By Jodi Hausen,Staff Writer

KIBBY TOWNSHIP – A wind power project proposed for four mountain ridges on the Canadian border has come under fire by local environmentalists.

The project’s permit application, proposed by Canadian power company TransCanada Corp., is currently being reviewed by Maine’s Land Use Regulation Commission and may be on the agenda for the commission’s next meeting on Nov. 2 at Saddleback Mountain Resort in Sandy River Plantation, according to Catherine Carroll, the commission’s director.

If the project goes forward, it would put more than 100 wind turbines atop Kibby Mountain, Kibby Range, Caribou Mountain and a fourth nearby unnamed peak near the Canadian border off Route 27 north of Eustis in Franklin County.

In a nine-page letter, Pam Prodan, an attorney representing Friends of the Boundary Mountains, said the group opposes the proposal for several reasons. She claims the project could:

• Disrupt important wildlife habitat by the removal of vegetation for the installation of bat study radar devices.

• Confuse and cause the death of migrating birds including the Bicknell’s thrush, an endangered species, with meteorological tower lighting.

• Affect recreation and tourism in the region by creating a visual scar on the landscape.

The group also contends that wildlife studies have been insufficient.

According to Marcia Spencer Famous, a land use planner for LURC, studies were done in the early 1990s when Kennetech, another company researching the viability of wind power on the same peaks, was in the permitting process but later dropped the project. Developers are continuing to collect data and have consulted with the state’s Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife and the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife, she said. Spencer Famous said she, as a planner and not a biologist, could only trust the opinions of state and federal authorities.

“It’s up to those two agencies to determine if the studies were sufficient,” she said Monday.

The company agreed to lower the proposed height of eight proposed meteorological towers to under 200 feet, which would not require lighting by the Federal Aviation Administration, thereby reducing the hazard to migrating birds.

Prodan also asked the commission to rescind an advisory ruling approved in August allowing developers to clear vegetation and install several bat-tracking radar devices on the mountains without a permit. Prodan claims so-called trails to be used to transport equipment to the mountaintops should be classified as roads and would, therefore, need to be permitted.

“LURC staff incorrectly concluded that a permit is not necessary for activities that involve constructing a ground access route for motorized vehicles including a stream crossing,” Prodan wrote in the letter, “and vegetation removal at locations over 2,700 feet elevation.”

Land at this elevation is classified by the commission as a protected mountain zone.

Any forestry operation at this elevation would need to be permitted, agreed Spencer Famous, and she said they did “set the bar a little higher” when allowing this activity without a permit.

They met two key requirements, she said – the proposed radar devices will be “located at the most reasonably available site for the project,” the mountain peaks, and sensitive resources were taken into consideration.

“The site was selected because of its remote location, minimal number of recreation sites, limited public use and limited public exposure,” Prodan quoted from the permit application in her letter. The group “submits first that the applicant is incorrect as to the minimal number of recreation sites and limited public use and exposure,” she said. “Second, even if correct, these factors do not justify the intrusiveness of towers on remote mountain peaks. In fact, it is exactly because the values of the region for remoteness and wilderness character would be degraded by the proposed activities that (the group) raises these concerns.”