billion to blanket Maine's mountains with over 1000 turbines to achieve Baldacci's goal of 2700 MW by 2020. That works out to about $20,000 per household. Imagine how much consumption could be reduced if your tax dollars being directed to the wind industry were instead directed toward incentives to insulate your attic and basement, install good storm windows, upgrade to a more efficient heating system, or buy a more fuel efficient vehicle. How much is Maine spending on conservation and efficiency programs this year? About $15 per household.
2700 MW of installed capacity will provide about 4% of the electricity used by the New England grid. The claims of substantial impacts on fossil fuel consumption or reductions in global warming are patently false. Dont' drink the Koolaid Bill. I know you are too smart for that.
Its about time the Sun Journal recognized the potential damage that awaits the citizens of the state if 50 Mars Hill - sized wind projects get built in the near future as Governor Baldacci decreed. Since Maine's noise regs, by their reliance on the dBA scale which discounts low frequencies by 8 decibels, do not require the accurate measurement of low frequency noise such as turbines produce, and since the state does not require the repetitive "blade thump" produced by turbines to be considered a "short duration repetitive" noise which requires a 6 decibel increase in the predicted noise level, the reality is that turbine noise well in excess of Maine's 45 dBA nighttime sound limit in rural communities is considered acceptable by the state.
"Blade thump" is the number one complaint of people around the world who live within proximity of turbines. It causes annoyance, sleep disturbance, anxiety, migraines, depression, feelings of hopelessness, ringing in the ears, vertigo, strange physical sensations as body cavities reverberate to the powerful whump, whump pulses emitted by these enormous machines. Unlike many locations where turbines are located in broad flat prairie or farmland, in Maine turbines will be located on ridges high above the treetops and will fill communities in the quiet valleys below with noise like lights in a football stadium illuminate the field.
The most egregious failure of the state is the failure to require a line of turbines on a ridge to be considered a line source of noise, like traffic on a highway or a long train on a track. Instead, for every wind project proposed thus far, the state is allowing the wind industry to ignore basic principals of the acoustics profession by treating each turbine as an individual point source of noise. Noise from line sources decays at half the rate of point sources, so the prediction model used by the wind industry's only noise consultant in the state of Maine has underpredicted the noise levels of every single turbine project beginning with Mars Hill by the failure to employ methods that are esxplained in basic acoustics textbooks.
Even without considering the line source issue, in Roxbury, RSE Consulting has predicted that 37 decibels of turbine noise will reach all homes on Roxbury Pond. Adding 8 decibels for low frequencies, and 6 decibels for blade thump to accurately predict the expected noise levels, nighttime turbine blade thump at 51 decibels can be expected, while background noise levels will typically be in the 2O decibel range due to still conditions in the valley, even though sufficient wind exists at turbine height for the rotors to spin. The people in Roxbury have been told by Angus King that turbine noise will be undetectable, no louder than a room full of people holding their breath. The magnitude of this deception will be discovered after the turbines are built. Does anyone believe that a $120 million dollar project will cease operation when residents complain of turbine noise? After two years nothing has been done to quiet the turbines at Mars Hill. Instead the state issued a letter of "substantial compliance" even though turbine noise in the mid 50 decibel range is commonly measured at affected homes.
Modern wind turbines weigh several hundred tons and stand hundreds of feet above the treetops. Each blade may weigh 16 tons, is 150' long and rips through the air at tip speeds approaching 200 MPH. The wind industry, and Dora Mills, would like us to think these are benign machines, no louder than a refrigerator. In reality they are the largest industrial machines on the planet. Turbines emit over 110 decibels of noise, equivalent in sound pressure to a rock band in a night club. It is a relief to see the editorial staff begin to question its blind allegiance to the propaganda of the wind industry. If only Angus King would take his rose colored glasses and see the reality of what his turbines will do to Roxbury when the stillness of the night is replaced with the cacophonous echoes of turbine blades thumping away on the ridge.
Steve Thurston
Recent Comments
A moratorium on wind power is needed
The hospitality and tourism industry has been strangely silent about the impending devastation to Maine's "Quality of Place" at the hands of the wind industry. Ms. Gray's thoughtful piece hopefully is the first cry in what will become a load roar from tourism dependent businesses throughout the state.
The Harraseekett Inn is one of the most prestigous hotels in the state, and was named one of the top 500 hotels in the world by Travel and Leisure magazine in 2010. When the Harraseekett Inn talks, the legislature should listen.
A bill calling for a moratorium on wind development has been proposed by Rep. Larry Dunfee. Putting the brakes on wind power in Maine's mountains until the impacts that were ignored by the former governor and his expedited wind law can be fully examined is the right thing to do. Please call you legislators and tell them to support the wind power moratorium bill.
You say Mr. Stowell "exaggerated the negative effects"?
How is it possible to exaggerate the negative effects of the cumulative impact of 2700 MW of wind turbines? To reach this goal will require anywhere from 1400 to 1800 monstrous, strobe lit, arm waving machines towering over 360 miles of Maine's precious wild mountain landscapes. And its not like the wind industry will stop at 2700 MW. At that point all resistance will have disappeared and mountains will continue to be assaulted until every possible ridge is occupied by turbines.
Maine as we know it is on the verge of being destroyed by the wind industry, and people who think this is the right thing to do are either in bed with the industry, care only about paltry short term benefits without a second thought to the value of Maine's majestic mountains, or are simply ignorant of the facts and believe that wind turbines will solve some make believe crisis.
While Maine is saving the planet with 2700 MW of wind power, China will build 750,000 MW of coal burning power plants, importing much of the coal from the US. That fact should hit people like a 2x4 upside the head if they would only stop and think about it for two seconds. Maine is flushing itself down the toilet with wind power.
Well said, Mr. Stowell
The wind turbine invasion will undoubtedly come to be seen as the worst mistake in Maine's history unless immediate steps are taken to stop it. Saddleback is just one of dozens of projects announced for the western mountains.
Turbines are planned for Roxbury, Byron, Rumford, Dixfield, Canton, Woodstock, Temple, Sumner, Buckfield, Newry, Bethel, Reddington, Sisk Mountain, Highland Plantation, Bingham, Lexington, Moscow. The state is under seige by the wind industry, thanks to former governor Baldacci and his genuflecting legislature. The current administration and newly elected legislature are well positioned to listen to the valid arguments of wind power opponents.
Citizens must make themselves heard over the din of wind power's false prophets - the power brokers who have masterminded this fiasco - Angus King being a prime example. Likewise, NRCM has abandoned its mission to protect Maine's environment and now talks illogically and hypocritically about supporting the wind industry while safeguarding Maine's "Quality of Place". NRCM, you can't have it both ways.
Tip of the iceberg
This is very troubling on a number of counts. DEP rules require that evidence of financing must be demonstrated in the application. The evidence submitted, and relied upon by the DEP in granting the permit, has been shown by King and Gardiner's statements and actions to be apparently inaccurate. This is a serious matter, because by signing the DEP application the applicant swears that the information submitted is true.
Furthermore, the draft permit issued by the DEP contained a standard condition stating that evidence of financing must be demonstrated prior to the commencement of construction. When the final permit was issued 5 days later, someone had changed the word "construction" to "operation", meaning the project could be constructed without satisfying the clear requirements of the law.
This improper condition gave King and Gardiner the ability to begin construction in 2009, making them eligible for a 30% rebate on the entire cost of the project under the federal stimulus program, a no-strings attached gift to King and Gardiner from the US taxpayer that would be worth $40 million. When this conflict in the language of the permit was pointed out to DEP, no one admitted responsibility for this language change, other than an admission of a "drafting error".
There is nothing in the record to indicate who requested this change or why this change was agreed to. When the DEP was forced to admit that an improper condition was included in the permit, they asked King and Gardiner to submit evidence of financing. In response, King and Gardiner submitted a letter from a Chicago bank called Northern Trust, indicating that Bayroot, the majority partner in the Record Hill Wind project, had sufficient funds on deposit to build the project, but that the money was not committed to the project and could be withdrawn at any time.
When appellants challenged this letter, King and Gardiner agreed to shut down construction, and to provide additional evidence of financial capacity prior to resuming - which has not occurred .
With the news that King and Gardiner have now applied for a federal loan guarantee, it is clear that no committment to finance this project has ever existed. One of the conditions of the loan guarantee program is that without the guarantee the project could not be built.
Maine transmission costs are just the beginning
Not only will Maine share in the cost of CMP's $1.5 billion dollar upgrade, according to the ISO chief Maine will also share in the cost of $12 billion in upgrades throughout the ISO-NE grid to allow the constantly fluctuating output of wind turbines in Maine, Massachussetts, New Hampshire and Vermont to be fed into the grid. Transmission lines must accommodate 100% of the nameplate capacity of wind generators, even though the turbines rarely produce at 100%, and average only 25% of their potential. This "overbuilding" of transmission is a massive hidden cost of wind power that is intentionally ignored by the wind industry. Not one wind developer testified about the MPRP during the PUC proceeding. They didn't have to. The fix was already in, thanks to mandates from the Governor's Expedited Wind Law, and other legislation passed in recent years which rewards wind power at the expense of the rate payer.
CMP is guaranteed a 12% rate of return on the MPRP transmission investment by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Rates for delivery of electricity are going to soar, because demand for electricity is flat due to the slow motion economy. Meanwhile wind generators need massive subsidies to cover the cost of putting turbines built in foreign countries on top of Maine's ridges (far from the load centers that drive demand). At the moment the grid is purchasing electricity for $44 per MW in the day ahead market (google ISO LMP Map). The cost of mountain top wind generated electricity is well over $100 per MW, not counting transmission upgrades. Taxpayers make up this difference in subsidies. The enormity of the wind power scam is almost incomprehensible, but for anyone who takes a few minutes to peel the layers, this onion is rotten to the core.
long winded but short on facts
D Wilson, blaming Len Greany for the business climate in Maine does not respond to his questions. Wind power opponents are not "the same people" who took a position on any of the issues you mention. They are people who have taken the time to understand that wind power is a taxpayer scam promoted by big business and unthinking government. Naomi Shalit's recent three part series accurately described how this happened in Maine.
Despite the assurances from Angus King that his turbines will replace fossil fuel generation on a one to one basis, the truth is the grid cannot even make use of the electricity these things generate due to their wild swings in output from one minute to the next. Until there is grid scale storage which these uncontrolled generators can feed into, the grid will ignore wind turbines when planning for day ahead capacity, and will rely on the controllable generators to provide the reliable response to predictable demand that FERC rules require. You might as well build ferris wheels on the mountains (which you would probably be in favor if it created a few jobs). People who blindly trust the wind industry's propaganda need to do more homework.
The towns that have adopted responsible turbine ordinances, Montville, Jackson, Dixmont, and many others using the benefit of a moratorium to study the issue such as Dixfield, have done so to avoid being the victims of improper siting of these monstrous machines. Why should Rumford become the next Mars Hill, Freedom, Vinalhaven, and now Upper Hot Brook Lake at Stetson II? The wind ordinance committee should be commended for doing a great job of researching this issue.
Saying we should produce all
Saying we should produce all of our energy here is like saying we should produce all of our oranges here. On second thought, if we get the US taxpayers to help pay to build and heat the greenhouses....why not?
Seriously, wind power is not a good use of tax dollars. $5 billion in subsidies will be required to install Baldacci's dream (nightmare actually) of 2700 MW, but 2700 MW of wind, at a 25% capacity factor, will only provide about 4% of the 16,000 MW electricity used by the NE grid on an average day. Wind power is nothing more than a symbolic feel good gesture in terms of our use of electricity.
If that same $5 billion was used for energy improvments to Maine homes it would equal about $10,000 per household. Imagine how many jobs that woulld create! Imagine how much foreign oil could be saved.
As it is, there are no programs in place that match the aggressive push for wind power. Angus King likes to say that wind power is not the silver bullet, it is like a silver shotgun pellet. But where are the other pellets? 95% of all renewable energy subsidies are going to wind power. Compared to the spending of our children's and grandchildren's borrowed tax dollars to deploy useless wind turbines built overseas, which actually increase the use of fossil fuels and emissions due to the stop and go inefficiency required to regulate the erratic output, conservation and efficiency programs - which everyone agrees are the most cost effective ways to reduce fossil fuel consumption - get almost nothing.
More mysteries with the wind law
In addition to the map, another key component of the wind law, for which there is no explanation, is the use of a 20 year old report entitled "Maines Finest Lakes". This is a partially completed report that has been gathering dust at the State Planning Office since it was created back in the 80s. No one on the Task Force seems to know who was responsible for its inlcusion in the Wind Law, but if you proposing a wind project near a lake or pond which is one of the 66 lakes that was given a score of "outstanding" for scenic beauty, the proximity of turbines requires a more careful analysis. If you are not on the list, the visual impact of turbines cannot even be considered by the DEP in its review. A serious problem with the use of this report is that, by its own admission, due to time and money, some criteria in the report were never completed and many ponds are not even scored in the scenic category. Such is the case with Roxbury Pond, a jewel of a lake which far exceeds the criteria by which the scenic inventory of a pond was supposed to be judged. Rob Gardiner, partner with Angus King in the Record Hill wind project in Roxbury, was director of NRCM when the report was created. He is credited as a participant on a similar report done at about the same time called Maine's Wildland Rivers Assessment Gardiner already had his wind measurement towers up in Roxbury, a mile away from Roxbury Pond, when the wind law was being created by the Governor's Task Force on Wind Power. He testified to the Task Force (his testimony is available on the Task Force website) that visual impact of turbines on the character of the area should not be an issue for review. Is it possible that Gardiner dusted off his copy of Maine's Finest Lakes, noticed that Roxbury Pond was not on the list of the 66 finest lakes, and then suggested that the report be used in the law, virtually guaranteeing that his project would be bulletproof from objections to the intrusion of 22 turbines on the panoramic beauty of the vistas from Roxbury Pond? We may never know, because there is no record of how that report got included in the law.
Kurt Adam paved the way for wind power
In clearing Adams of wrong doing, AG Mills said that the PUC has no jurisdiction over wind power. She could not be more wrong. While head of the PUC Kurt Adams presented numerous reports to the legislature and regulatory agencies recommending strategies for encouraging the sacrifice of Maine's treasured mountains for the benefit of the wind industry. These recommendations became laws that removed 50 years of environmental protections and reversed decades of hard fought conservation efforts involving hundreds of millions of private and public dollars. What AG Mills could have truthfully said is that while head of the PUC Kurt Adams paved the way for the wind "gold rush" that threatens every ridgeline in the state, and that First Wind merely rewarded Adams for a job well done by giving him a job that tripled his salary and promised him millions more in future benefits. Assuming First Wind survives its current fiscal problems no one should be surprised if Baldacci joins Adams as Vice President when he leaves office.
Baldacci should introduce
Baldacci should introduce emergency legislation to rename Maine from "Vacation Land" to "Industrial Waste Land". 2700 megawatts of land based wind turbines by the year 2020 will require 1800 1.5 MW turbines, the most popular model in use in Maine, made by GE, owner of NBC, CNBC, MSNBC (notice all the subliminal messages showing slowly spinning turbines in wide open grasslands on those channels?). Do you think GE might have a lobbyist or two in Washington? How about 150?
Roxbury is the tip of the iceberg. There are 50 wind projects the size of Roxbury on the wind industry's drawing boards. There will not be a horizon from Buckfield to Quebec that is not dominated by monstrous arm waving machines.
As Mr. Dwight says, our grandchildren are footing the bill for this unprecedented assault on Maine's landscape. If only the money being used to subsidize wind power in Maine were instead spent on Conservation and Efficiency programs. Each household in Maine would be eligible for $14,000 in incentives for insulation, new windows, a 95% efficient gas boiler to replace the 60% efficient oil fired dinosaur in most basements. The savings in foreign oil for home heating could easily reach 50% with such simple, cost effective improvements.
Instead, we are destroying Maine with thousands of wind turbines, hundreds of miles of 35' wide roads blasted across fragile mountain ecosystems, and hundreds of miles of new transmission corridors to remote turbine projects. When the goal of 2700 MW is reached the combined total of the electricity from all these turbines will only generate about 4% of the daily demand of the New England grid, not when the grid needs it, and often times replacing existing renewable electricity already in place. So much for saving the planet.
Is there any doubt about where Baldacci sees his next job? His former chief of staff and former head of the PUC Kurt Adams is now VP at First Wind. I bet he will put in a good word for his former boss.
Jon Abrecht - for info on
Jon Abrecht - for info on the risks you face from turbines nearby I suggest you go to windturbinesyndrome.com If there is any conspiracy at work, it is the conspiracy to steal your tax dollars by the wind industry. 2/3 of the cost of these projects is paid with subsidies which will equal $14,000 per household in Maine by the time the goal established by the Governor's Emergency Wind Law is reached which will put 1800 turbines on 360 miles of Maine's mountain ridges. Think how you could reduce your energy costs if the government gave you $14,000. Wind power is the worst mistake Maine has ever made. Meanwhile we're more concerned about military training flights. Go figure.
This editorial reads like it
This editorial reads like it was written by Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde.
On the one hand you applaud the rejection or a resolution that "would have encouraged government to perform independent studies of possible health effects of turbines, and "refine" energy generation and policy to mitigate them" while on the other you say say this "If the MMA should resolve anything, it should be this: Dismissing possible health effects of turbines would be foolhardy, without examination first, and that studies should be done as soon as possible." Both statements are in agreement. Where is your argument?
Drs. Aniel and Nissenbaum are attempting to get the MMA to do exactly as you suggest - recommend government study the already widely recognized health effects of turbines. If Maine Health Dept director Dora Mills had an ounce of compassion for the people of Mars Hill and Freedom whose lives and health have been severely impacted by turbines and the people in rural Maine that are at risk of the same fate, she would not be advocating for building turbines as fast as possible.
Why do you discredit the doctors who are actually showing care and concern by applauding the MMA's decision to ignore them? One thing is clear. The MMA needs to reconsider their decision and do exactly as you suggest. Study the health effects of turbines as soon as possible because to do otherwise is foolhardy.
It is ironic that Gov.
It is ironic that Gov. Baldacci has intervened with the National Guard about training flights and yet he ignores the huge catastrophe that awaits western Maine from the construction of thousands of wind turbines throughout the mountains. Roxbury, Rumford, Dixfield, Carthage, Sumner, Buckfield, Byron, have all been announced as proposed sites for turbines in western Maine. These first projects are only the tip of the iceberg of the scores of projects that will be required to reach the goal established by the legislature for 2700 megawatts of wind turbines by 2020. There will be turbines on every horizon. Noise from low level flights might be annoying, but wind turbines actually make people sick. See windturbinesyndrome.org for the evidence.
The tax dollars that will be used to subsidize wind power in Maine amount to about $14,000 per household. By contrast, Maine's annual budget for conservation and efficiency is about $15 per household. Imagine what you could do to reduce your consumption of heating oil or wood if you were given $14,000 for basement or attic insulation, storm windows, or an improved heating system, and get a tax credit or cash to pay for it? Wind power is a subsidy-driven scam being perpetrated by powerful political and industrial forces but it has nothing to do with climate change, or reductions in fossil fuel use. Credit the wind industry with a successful propaganda campaign which has swayed public opinion. People who do their homework quickly realize this truth.
The threat posed by wind power makes low level flights disappear from the radar screen in my opinion. See wind-power-problems.org for more information.
The important point of this
The important point of this editorial is that for the moment at least, we seem to be entering a cooling phase. This summer's weather in Maine is not proof of that. Rapid ice melting in the Arctic is not evidence to the contrary. WORLD WIDE temperatures are declining. Antarctic Ice (where 90% of the worlds ice is found) is increasing at a rapid rate. For all we know we could be entering another period of glaciation. The warming periods between glaciations typically last for about 12,000 years. The glaciers that covered Maine began receding about 12,000 years ago. We are still living within the greater "ice age" called the Holocene Age, and no one knows when it will end. Civilization has benefited from the warming trend over the past 12,000 years. When the ice comes back, it will be here for a hundred thousand years if history repeats itself.
Global warming fears have driven public policy decisions that reward industries like wind power that claim to have an impact on climate change by reducing fossil fuel burning to generate electricity. Those claims are false and the public policy that supports them with obscene amounts of subsidies is misguided at best and corrupt at worst.
The scars left by Angus King's wind turbine construction will be there until the next glaciers scrape the tops off the mountains and redefine Maine's landscape. That may happen sooner than later.
Publicwerks, The bigger
Publicwerks,
The bigger picture may off shore wind power some day. 95% of Maine's wind resource lies offshore, within 20 miles of the major population centers where the power is needed. When offshore wind power can compete with other forms of baseload generation it will happen. That is not the case today. Wind generated electricity is ridiculously expensive compared to the value of the electricity produced.
Today the bigger picture, which we are ignoring at our peril while we build useless wind farms on undeveloped ridges in remote areas, is conservation and efficiency. The money being used to subsidize big wind is wasted. If this money was spent on conservation and efficiency it would actually provide a 2 to 1 return on the investment and Mainer's would have the chance to greatly reduce their consumption of foreign oil. I'm not a fan of giant subsidies that rely on deficit spending, but if we are going to spend my granddaughters money, I'd rather see it spent on something that actually will make a difference.
Steve Thurston It costs over
Steve Thurston
It costs over $100 per MW to generate electricity with mountain top wind projects. Electricity is selling for about $35 per MW in the real time market. The difference is made up in subsidies not available to baseload generators who provide the power we cannot do without (in fact these generators are penalized so that wind farms can get renewable energy credits). In Maine wind power will more often replace existing biomass and hydro, not natural gas, because wind is typically available at night and in the winter when demand is lowest and is being met by existing renewables. It will take over 1500 turbines to accomplish the goal of 2700 MW by 2020. Over 360 miles of mountain ridges will be required. At a 25% capacity factor (the factor used by ISO NE for capacity payments (more subsidies) for wind farms, 2700 MW will provide 675 MW of electricity to the grid which averages 16,000 MW on an average day or about 4% of grid demand. Even if wind power reduced fossil fuel consumption is it worth it to pay 3 times the current cost of electricity for wind power that makes very little difference to the operation of the grid? If the subsidies being directed at wind power were instead directed at conservation and efficiency projects which would benefit the people of Maine, each household would be eligible for about $14,000 in incentives for insulation, more efficient heating systems, etc. We don't need wind power. We need to reduce foreign oil consumption used for heating. Anyone who thinks wind power is good for Maine has simply not done their homework.
If only the nation, or the
If only the nation, or the world for that matter, had a sensible energy policy to start with. Energy policy in the US is driven by corporate interests, not the interests of the citizens. That is why 90% of energy subsidies are directed toward outrageously expensive, uncontrollable wind power, when every study done shows that the most cost effective immediate solution to our reliance on foreign oil and fossil fuels in general is massive conservation and efficiency programs.
If the subsidies targeted for 2700 MW of wind power by 2020 were instead directed toward C and E, every household in Maine would be eligible for approximately $14,000 in incentives for insulation, heating system upgrades, storm windows, and more fuel efficient vehicles. Instead we get thousands of turbines on Maine's mountain ridges, effectively destroying forever the sense of place that was recently found by the Brookings Institute to be Maine's most important asset. All of these turbines will generate about 4% of the electricity used by the New England grid on an average day. Why are we doing this? Because Angus King sees himself as the Lawrence of Arabia of Wind and Gov. Baldacci has been sucked into the idea that his legacy will be "the renewable energy governor". With such political power being wielded the wind industry had no trouble monopolizing the Task Force and drafting legislation that removed all barriers to rapid disfigurement of Maine's western mountain landscapes. Citizens are left with little more than pitchforks to defend themselves and their communities against this brutal assault. State and federal governments do not have solutions to our energy problems - they are standing in the way, and destroying Maine's most precious asset at the same time.
Kevin, Cutting and pasting
Kevin,
Cutting and pasting from the wind industry's web site does not address my arguments. AWEA is the mouthpiece for an industry that is a glutton for tax subsidies. Why are you seeing all those ads for GE turbines on NBC, MSNBC, and CNBC? Because GE owns NBC. Tax money spent on wind turbines is a misuse of our tax dollars. It needs to to be spent on reducing consumption, not on very expensive, but unreliable and essentially redundant wind turbines.
If you lived near turbines many many years ago as you say, you did not live near turbines anywhere as large and as noisy as modern turbines. They have doubled in size in the last 10 years. Try living at Mars Hill today.
Steve Thurston
I wish you were right Bill.
I wish you were right Bill. You are wrong on both counts. People living near turbines, like the folks on Mars Hill, frequently were in favor of turbines before they were installed, for the same reasons you are - getting us off foreign oil, clean and green, the wind is free, etc. It was not until their lives were impacted by the noise that their opinions changed. Unlike living near the predictable sounds of airports, train stations, highways, wind turbines produce random, low frequency un-synchronized pulses of high energy that some humans cannot adjust to. People living in rural Maine live there for a reason. If they wanted to live near airports or train stations they would. They like hearing the stillness of the night, the call of the loon, the morning chorus of birds. There is no justification for imposing intolerable nighttime turbine noise on these communities.
Virtually none of the electricity in this country is generated with oil, domestic or foreign. Oil is used for heating and transportation. To reduce reliance on foreign oil we need to reduce consumption. That requires conservation and efficiency programs that have some meat on their bones.
Wind power is a scam. It costs over $100 per MW to generate electricity with turbines. Electricity sells for about $35 in the wholesale grid market. The difference is subsidized by tax payers and rate payers. If the money spent subsidizing wind power was spent, where it should be, on conservation and efficiency incentives for Maine families and businesses, there would be a substantial reduction in the use of heating oil in Maine. It will cost about $6.9 billion to blanket Maine's mountains with over 1000 turbines to achieve Baldacci's goal of 2700 MW by 2020. That works out to about $20,000 per household. Imagine how much consumption could be reduced if your tax dollars being directed to the wind industry were instead directed toward incentives to insulate your attic and basement, install good storm windows, upgrade to a more efficient heating system, or buy a more fuel efficient vehicle. How much is Maine spending on conservation and efficiency programs this year? About $15 per household.
2700 MW of installed capacity will provide about 4% of the electricity used by the New England grid. The claims of substantial impacts on fossil fuel consumption or reductions in global warming are patently false. Dont' drink the Koolaid Bill. I know you are too smart for that.
Steve Thurston
Its about time the Sun
Its about time the Sun Journal recognized the potential damage that awaits the citizens of the state if 50 Mars Hill - sized wind projects get built in the near future as Governor Baldacci decreed. Since Maine's noise regs, by their reliance on the dBA scale which discounts low frequencies by 8 decibels, do not require the accurate measurement of low frequency noise such as turbines produce, and since the state does not require the repetitive "blade thump" produced by turbines to be considered a "short duration repetitive" noise which requires a 6 decibel increase in the predicted noise level, the reality is that turbine noise well in excess of Maine's 45 dBA nighttime sound limit in rural communities is considered acceptable by the state.
"Blade thump" is the number one complaint of people around the world who live within proximity of turbines. It causes annoyance, sleep disturbance, anxiety, migraines, depression, feelings of hopelessness, ringing in the ears, vertigo, strange physical sensations as body cavities reverberate to the powerful whump, whump pulses emitted by these enormous machines. Unlike many locations where turbines are located in broad flat prairie or farmland, in Maine turbines will be located on ridges high above the treetops and will fill communities in the quiet valleys below with noise like lights in a football stadium illuminate the field.
The most egregious failure of the state is the failure to require a line of turbines on a ridge to be considered a line source of noise, like traffic on a highway or a long train on a track. Instead, for every wind project proposed thus far, the state is allowing the wind industry to ignore basic principals of the acoustics profession by treating each turbine as an individual point source of noise. Noise from line sources decays at half the rate of point sources, so the prediction model used by the wind industry's only noise consultant in the state of Maine has underpredicted the noise levels of every single turbine project beginning with Mars Hill by the failure to employ methods that are esxplained in basic acoustics textbooks.
Even without considering the line source issue, in Roxbury, RSE Consulting has predicted that 37 decibels of turbine noise will reach all homes on Roxbury Pond. Adding 8 decibels for low frequencies, and 6 decibels for blade thump to accurately predict the expected noise levels, nighttime turbine blade thump at 51 decibels can be expected, while background noise levels will typically be in the 2O decibel range due to still conditions in the valley, even though sufficient wind exists at turbine height for the rotors to spin. The people in Roxbury have been told by Angus King that turbine noise will be undetectable, no louder than a room full of people holding their breath. The magnitude of this deception will be discovered after the turbines are built. Does anyone believe that a $120 million dollar project will cease operation when residents complain of turbine noise? After two years nothing has been done to quiet the turbines at Mars Hill. Instead the state issued a letter of "substantial compliance" even though turbine noise in the mid 50 decibel range is commonly measured at affected homes.
Modern wind turbines weigh several hundred tons and stand hundreds of feet above the treetops. Each blade may weigh 16 tons, is 150' long and rips through the air at tip speeds approaching 200 MPH. The wind industry, and Dora Mills, would like us to think these are benign machines, no louder than a refrigerator. In reality they are the largest industrial machines on the planet. Turbines emit over 110 decibels of noise, equivalent in sound pressure to a rock band in a night club. It is a relief to see the editorial staff begin to question its blind allegiance to the propaganda of the wind industry. If only Angus King would take his rose colored glasses and see the reality of what his turbines will do to Roxbury when the stillness of the night is replaced with the cacophonous echoes of turbine blades thumping away on the ridge.
Steve Thurston