BANGOR, Maine — A public hearing on a tax increment financing district for the proposed Passadumkeag Wind Park will be held at 10 a.m.
Tuesday before the Penobscot County commissioners at the historic Penobscot County Courthouse on Hammond Street. It will be held on the second floor of the building.
A TIF with the county would provide the developer, Quantum Utility Generation, an alternative energy company based in Houston, Texas, with tax breaks toward the project in exchange for a portion of resulting revenues, which may be used for a variety of county initiatives totaling $7.8 million over 30 years that would benefit residents in the Unorganized Territory.
If approved, the TIF would be the first in Penobscot County, Commissioner Tom Davis of Kenduskeag said Thursday.
“We are neutral on the project itself,” he said. “Creating the TIF does not mean we are supporting the project. But, if it is built, we want to make sure the citizens in the Unorganized Territory in the county benefit.”
Those benefits would include improvements to roads, development and maintenance of a system of recreational trails, improvement of fire and emergency medical services, construction of and staffing for a child care center and a scholarship fund for job training for residents.
The proposal would allow the county to finance its upfront contribution to the project by issuing bonds.
Most of the windmills would be built atop Passadumkeag Ridge in Grand Falls, which is just south-southeast of Burlington and Lowell, but some of the project also would be in Summit Township, according to a previously published report.
That section of the county is in Commissioner Stephen Stanley’s district. Stanley, who lives in Medway, said Tuesday that although it would be at least two years before residents would see any financial benefits from the creation of a TIF, it makes sense to create the district now.
“There are pros and cons to wind power,” Stanley said. “I’m neither for nor against this project, but as commissioners, we need to take advantage of what comes across our desks. This will help people in the Unorganized Territory in Penobscot County and only people in the Unorganized Territory.”
The turbines would be 459 feet from base to extended blade tip. Each would generate 3 megawatts of electricity, according to the company’s proposal. Electricity would be collected in a 34.5-kilovolt line to run about 17 miles from Passadumkeag Ridge along Greenfield Road through Summit Township, Greenfield Township and Greenbush.
“Nearly all of this line is in an existing electrical distribution line right-of-way immediately adjacent to an existing road,” the initial proposal to the Maine Department of Environmental Protection stated.
The project would include a substation in Greenbush and a connection to an existing 115-kilovolt transmission line on Greenbush Road.
Some local residents and business owners already have expressed reservations about the project, saying it could detract from the region’s beauty and deter visitors from coming to local camps and lodges.
Bowdoinham resident Chris Jackson, who owns a small parcel on West Lake in Township 3 North District, about six miles from the proposed site, said in March, when the project was announced, that he opposes it.
“This would definitely have a scenic impact,” Jackson said. “The property on the east side of West Lake overlooks Passadumkeag Mountain across the lake.”
Jackson also said he is concerned that the project would have an adverse effect on the nearby Robbins Lumber Conservation Easement, which in 2000 set more than 20,000 acres surrounding Nicatous Lake in eastern Maine in perpetual protection from development or disturbance.
The DEP has scheduled a second public meeting for 7 p.m. Thursday, July 12, at the Greenbush Town Office, 132 Military Road, to get feedback on its review of the project.
The public hearing Tuesday will address the proposed TIF, not the project itself.
Don’t blight the county with this stuff just to ship the measly bit of energy out of state.
I agree… we should also stop digging more clams that we consume in the state, fishing for more lobster than we consume, and growing more potatoes/broccoli than we consume. While we are at it, close any factories that make a product sold outside of state lines. Just makes good sense.
As for the visual impact, I hope that is enough opposition to put a stop to this blatant development of privately owned land. We need to get back to the basics and make sure that ONLY luxuries and recreation are developed, NOT electricity generation. The “needs” of this country need to take a backseat to the “wants” once and for all.
@ARandomName…. Good to defend free markets, property rights, and America’s energy needs. But what do any of those have to do with grid-scale wind power?
TIF should be tied to job creation.
It is estimated that there is one full time maintenance position generated per 8-10 turbines. So TIF something that produces 3, maybe 4, jobs? That is asinine.
Odd Maine should be continuing to subsidize wind farming, at a time when Great Britain is cutting theirs:
from the BBC Science:
By Roger Harrabin,Environment analyst
Wind power firms warn they may take the government to court if they get caught in a political row over subsidies.After conducting technical studies, the energy department proposed a subsidy cut of 10% for power from onshore wind.But the chancellor is under pressure from back-benchers to scrap subsidies, and is said to favour a 25% cut.
The industry body, Renewable UK, says it may take legal action if the government makes a decision that overrides its own technical evidence.”It’s really important this process is seen to be evidence-based and rational,” said Gordon Edge of Renewable UK.”The government took technical guidance on this issue. If at this point the government says we are going to do less for onshore wind than it proposed that will be seen as nakedly political.”
Taxpayers just paid the owners of Maine Yankee $81 million to take care of their spent fuel and we will be shelling out $10 million a year for the foreseeable future.
That’s $100 million over 10 years – and not one microwatt of electricity will be generated.
Not a peep about this from the cave dwellers.
Yessah
Wind farms are unnecessary and only create temporary jobs and a demand for additional subsidies; at worse we are paying to have a subsidy pump installed in our backyard with no job gain and perhaps even long lasting harm to the environment from clear cuts, bird/bat damage, etc.
Perhaps the concept of a TIF should be changed to enable an organization to get enough other public subsidies to pay back bond holders and not really benefit the community.
??If the wind turbine goes off line or stops producing power, shouldn’t the TIF be reduced accordingly?
I can only hope the commissioners are up on how these developers have many mechanisms available to them to get pretty rich. Electricity sales by power purchase agreements, electricity sales to the iso-ne market, renewable energy credit sales, production tax credits, accelerated depreciation. Is there no end to propping up these ventures.
Nowhere in the TIF proposal is any benefit indicated for the area around Passadumkeag Mountain and the nearby town of Burlington, which will experience the loss of scenic amenities if and when the wind development is completed. Benefits will go to the county’s unorganized territory generally, not the local community. The TIF document acknowledges that just 5-7 permanent jobs are expected from this project, once the construction phase is complete. And further, the County proposes to refund 60% of the new tax revenues from the project back to the developer as an incentive to build. It seems to me that we’re selling off our capital…the thing that makes this area so special…and selling it cheap.
Are industrial wind developers required to offer “tangible benefits” (legal bribes) to unorganized territories? In Carthage the developers, Patriot Renewables, a subsidiary of the Massachusetts company that did the Big Dig, were bribing residents with $20. gift certificates to the Blue Moose so they could buy pizza and beer. They bribed the Department of Conservation with $60,000. to build a new playground at Mount Blue State Park. They bribed the snowmobile club. They have money, lots of it, and they flash it around. Don’t be bought off, people. Stand your ground and protect it. Keep Maine beautiful.
C’mon folks . . . . . pay attention!!!! While our dear leader is out there beating the drum for “Outsourcing” jobs, where do you think these monstrosities were made? OVERSEAS JOBS. Most of the construction is done by out of state workers that are brought in for the duration of the build. The Grid updates are being done by mostly out of state contractors from Kansas, Oklahoma, etc. When they are up, there might be 4 – 6 employees to run the whole project. The Grid updates are woefully inadequate, and will cost $1.4 billion now (which we are paying for in our CMP and Bangor Hydro bills) and will grow to somewhere between $19 and 27 BILLION!!! Thats right BILLION. Think our bills are not going up some more??? And all this energy that is so inefficiently made is going to Quebec and Massachusetts, but WE are paying the bill, and paying the price of our environment. And to make it worse, we are removing perfectly efficient, dependable and reliable hydro dams that have been producing energy for more than 100 years because the environmentalists think we should let the salmon back up the river, but it is OK to kill EXISTING bats and Bald Eagles. Doesn’t anyone else see this idocy??
The US pioneered commercial-scale wind turbines – and tested a 2 MW machine in 1978.
What happened to US wind power R&D and the jobs it would have created?
Ronald Reagan and the GOP destroyed that infant industry in its crib.
They gave those jobs away.
Idiots.
YEssah
read abouy VESTAS going bankrupt, read about Onatario and Great Britian and New Zealand and Denmark and on and on. The WIND Industry is not working.
At a time when electricity prices have been falling because our dominant electricity generation source (natural gas) has plummeted, Maine electric rates rise. Why? Because our PUC has been in the pocket of special interests. The greasy fingerprints of Kurt Adams and Dave Littell are too conspicuous. Why no news reports about a 19% increase? If the sales tax went up a penny there would be a news story or two. Why are electric rates increasing? So that we ratepayers can build a transmission superhighway for useless wind projects.
Once again, local welfare being extended to the wind thieves. This is the worst use of TIF. It is estimated that there is one full time maintenance position generated per 8-10 turbines. So TIF something that produces 3, maybe 4, jobs? That is asinine.
TIF is supposed to be used for economic development, for battling blight, etc. This TIF supports something that when a threshold is reached that we must have 20%, 30%, 40% of our electricity come from the most expensive source–wind–it will harm the economy and cause us to lose jobs. It isn’t reversing blight, it is promoting industrial blight into beautiful areas.
The politicians are pandering money skimmers, making a lousy tax deal. If wind wants to come into Maine, it should be fully taxed on full valuation, not given a TIF.
The Commissioners who are quoted say they are “neutral” about the wind project. Yet they seem poised to negotiate a bad TIF deal in order to help the wind developer. Commissioners, if you are neutral about the project, then wait until it is approved, then negotiate a TIF from a position of strength, not pander for your cut of subsidy & REC money that this useless project will rake in. By doing a TIF now, you are clearly stating that you wish to have Passadumkeag Mt. destroyed by a sprawling wind project with turbines that are more than half as tall as Boston’s Hancock Tower, the tallest building in New England. How does that fit into our “Quality of Place”?
Since the Commissioners seem Hell Bent on doing a TIF to help these Texas thieves, here are a couple of suggestions regarding TIF. Make no TIF greater than 50-50, nothing more for the wind developer. Then make signing a TIF contingent on the purchase of a bond to cover the full estimated de-commissioning costs 20 years from now, with no discounting for “salvage” or “re-sale” value. In full, up-front, bonded. You want to have us help position you to reap taxpayer subsidies and destroy a beautiful part of Maine? Then, Texas boys, play by OUR rules.
Another suggestion is to tie development of a ski & winter recreation area to the development. Passadumkeag Mt. is the highest point between Cadillac Mt. and Mt. Katahdin. A ski are has been dreamed about on the broad shoulders of the mountain and it would have 800 to 1,000 feet of vertical. If turbines are going up there, why not a couple of chairlifts and a few dozen trails. The area within an hour’s drive is enough population base to support it and it might draw Canadians as well. Take TIF money and combine it with other development resources and create a public-private entity. Big Rock Ski Area co-exists with turbines on Mars Hill, so why not Passadumkeag Mt.?
Of course, I just really want it left alone!
Hey, BDN, what is going on with censorship tonight? A very insightful comment posted by PenobScot that I read earlier is no longer here! The wind controversy is a complex, interwoven multitude of issues. The issue PenobScot tried to raise is why the BDN and other Maine media have ignored the story of electricity transmission rates of CMP customers increasing 19.6%, due to the $1.4 billion MPRP. Is this the first installment of the dramatic electricity rate increases we will see due to development of industrial wind power in Maine? It ties in with this story, BDN!
The sole reason for MPRP is needing to design over-capacity for the thermal loading from surges of wind power when wind conditins happen to be right a few times a year for these underperforming (average 25% capacity) ridge-top monstrosities actually produce real, usable power. Even with the MPRP expansion to a 345 kv (Killer-volt) line, ISO-New England is saying they will not provide capacity payments to wind projects due to congestion in the line south of Orrington. That means Passadumkeag Mt. should NOT be built. It also means that further build-out of wind projects will mean another MPRP and further rate increases! This is maddening!
This project is a disgrace just like all of them. A rape of Maine, Mainers, Ratepayers and Taxpayers.
And this is how Maine property taxpayers end up financing wind projects. I’ve been to a few of these meetings in which wind TIFs were deliberated. The TIF deal is sold to the taxpayers as if it were a freebie that they’d be foolish to pass up. Truth is, the only freebie goes to the wind developer which will get about 50% or more of its property taxes returned to it…….at the expense of Maine taxpayers. The Penobscot County Commissioners will get the balance (also at the expense of Maine taxpayers) to be used – or wasted – anywhere in their UTs.
The use of tax increment financing for wind projects is a corruption of the intent of the program. TIF deals where supposed to be used to encourage projects that provided great value to a community, especially large numbers of jobs for locals or enhanced community quality. Wind projects typically provide an odd job or two for locals, if any at all, and leave the community quality degraded. In the case of wind TIFs, the only value is in the redistribution of money diverted away from Maine taxpayers.
Why would the commissioners feel the need to give a TIF to a subdidiary of a multi billion dollar multi national conglomerate? Why do the comms think UTs need development? A business would not be built where there are no workers to man the jobs, if any were created. Let the tunnel vision stop and realize what is being built is not for Mainers but for Mass developers in the wind cartel.