King of the hill
As a business owner in Brunswick and member of the Southern Midcoast Chamber of Commerce, I was angry to read in the Portland Press Herald on July 26 that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce purchased advertisements to influence the Maine U.S. Senate race. Their target is the frontrunner, independent Angus King.
The U.S. Chamber has a mission to support only Republican congressional candidates and “will spend $100 million to influence elections this year.”
The U.S. Chamber seems one-sided in its efforts to support pro-business candidates rather than candidates who have a grasp of all local, state and national issues and remain independent of party interests. More importantly, if they looked at each candidate with perspective they would learn that, “During his terms as Maine Governor, King focused on economic development and job creation. He also affected significant reforms in education, mental health services, land conservation, environmental protection, and the delivery of state services.”
For more on what he has done for Maine, visit his website at angus2012.com.
All Chamber members aren’t Republicans. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is not representing all business owners equitably and ethically. I support the election of King.
He is intelligent, trustworthy, honest, disciplined, has great integrity and will do the right thing for the state of Maine and its citizens. As our U.S. senator, King will be a formidable leader and speak for the principles of Maine and not for the dictates of a political party or political action group.
Anne V. Marr
Brunswick
Extensive precautions
Notwithstanding Clyde MacDonald’s list of anecdotes in his July 30 column, extensive precautions are taken to deal with the possibility of fires at wind farms. The reason for this is simple: fires threaten the safety of workers. They also cost wind farm operators money, in staff time, potential turbine damage and lost production. This provides a very strong incentive for operators and turbine manufacturers to keep fires from happening.
The sophisticated equipment in turbines, subject to constant motion and sometimes challenging environments, can sometimes fail. Safety measures to prevent fires include systems that change the pitch of blades to prevent overspeed, temperature monitors and automatic shutoff systems to prevent overheating, lightning protection and remote shutdown. Also, wind farm operation is monitored continuously by an operations center, and incidents such as fires are quickly noted and dealt with.
In the event of any emergency, the owner/operator and any other subcontractor working on a turbine or wind farm will have an emergency response plan which includes contacting local emergency response teams, fire companies and police, if necessary. Many such programs also include preplanning and training with local emergency response teams. This planning helps limit effects to both adjacent turbines and the surrounding landscape.
Sensors and data acquisition systems make it possible to analyze why a turbine shuts down or fails. This leads to continuous improvement in technology, operation and maintenance. As a result, wind turbines are remarkably reliable, with 38,000 in operation in the U.S. alone, and very few failures.
Tom Vinson
Senior director of federal regulatory affairs
American Wind Energy Association
Washington, D.C.
LePage best governor
I have watched and listened over the last couple of weeks to the outcry by some over the recitation of the term “Gestapo” by Gov. Paul LePage. His euphemistic use of the term to describe his opinion on tax collection by Internal Revenue Service agents for Obamacare violations was not as far off as you might think. “Gestapo” is defined as “a secret-police organization operating especially against persons suspected of treason or sedition and employing methods held to be underhanded or terrorist.”
What I find appalling is not the governor’s “tongue-in-cheek” use of the term, but the reaction by those who sat by silently while President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were called Nazis, among other hateful names, without a hint of condemnation from those same people.
Recently, one poor, misguided soul asked LePage to resign for his use of the descriptive term. That citizen would be well advised to remember that the governor’s choice of words became acceptable when the left-wing and liberals stood by silently, while others were insulted with far-worse terminology and for hateful political reasons.
The governor’s explanatory term is probably more right than wrong. But, it is too late to be complaining now, since you allowed the language standard to become acceptable over the last decade. You are the ones who established the new First Amendment precedent, not LePage.
The bottom line is that LePage is probably the best governor in our state’s history. Get over it. Remember history. Remember the standards you set before exercising your hypocrisy again.
N. Laurence Willey, Jr. Esq.
Bangor
Innovation for a greener tomorrow
Many modern-day conveniences that keep our society running efficiently are products of oil-based industries. Being used to this level of comfort, we often neglect the consequences of oil drilling. As a college student, I’m concerned for the quality of life that will affect future generations, and I am always looking for ways to support engineering plans for a greener tomorrow.
Offshore wind is one of the best domestic resources we have to lessen our dependence on oil. We have plenty of potential offshore wind energy in Maine and the engineering plans in progress to make it a reality. However, a problem in this method is financing, and without an Investment Tax Credit (ITC) it will be very hard to incentivize investment in this industry. Without that investment, we cannot bring offshore wind power to a cost-efficient scale.
Under current law, the ITC for offshore wind expires at the end of 2012. That is why H.R. 3238 is so important. H.R. 3238, Incentivizing Offshore Wind Power Act, is a bipartisan bill that would provide a 30 percent ITC for the first 3,000 megawatts of offshore wind placed in service. This bill rewards the first movers in the industry, incentivizes development and sends a clear signal to investors that America and Maine are committed to producing clean and domestic energy.
Without the proper financing this precious opportunity to create clean energy could be lost. This is why it is important for Maine’s entire Congressional delegation to support the passing of H.R. 3238 as soon as possible.
Gabe Borland
Orono
Bangor’s foremost attorney, Laurence Willey, is too modest in his praise of Paul LePage as arguably Maine’s greatest governor. Among historians and political scientists he is increasingly regarded as the greatest governor in all of American history. Anyone who disputes this is obviously a “liberal.”
LOL
I would like to know what appointment he’s suckin’ up for.
You are not sufficiently fulsome in your praise of our beloved Governor. He is the greatest American to have ever lived, as he makes both Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt seem to be mere clay-footed mortals by comparison. Indeed, he is the greatest human being to have ever graced this planet, the very zenith of human evolution, were the Governor to believe in such a theory.
Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s potty-mouth!
The Governor is truly a super-hero for the ages.
Faster than a speeding bullet; more powerful than a locomotive; able to leap tall buildings in a single bound!
Larry, Chief justice Roberts said Obamacare is legal, you should be trilled. He was a W. appointee after all, or are you going to say, Bush didn’t do it. Stop whining or you’ll never get to be Gov. yourself.
Oh, so that’s what he’s up to.
Tom Vinson, your fire suppression plan for industrial wind turbines located by the developers in the most inaccessible (and environmentally fragile) locations in our state is to just dial 911? That’s disgraceful. You should be ashamed.
can i post?
the guy says “Safety measures to prevent fires include systems that change the pitch of blades to prevent overspeed, temperature monitors and automatic shutoff systems to prevent overheating, lightning protection ”
gee…where does the power come from to continuously montior this???
WIND = 75% does not blow…= 75% sucks from the GRID….
Tom Vinson, Listen up. Two years ago I attended an open house sponsored by First Wind. Their objective was to present facts and answer questions about their proposed Bowers Mountain wind project in Carroll, Maine. I asked how in the world firefighters would reach the turbines in case of a fire when they’re on top a forested mountain miles from any hardtop roads. The First Wind representative told me that fires never happen but that if a fire did break out, the Carroll Fire Department would be able to handle it in part because First Wind is giving them money to buy a new pumper truck. What this carpet-bagging wind-scam salesman didn’t realize is that Carroll does not even have a fire department! So I hope you’ll forgive me for not buying what you’re selling!
The carpetbagging wind salesmen take rural Mainers for fools and approach the towns as though they will be taking candy from a baby. Some of the naive and possibly corrupt town officials help them with their dirty work. Shame on all.
Sort of like DCP in Searsport…”.some of the naive and possibly corrupt town officials help them with their dirty work. Shame on all.”
Do you live in Carroll Plt?
Yay, so let’s keep on drilling and polluting and giving tax cuts to the oil billionaires. Hurray. Let’s not develop promising alternatives. What backwards thinking, but then again, typical of the TeaPublicans. PS: I know conservative people in norther Maine who are THRILLED with the wind power up there. Stooging for the oil and gas companies is the real corruption and dirty work, literally.
Tell me Tinserblic what wind power has to do with oil.
I didn’t think you could.
Tom- isn’t First Wind the one that keeps having fires in HI? So why should we trust them in the woods of Maine- anyone who knows anything about those turbines knows they have 400 gallons of oil to run each one and that no fire engine could possibly reach their 45 story peaks even if they could get to them on the destructive dirt roads they create that ruin the beautiful untouched parts of Maine that any conservationist group like Sierra and NRCM would be all over if they were not compensated in some way- let’s have someone not employed by the wind companies/interests tell us how great these things arem how they don’t kill appreciable numbers of birds and bats, don’t make people ill- I doubt the credible scientist I am about to quote would do so..even the NIH said they can cause cancer and heart disease? the latest from the Global Warming Foundation scientist at their conference
“The key problems with current policies for wind power are simple. They require a huge commitment of investment to a technology that is not very green, in the sense of saving a lot of CO2, but which is certainly very expensive and inflexible. Unless the current Government scales back its commitment to wind power very substantially, its policy will be worse than a mistake, it will be a blunder,” Professor Hughes said.
High time we educate Mainers on the pitfalls of a useless industry that Baldacci and King forced on the State with sneaky tactics just like their buddies the wind industry- who, as many of us know by now, are taking advantage of the poor while they get rich..we need a Robin Hood here.
I find it alarming that a lawyer is advocating the 1st Amendment by advocating against the 1st Amendment at the same time. If your argument is that LePage can express himself, then why is the flip side of that token not true? Why are you arguing that those who want to dissent against LePage shouldn’t be able to express themselves? Seems like a one sided bit of logic.
N. Laurence Willey, Jr. Esq.–…….Lepage the best governor in our state’s history?
Time to lower your dosage counsel.
Lawyer Willey seems to share the same intellectual abilities as his beloved Governor. Note his misuse of the word “euphemistic” to describe LePage’s calling IRS agents “Gestapos.”
As a euphemism is a more positive word that less accurately replaces a more unpleasant word (“passed on” in lieu of “died”), one wonders what Willey believes the more accurate, but unpleasant, phrase the Governor might have used was. There is none. Willey does not know the meaning of the language he uses, which is particularly sad as he had the luxury of composing a letter rather than speaking extemporaneously.
I will use a euphemism here: Lawyer Willey, the light is on but no one is at home.
Ann Marr: good letter.
N. L. Willey: you are even more in the minority than the Governor.
Tom Vinson – your job is to whitewash your industry’s myriad flaws.
First off, that is a HUGE job.
Secondly, fire is a very real danger here in the forested northeast and you can’t extrapolate from the treeless desert to the Maine woods.
See:
http://bangor-launch.newspackstaging.com/2011/06/29/opinion/forest-fires-and-wind-turbines-the-danger-no-one-is-talking-about/
Mr. Vinson – Turbine manufacturer Vestas stated in a 2007 manual that in case of a fire a minimum 1,300′ radius must be evacuated and roped off. This is because of the throw potential of flaming blade fragments. That was in 2007 and today’s turbines are far bigger.
http://www.windturbinewarehouse.com/pdfs/vestas/Vestas_V_66_SAC_DSM_3_20_07.pdf
Yet I do not know of any Maine law that requires a minimum cleared fire radius.
By the way, math tells us that a 1,300′ radius translates to 122 acres of land that might be off limits or need to be cleared of flammable forest for each turbine, or 219,392 acres across our state based on the 1,800 turbines envisioned in Baldacci’s wind plans.
Baxter Park is about 209,000 acres. So does this mean that if one follows turbine manufacturers’ safety advice, an area bigger than Baxter Park (or four times the size of Acadia National Park) is in the process of quietly becoming off limits or unduly dangerous to Mainers?
Mr. Vinson – have you ever heard of Baxter Park?
Have you ever been to Maine?
Or are you just one more person in Washington, D.C. that is part of America’s problems?
Mr. Vinson, as a paid advocate for the wind industry, seems very confident in his assurances that fire danger is minimal and that–should a fire get started–there will always be safeguards in place to keep it from spreading or causing extensive damage. But we know for a fact that many of the proposed turbine installations on the mountains of Maine are not easily accessible by the large suppression equipment and professional firefighters such fires would require. They are also on hilltops…far away from ponds and rivers from which water could be drafted. There’s not a ladder truck in the state that can reach 350-400 feet into the air, either. If a turbine catches fire, we have no way to extinguish it. A quick peruse of YouTube videos will show what happens when a nacelle catches fire.
When concerns about turbines in our forests were expressed to Maine’s fire marshal and forest service, they quoted wind industry assurances and also spoke about their new option of dropping firefighters from helicopters to remote areas so that they have an advance team on the ground. But today’s newspapers, reporting a forest fire in Greenville, show how unreliable that plan is:
http://www.sunjournal.com/news/maine/2012/08/05/big-spencer-mountain-fire-may-burn-days/1233028
“Forest Ranger Jon Blackstone, who is helping coordinate the firefighting effort, said high winds forced rangers to abandon a plan to land two rangers and about 10 Maine Forest Service volunteer firefighters on the mountain via helicopter Sunday to fight the fire on the ground…”
“Blackstone said it’s likely either lightning or a spark, or something else related to the construction work (on two communications towers atop Spencer Mt.) that caused the fire, but the cause hasn’t been determined yet.
““The construction crew left on their own this morning before the fire got worse,” said Blackstone.”
Lightning? Sparks during construction in tinder-dry woods? Helicopters which can’t function due to high wind? (Wind turbines are built in windy areas, right?)
There are many holes in Mr. Vinson’s arguments, but he is paid to make them, nonetheless. How will electronic monitoring equipment work when a fire shuts off the electricity which the turbine facility draws on for its operation? Will the individual developers of these facilities compensate towns and counties for the cost of fighting any forest fires? For lost property and or timber value or lost homes and cabins? Is Mr. Winson including all the recent and widespread gearbox failures when he says ‘very few failures’? Or is he talking only about catastrophic failures resulting in devastating fires?
One remote fire can signal devstation for this–the most forested state in the country. If the current wind energy plan is implemented, resulting in more than 1,000 turbines on our mountains, how ‘few failures’ can we withstand?
The mountain summits are no place for industrial development of this sort. The Maine Forest Service must begin to work in tandem with Maine citizens who are trying to preserve what makes Maine so special.
Respectfully,
Karen Pease
Lexington Twp., Maine
Anyone speaking for wind lobby group, AWEA, should be taken with caution and suspicion. This is a group that has one goal – make sure its wind industry members make a lot of dough. That’s about it. Mr. Vinson shows that he has mastered corporate speak – saying nothing of any relevance and sidestepping the issue. So, Mr. Vinson, skip the corporate blather and tell us how the operator will deal with a fire burning out of control hundreds of feet in the air and dispersing burning debris over a forested area full of dry slash and tough access through steep terrain.
Mr. Borland, can you quantitate the degree to which offshore wind generated electricity will lessen our dependence on oil? I’m not asking this with hostility or malice. I’ve just not been able to find anyone who can answer this. Less than 1% of New England’s electricity is generated by oil, so you must be speaking of home heating oil and/or transportation fuels. Can you give a figure for what must be an enormous cost in converting New England’s non-electric transportation and home heating to electric? How much new conventional generating capacity would have to be built to pick up this NEW electric load when the wind stops blowing? Has U of M addressed these topics? Genuinely curious.
Hired shill Tom Vinson, though Maine is a verdant state that usually has plenty of rain, we actually do have some nasty dry spells sometimes. There have been hundreds of petroleum-lubricants-filled wind turbines catch on fire, so don’t downplay the danger, dammit! Here in Maine, we are putting these potential torches on ridges surrounded by tinder left from bad forestry practices, far from any effective fire fighting capability. Especially those of First Wind, since Haynes and Gardner, the two large ladwoners who lease turbines sites are the messiest timber harvesters in Maine, leaving behind vast amounts of fuel for forest fires.
In Lincoln, First Wind and the Lincoln Fire Chief both admitted that a turbine fire couldn’t be directly suppressed, that they would work to “contain” any fire that might occur. Asked how quickly the LFD could respond, the chief stated that it depends on time of the day, staffing, and response of the other firefighters. So, a fire gets underway, takes a while to get reported, and likely a half hour for the responders to get to the site and get set up and have only a tank truck and the crew with hand tools. Can the pumper dip into the lake a half mile or a mile away and pump uphill 500 vertical feet?
Now, imagine it is the conditions of 1947 all over again and there happens to be a stiff wind when the unfortunate happens with a turbine fire. You have one hell of a conflagration on your hands. If Lincoln can barely respond, what happens when these fires start in more remote areas and on higher terrain than the low ridges of Lincoln Lakes? It is disaster in the making and thank you Mr. McDonald for bringing out this important point.
Young Mr. Borland, please take an economics course so you might be able to come to grips with the concept of economic feasibility while you are so enthralled with saving the planet with wind power. Of course you advocate for using taxpayer money to support this boondoggle because you know it doesn’t happen without it.
Regarding off shore: Yes, the wind may be a better resource in the Gulf of Maine than on-shore. However, consider the extra costs of ocean based wind power. At Block Island, RI the shallow water wind project will use existing components, with monopoles secured directly to the ocean floor. The contract for the project is for 24 cents per kwh, with a 3.5% annual index. By contrast, the wholesale price to ISO-NE is around 6 cents per kwh. So Block Island is 4 times the cost.
In the Gulf of Maine, the technology for floating rafts of turbines in deep water hasn’t even been developed. It is bound to be far more expensive than Block Island. It wouldn’t surprise me if it were twice the cost of Block Island, as it must be designed to survive “The Perfect Storm” (search NOAA and the website states 60 mph sustained winds for 2 days and 40 foot seas), otherwise, it will all end up as salvage in Nova Scotia somewhere.
The best solution is for the government to get out of subsidizing, providing tax breaks, mandates, and other manipulations for all forms of energy. Let our free market decide and let it innovate. You will see energy dense sources continue to power our economy and lifestyle while the scams that cannot compete in a free market will fail. Your dream of carpeting the Gulf of Maine with absurdly expensive wind power would never happen. Please take an economics course, young college student!
I find it interesting that AWEA, the lobby for the subsidy scoundrals in the wind industry, is paying attention to a letter in the little BDN. Wow! These masters of deceipt and spinners of lies must be really fearful of the citizens to jump on Clyde McDonald for bringing forth the uncomfortable truth regarding wind turbines. Tom “Tax Subsidy” Vinson must have his hands full with the huge number of negative issues regarding wind power to defend against citizens who seek the truth about his scam.
Mr Borland; Ifyou spent a little more time doing some research, and not listening to he alarmist faculty, you would know that wind turbines, even if they would work more than the 25% of the time they are rated for, would not allow for the shutdown of one small fossil fuel power plant in Maine or anywhere else in the country. You see, wind is so unreliable and variable that all the full time plants have to up and running even if the wind is blowing. If the wind was to die down quickly, as it often does, and those plants didn’t pick up the slack within a millisecond, there would be a huge brownout or even a statewide blackout, blowing transmission stations and transformers all over the grid. This is not speculation, IT IS FACT!!! All the power that could be generated by your wind turbines couldn’t heat one house, power one truck, or one car . . . they all use petroleum . . oil . . . natural gas . . . which is still one quarter the price of what comes out of a wind turbine. Those ugly towers are going to be obsolete once the subsidies are dried up next year. Remember, turn Maine RED in November and keep it GREEN!
Mr. Vinsen, how timely of you to jump on Clyde McDonald’s warning about the forest fire danger posed by wind turbine fires. Check out http://eastcountymagazine.org/node/10581 “Cal Fire: Wind Turbine Generator Caused Wildland Fired That Charred 367 Acres” (July 31, 2012) Here are some quotes from the that piece.
“The fire started with the windmill itself,” Captain Greg Ewing with Cal Fire/Riverside Fire Department informed ECM today.
Despite extensive area cleared around the base of each turbine, Ewing said, the blaze still spread into a wildland fire that swiftly engulfed 367 acres. If not for prompt reporting by a witness, it could have been far worse.
He also confirmed that ground had been cleared around the base of each turbine, the blaze swiftly spread to become a wildland fire despite those precautions.
Wind developers have claimed that clearance around turbines, coupled with improved technology, make prospects of fires slim. Earlier this year, a representative from Iberdrola (developer of Tule Wind) assured ECM that the odds of a modern wind turbine causing a fire that escapes to become a wildland fire were infinitessimal.
Well, folks in Maine, this San Diego fire just shows that the wind industry and Mr. Vinson are, as always, a bunch of liars! Our vast forests in Maine need to be protected from fire, not have hundreds of potential torches perched high on its ridges.
Hey Annie; You must be one of those Hippies with short memory problems……
Remember this from when good ‘ol Angus left us and Baldacci holding the bag in ’02??
And this was from your Bible, The Portland Press Herald . . . .
In Just Three Short Years, King Managed To Turn That $350 Million Surplus Into A $1 Billion Deficit
“The Huge Task Of Filling A $1 Billion Hole In The Next State Budget Will Overshadow Everything Else In The Upcoming Legislative Session, As Gov.-Elect John Baldacci And The Legislature Try To Eliminate A Shortfall That Represents 17 Percent Of The General Fund Budget. The issue is not whether they will do the job, because the Maine Constitution requires a balanced budget.” (Paul Carrier, “Top Priority: $1 Billion Gap In New Budget,” Portland Press Herald, 12/22/02)
So the Governor gets blamed for what the legislature did? Just like Obama gets blamed for what Congress does. The Legislative Branch is responsible for passing budgets. The Executive Branch can only submit a budget. Neither accusations are accurate. I think this is a more truthful description of what happened on King’s watch: http://www.kjonline.com/news/gops-claim-king-left-maine-with-_1-billion-shortfall-has-merit_2012-06-20.html .
Anne V. Marr…I’ll second that
Gabe Borland….I do not know if you are aware that offshore wind power is not as reliable as you may think and it may well have environmental consequences. I recently took a trip to Massachusetts and saw 3 large scale wind turbines, from miles away they looked massive. Cape wind will have 220 wind turbines 3 miles offshore. They claimed that they would be just specks on the horizon. Well guess what they aren’t going to be. Just seeing 3 wind turbines on that scale made my stomach turn. I am for nuclear power and believe me that is the safest most efficient alternative to oil or coal. The federal agency BORME is intent on placing these turbines on the fishing ledges. Not a good thing.
N. Laurence Willey, Jr. Esq., to put it simply ‘two wrongs don’t make a ritht’.
Anne Marr;
Here was Angus’ answer to the mess he left us in ’02. To use a phrase from Obama, “Do we really want to go back to what put us here?” Again, this is from that bastion of Liberalism, The Portland Press Herald. Plus, Angus and his family have been very busy lining their pockets with taxpayer money in the heavily subsidized First Wind.
King’s Solution? More Tax Increases
King Said He Believed His Predecessor Will Need To Raise Taxes In Order To Avoid Unacceptable Cuts To The Budget. “‘It is a huge challenge,’ said Kay Rand, the chief of staff for outgoing Gov. Angus King. ‘I hope he’s successful in being able to balance the budget without a tax increase but it will be exceptionally difficult.’ King has said he believes tax hikes will be needed to avoid unacceptably deep cuts in state spending.” (Paul Carrier, “Top Priority: $1 Billion Gap In New Budget,” Portland [ME] Press Herald, 12/22/02)
This is a better presentation, http://www.kjonline.com/news/gops-claim-king-left-maine-with-_1-billion-shortfall-has-merit_2012-06-20.html , and lays the responsibility squarely in the legislature’s lap. I do not want a legislature that rubber stamps a governor’s requests. I want them to do the job of taking care of Maine. I want the separation of powers our founders knew was necessary to maintain the integrity of the governing system they envisioned. But one can only make decisions based on the information one has and it seems that in that time period no one had a crystal ball. All projections were off…. by a lot.
Mr. Willey: History will judge Mr. Lepage’s performance as Governor and I have a sneaking suspicion that history isn’t going to be any kinder to LePage than it was to Mr.Bush and Mr. Cheney.
devonshire . . . . . You can NOT be for the King of WindPower and against Wind Too!!!! Do you really believe Angus can give up his Golden Goose??? He won’t.
Le Page’s brash and sometimes debilitating outbursts require the services of a follow-up story to explain “What I really meant to say.” He then employs Adrienne Bennett, his more fluent spokeswoman, to give even more details.
So preposterous has Le Page become on the public stage , that even the BDN now finds it necessary to hire a writer to analyse even further, through Ms. Bennett, what it was, she thought, Le Page wanted to say.
No jury would ever condone Le Page’s vitriolic attacks against the citizens of Maine. Mr. Willey, your praise and defense of this man is dismissed. The court of public opinion is not here to listen to evidence about what was said about Bush and Cheney. Both were guilty of lying and committing this country to war based on false information.
Le Page is guilty of besmirching the president, the NAACP., and the overall population of the State of Maine.
He is without any doubt, in the minds of so many Maine residents – the worst. The worst governor this state has had to suffer.
Kudos for a well written response. You spoke for the majority of Mainers. Thank you.
///////
Anne the US Chamber of Commerce is an ALEC member and a very active one. While watching the Olympics I saw that ad over and over again, ad nauseum, and pretty soon got disgusted enough to say ‘well, they just probably got a few more votes for King’. If I weren’t already going to vote for him I would have decided to in reaction to that ad. It is such a condescending appeal to voters’ worst character traits. Quite offensive if you are a thinking person. And, I applaud King for not responding to it. It does not merit a response.
Mr. Willey if LePage is your standard for effective leadership then I believe your standards are about as low as they can get. Yes, you are correct that you cannot maintain credibility as a critic if you engage in the same behavior you are criticizing, but then most of those critics are not governors. The standard for that position in terms of representing ALL of the people of Maine should be quite high…… better than the best of us. That is what leadership used to be about. Making us want to be a better people.
I wonder if enough thought has gone into what happens if the folks who are against wind power prevail?
If we continue as we are we will continue our pattern of relying on oil, nuclear and coal as primary energy sources in the US. This will mean we will eventually run out, but only after we have destroyed even more fragile eco-systems than we have here, ruined views and wilderness, polluted groundwater, left waste that will remain toxic for hundreds of years and started fires that never, ever go out.
Is wind perfect? No. Is it the whole solution? Possibly not. But it is a solution that is durable, that improves as the technology and expertise grows, and is reversible! It is and can be a strong contribution to our energy strategy and a legitimate Maine export.
Let’s look at the ugly alternatives that are part of the energy reality at the moment. In Pennsylvania there are underground fires that have burned for YEARS as coal fields have caught on fire. Communities have had to be evacuated and entire towns threatened. Fracking has caused toxic chemicals to spill into well water and communities are able to light their faucets with a match.
We have oil wells like the Deepwater Horizon which we had the technology to build but absolutely no ability to cap or repair when the equipment failed and leaked millions of gallons of crude into one of our most sensitive fisheries.
We are looking at drilling in the arctic and now that the waterways are more navigable (chose seasonable pattern or global warming as a reason depending on your viewpoint) they are talking about sinking wells offshore there where in winter a potential spill will flow unchecked under surface ice for months before a potential fix could be put in place in the event of a failure.
We string miles of pipelines, wires, cable, through every conceivable habitat.
We generate nuclear waste which not only is toxic, but which we can’t find safe places to store and must perpetually guard against potential use by terrorists and bad actors lest it be re-purposed into a weapon.
All of that seems fine and dandy to most folks it seems!
Reducing the demand for it, even by a fraction..oh no, we can’t do that!
Solar has become the recent political football because its a great way to score some snarky comments from one political party to another. Meanwhile you know who laughs? China and the other countries who engineered not just the better technology but the foul and deceitful commercial practices which undercut our nation as a potential manufacturing competitor! We handed them the win. We are so busy being smug and scoring points off one another that they will continue to widen their lead in manufacturing and will continue to be the “go to” source for a very useful commercial technology. Know what else? They are developing the markets in Asia, South America and Africa which we are too good to explore as customers for their products.
When it comes time and we look around and say…alternative energy is now a have to have, not an option…you know what we will find? That everyone else will be in a position to market it to us at a cost and we will be in no position to compete or provide it for ourselves. Once again, behind the curve. Why? Because we are short sighted, arrogant, and have lost our respect for learning to innovate and do something new.
We have become “can’t do” rather than “can do”. That is not how I was taught growing up, nor was it how I was taught in the military. I also wasn’t taught to ride something into the ground and then whine when I hadn’t prepared for what happened when I got to the bottom.
We all moan about manufacturing and jobs going overseas. Some of that has to do with the price of labor, but more of it has to do with economic short sightedness on the part of our business community. I think of my foster father who worked at Bethlehem Steel in Baltimore before it was shut down. It wasn’t the unions that closed them down, it was the fact that despite knowing that their works were becoming obsolete the company refused to modernize and upgrade to the processes being used in Japan, Korea, and elsewhere. Eventually they became non competitive and took their capital and moved to another industry rather than reinvest and build back the capability here.
Looking at wind power we see a possibility for contributing to our energy strategy and to our future. Turbines don’t spill millions of gallons of oil all over the countryside when they fail. If they catch fire, the fire doesn’t burn for YEARS at a time unchecked. They can be dismantled and the land can recover if they are removed.
Some don’t like how they look. I suggest you visit parks and wildlands in the West and look at abandoned drill sites and exploratory wells standing in perpetuity next to some of the most amazing an unique scenery on the planet. Or visit drilling sites that are located next to petroglyphs and archeological sites.
Some don’t like how they sound. Ever listen to an oil rig pumping away? Or maybe you have enjoyed the pristine Maine experience of having your seasonal neighbors arrive at intervals with trailer loads of generators and machines to keep their beer cold while they “enjoy” their back to nature experience with all the comforts at home at hand.
In Maine I can potentially protest a windmill’s noise signature, I can do nothing about as many unshielded generators as my neighbors care to use for as long as they care to use them! I guarantee you that the average noise level from multiple point sources far exceeds the noise from a windmill.
Subsidies? After the top oil companies had the nerve to stand in front of Congress and whine that they couldn’t possibly continue their billions in profits annually without the taxpayer’s dole (to the tune of more billions than alternative energy has ever been graced with anywhere)…what happened? Our legislature caved in! Oooh no, can’t hurt their feelings!
Companies have proven they are interested in short term profit to show stock holders. That is the definition of free market capitalism. So we can’t look to them to show the way, especially these days, in new innovations.
The government tries to help out alt energy and gets a black eye over it. Clearly there is no support for using public money to encourage innovation…which puts us behind nearly every other country in the world which DOES actively support new technology development.
So let’s…do nothing! And be proud of ourselves for our can’t do!
Personally, I don’t believe in that. I don’t believe in doing nothing, the status quo, not trying to do better. That is not the America I learned to believe in. I don’t think we should chuck in solar because Solyndra failed, with the active subversion and economic warfare of China firmly behind the failure and our own political bickering to stand in our way. I am not a quitter. America should not be a nation of quitters.
I live in Carroll. I support wind power.
I live off the grid, I use solar, my installation is silent, efficient, self done. The pollution investment of the panels is a one time per25 year investment rather than a continuing pollution cost as other forms of energy require. My batteries are a once in 10 years pollution cost as opposed to continuous pollution.
I live in a place where I have been told that if I have a fire that I shouldn’t even bother to call for help…if they can figure out who to send it will be too late. I live remotely quite close to where the Bowers project was to go in. Know what? A woodstove fire at my home could potentially have the EXACT same level of devastation to the woodlands in this area that a turbine fire would.
In fiscal matters we all look down on people who don’t save and prepare or who spend foolishly beyond their means. We are quick to judge and condemn people who spend their last dime and then expect more to magically appear. But when it comes to energy we all do exactly that.
If we don’t work on the future now, we won’t be ready.
Personally, I’m not against wind power. I’m against running roughshod over people and places to accommodate a favored industry to build a form of electricity generation that is more puff than performance.
Ms. Itchkawich, there is absolutely zero data supporting the notion that mountaintop wind turbines in Maine are going have any appreciable impact on coal mining in the U.S. Only 11% of New England’s electricity comes from coal and those generators are probably nearing the end of their lives, anyway. The New England grid operator has already said the coal generators will likely be replaced by natural gas generators – not wind turbines. New England gets less than 1% of its electricity from oil (0.4% in 2010). Reducing our consumption of oil and coal is a good thing. Degrading our state’s greatest assets, and the lives of many rural Mainers, while pretending wind turbines are going to have big impacts on oil and coal consumption, is a bad thing.
A proposed wind project 5 miles north of my home estimated that it would have to blast and excavate 1.5 million cubic yards of mountain to build the project. Reversible? Can you explain to me how the land recovers from that?
Mountaintop wind turbines in Maine will be minor contributors to electricity production in New England and inconsequential contributors to an improved environment – locally or globally. So, let’s not throw away some important things to chase something so meager in its benefits.
If you’re prepared to tell me specifically and quantitatively how much Maine mountaintop wind turbines will improve our environment, and why it’s significant enough to write off many of Maine’s most beautiful places or many of it’s rural citizens, I’m prepared to be educated.
I look back at people’s initial reaction to domestic electricity in any form. When it was first proposed all sorts of things were said about it. It was impractical, dangerous, would start fires, was bad for your eyesight, would lead to social dissolution, would me impractical and never reach people in most places in this country, much less the world. There was no infrastructure to support it, the technology was poor, they started using DC current even! There weren’t enough poles or wires. The line loss from generating stations to the home was huge.
At the time, many of those concerns had a lot of validity. Over time, with hard work, these concerns were overcome and now household electricity is considered a norm. This started in the 1870’s. One hundred and forty years later that ridiculous idea is now mainstream. We didn’t get there over night though. For decades only a few cities had the technology.
We can look at cell phones in our own lifetimes, same story. The first ones were huge, hardly worked at all, grossly expensive and almost no one believed that within twenty years we would be giving up landlines in favor of them or that our phones would be mini-computers and entertainment devices that connected us worldwide!
Right now wind energy in the US is at about 3% of our domestic needs. The Department of Energy is working on a goal to make that 20% by the year 2030 in partnership with private firms. If this is the case, then it is conceivable that less coal mining will be needed, or at least, less than would be needed if we had done nothing at all. One of the frustrating things is that energy consumption is a moving target, it increases by nature as our demand and population increases. So its conceivable that we may mine as much coal in 2030 as we do now, but not nearly as much as we might need had we not supplemented the energy supply with wind.
We may start out with a puff but in time the performance comes. As with anything its a matter of hard work and effort. In most of humankind’s achievements most of the people at the time didn’t think it would ever amount to anything.
Using more natural gas rather than coal is just as concerning in terms of groundwater contamination with toxic substances and sink faucets that suddenly are able to be lit on fire. Trading natural gas for coal may not be an option the people whose wells are being poisoned will agree to.
Overtime we can expect energy storage technology to improve and blade and turbine construction to improve. We will get smarter with experience. If we try that is.
People all across America are sacrificing for energy exploration, some their lives and health, some their sacred and historical sites, many their way of life. I think the story I read about Edward Itta, and Inupiat Eskimo and how he wrestled with his conscience over energy development off the north shore of Alaska really moved me. He struck me as someone who deeply cares about both the traditional ways of life and beauty of his home and someone who is concerned for the future of his people and his community. I think his choice was much harder than ours is here in Maine and the stakes even greater in terms of long term irreversible damage.
I’m saying that we can much more easily reforest and even reshape a mountain than we can stop underground coal fires that will burn for decades unchecked, plug leaking oil wells under arctic ice, clean oil out of fisheries, or replace an underground drinking water aquifer that has been contaminated by fracking chemicals due to natural gas development. I’m saying that already in many areas of the country precious habitat and natural views have been lost to oil rigs and objects that are far uglier than a windmill ever will be on its worst day.
We can say, “not here!”; but we are still responsible for the energy we use. It isn’t enough to isolate the issue just to Maine or the New England states, we are too interdependent for that to be true. In the end, we are all Americans and whether it is Maine’s lakes, the red rock country of Utah, the mountains of Pennsylvania or pristine arctic wilderness we need to consider whether we are contributing to possible solutions or slamming the door on future options. We need to think which of our options are the least damaging over the long term.
All I’m saying is that unless one tries one never succeeds. And I also live within three miles of a proposed wind farm.
You won’t get any argument from me about the down side of fossil fuels. But, it doesn’t change the fact that wind power IN MAINE will have little impact on the biggest fossil fuel offenders – oil and coal. Yes, natural gas has its problems, extraction being the big one. But any given mountaintop wind project in Maine will have little impact on even natural gas, the one fossil fuel we will continue to use a lot of making electricity.
Yes, technology improves over time, but there are limits to efficiency improvements and eventually you reach a point of diminishing returns. Wind turbines have been around for decades and have improved, but the improvements will continue to get smaller over time, and we still can’t make the wind blow any more than it wants to. If we believe they’ll get that much better, then let’s stop siting them on Maine mountaintops until then – we will lose virtually nothing in environmental benefits and maybe we would need many fewer by that time. Let them be tested out on the plains and in cornfields, where they don’t permanently alter the landscape, until they have improved significantly. By that time, other solutions might have evolved in the endless advancing march of technology, just as you allude to in your post. I’m coming at this from a Maine standpoint, you from a national one. Forty-six percent of the electricity generated in Maine in 2010 was from renewable sources (most of which was not wind power). We’re already a leader in the nation with regard to renewable electricity generation and carbon emissions from electricity generation. My point is this: We don’t have to give up our most treasured resources just to bump our green credentials up a couple notches. We don’t have to force wind projects into communities that don’t want them on the false notion that it’s going to have some significant, measurable impact on the environment. Big impacts should be matched by big results, and with mountaintop wind power in our state, that just isn’t happening. I’m very familiar with what Maine’s current wind projects are generating, and let me tell you, we’re not fixing any environmental problems here with wind.And speaking of big impacts, you don’t put 1.5 million cubic yards of mountain back together. Find some pictures of the massive cuts at the Kibby project and imagine how you would repair them. Of course, the developers are under no obligation whatsoever to even attempt something so whimsical and wouldn’t anyway.
Armichka,
I’m not really concerned about green credentials personally, some may be, its just not that important to me.
What is important to me is encouraging people to look at alternatives and find some choices, make plans, develop technologies…before we have to take riskier and riskier moves to develop oil, gas, coal and nuclear options for energy production.
Mountains are beautiful. Have you been to Pennsylvania? I was born in Maryland and visited PA often. The western portion of Maryland and Pennsylvania are a lot like Maine in many ways except the mountains are ‘thicker’ closer together and a bit more tall ones are pushed together. Outside of Pittsburgh and Allentown the state is very rural and thinly populated, much like here. The people outside the cities are generally low income and struggle to get by, in some areas mining is the only real industry and is a lot like how we regard logging here.
Ever seen coal extracted from a mountain (MTR- Mountain Top Removal)? It doesn’t happen as often these days as when I was a child but they used to blow the tops off the mountains, scrape off the topsoil and go for the coal. 3-5% of US coal production and up to 30% of coal mined in neighboring West Virginia is extracted this way. I suggest you look this up and check out the pictures. Others are riddled with shafts sunk deep below ground. Mining is a dangerous and risky profession in terms of health. Safety standards are still lacking enforcement in places.
There are standards and they are supposed to replace the “overburden” (Polite for all that lovely topsoil that used to be the top of a mountain but which was in the way of all that delicious coal.) and restore the mountain after. This is largely ignored and does nothing for the small streams and waterways that are blocked up where the valleys used to be. MTR takes off the first 400 vertical feet of a mountain top before the coal is reached and the real digging begins. Over 2000 sq miles in Appalachia have been treated this way. Legislation to ban this practice is generally defeated.
I’ve been to Centralia years ago. It used to be a small town of about a thousand people or so. The fire there started in 1962 the year before I was born! It is strange to think about a fire burning that long. There are only a handful of people that have stayed even though the state has been trying to kick them out and took over the place long since. There are dangerous levels of CO, CO2, and low levels of breathable oxygen. They say the fire will burn for a thousand years or more.
Extracting natural gas involves pumping toxic chemicals and water into the ground to crack through rock and open gas seams. It also seems to open parts of the water table and underground aquifers which then fill with the chemicals. These run for miles inaccessibly under ground and are impossible to fix or re mediate through any known method. People have to buy bottled water for life and hope their homes don’t disappear into sink holes that open without warning on their land…and then hope they can prove that someone’s company was responsible for making their homes unlivable and unsellable…talk about a decrease in property values! Its a total loss for these families and can happen without warning.
Whose mountain is more important? Whose life? Whose children’s health? Which impact is worse?
Even to stop a fraction of this from happening is it so unworthy to try?
I’ve been to Pennsylvania and West Virginia. My grandparents were from Kentucky.
I suppose one could say, its isn’t happening here so it doesn’t matter.
Or we could say, it won’t make a huge difference so why try at all?
I can’t say that without the words sticking in my throat. That’s just me.
Stephanie, I couldn’t agree with you more about coal mining. You don’t have to write a word to convince me of it’s negative impacts. I’ve spent quite a bit of time in both Pennsylvania (especially around Allentown and Scranton) and West Virginia. I HAVE seen mountaintop removal mining first hand – it’s a deplorable practice – and it could be stopped tomorrow with enforcement of the Clean Water Act. Only about 7% of our nation’s coal is mined this way and we could easily get by without it. It’s not electricity needs that perpetuate mountaintop removal mining, it’s well-entrenched coal conglomerates and other related industry interests.
I’ve also seen coal strip mining first hand in Texas and Wyoming – it’s horrible. But, even if we stop using it, it will be sold on the global market. Our coal exports are up even though our domestic consumption is down. Want to stop strip mining? Ban it. Good luck – it’s a huge industry and they’ll sell it anywhere in the world they can. There’s a lot of undeveloped world out there that would love to have it.
Most importantly, though, mountaintop wind turbines in MAINE will have NO impact on coal mining in the rest of the country. ISO New England has already told us that wind turbines would replace, almost exclusively, natural gas. Compared to the rest of the country, New England burns a small amount of coal and has only a few coal-fired generators. We don’t get coal-fired electricity from the rest of the country. ISO New England has already told us the coal generators in New England are on their way out in all likelihood – to be replaced by natural gas generators.
I agree that natural gas extraction needs to be better regulated, you don’t have to convince me of that either – and we should be pushing for that. I have family and land in fracking country, and I want to know that all precautions are being taken to insure that their, and my, interests are considered. I’m with you there too. We SHOULD be doing what we can to reduce our overall fossil fuel consumption, in my opinion. BUT, for me, it still comes down to what I said in my last post. Big impacts demand big results.
Most of my neighbors and I are not prepared to have our rural community inundated with wind turbines that will do nothing that will be even remotely perceptible in the world of fracking (and isn’t even related to the world of coal). I say, let’s find a better way to effect an equivalent change that doesn’t require blasting away at Maine’s mountains. It shouldn’t be difficult since the natural gas offset would be so tiny in the great scheme of things.
The Bowers Mt. project was a 57 MW proposal. After all the math, that works out to about one-tenth of one percent (0.11%) of the electricity consumption of New England. Would it be cleaner energy? Yes, it would, relatively speaking. Would it be enough clean energy to warrant the negative impacts (not to mention the taxpayer sacrifices)? Not in my opinion. It might be good enough for you, it’s just not for me – and that’s not because I don’t care about people negatively impacted by fracking. I just know that it’s going to have no real impact on them.
I’m not a fan of fossil fuels nor an enemy of renewables. I’m a pragmatist and a realist. I want a clean world too, but I think it relies more on proven methods than on wishful thinking. Just feeling better about things isn’t good enough for me. As one business writer wrote: “Facts are better than hope.”
Armichka,
The 2005 stats for Maine from the DOE show 2% coal and 33% natural gas. As you say coal dependence is decreasing for us (although is nearly half the electricity generation source in the US as a whole) but natural gas will be taking even more of a role.
That means fracking, that natural gas has to come from somewhere and I can’t ignore the effects of our energy use on others.
You are quite right about how tough it is to put the breaks on the coal industry, natural gas is just as bad. The administration has just been rebuffed fro even trying to get the companies doing natural gas development to disclose the chemicals they are using. The industry appears to be resisting both because they don’t want the public to know what they are putting into the ground, but also because the only hope damaged home owners in fracking country have is showing a connection between the substances in their wells and soil with what has been pumped in miles away by a company doing the development. Getting any kind of acceptance of responsibility for the damage being done is like pulling teeth and an expensive legal exercise that most regular people who have just had their homes and land destroyed can’t afford. The companies say, “Hey we are exploring miles away, you prove we are the ones responsible! And by the way we aren’t going to give you any information about what we are doing that might help you make your point!”
You had said you thought you supported more intense regulations for fracking…I’m not at all convinced fracking can ever be done safely and I’m fairly convinced that a lot of peoples’ lives and health are going to be spoiled long before any legislature agrees to regulate the industry. Regulation is actually outlawed at the moment at the federal level as part of the partisan in-fighting and budget wrangling under the view that it will be job destroying.
Repairing an entire underground aquifer or getting those chemicals out of the ground and soil once they’ve been pumped in…I don’t believe that there is any plan out there to address that or that its technically possible. As you know those small fracture lines and bits of water table run for miles in complicated systems that we generally don’t understand all that well or have any way to map…unless we consider this a huge experiment in tracking where those chemicals show up as sort of tracers, which isn’t really responsible scientific inquiry as I believe you would likely agree.
Given a choice of wind and knowing that we may reduce some dependence on natural gas, or hopefully in time eliminate it, seems preferable to me than to live off the misery of others. I don’t think its right to pass off the consequences of our energy use to others.
We have perhaps hundreds of years of natural gas and oil and history shows scientific breakthroughs will occur way before then to shift the paradigm.
The problem is that spoiled self centered elitists are so arrogant and wrapped up in themselves (thank their mummy’s and daddy’s) that they feel they are going to singlehandedly save mankind. And they do so with blinders on, ignorant of the realities such as the fact we don’t burn oil to make electricity and wind avoids no CO2.
When you can’t think for yourself, join a green religion and preach.
Patten,
The oil and gas remaining are located in places and in situations where harvesting them becomes more and more costly and more and more dangerous in terms of potential damage to the surrounding environment. That said, should we wait to find alternatives until the very last drop and vapor is used? And should we undertake these increasingly risky choices for development because we have no other solutions in the works?
Your second paragraph is full of a lot of emotionally loaded rhetoric. I don’ t think this helps us as Americans to come together to look at solutions and alternatives for our present and future energy usage.
Electricity is generated a number of ways, including coal and nuclear. Surely decreasing our dependence there, even in a small fraction is a worthwhile goal to follow? Wind certainly avoids a number of waste products such as radioactive waste from nuclear, groundwater contamination from the development of natural gas through fracking (a technique devised to get at the increasingly tougher to reach reserves), and air pollution from coal burning.
I chose to think for myself, to question, and to look at alternatives.
One statement you made particularly interests me. You say, “history shows scientific breakthroughs will occur way before then to shift the paradigm”. It seems to me that breakthroughs usually come after a lot of hard work and trial and error. They are then “announced”. Stifling innovation and new ideas is not a great way to prepare for those breakthroughs to occur but it is a good way to ensure that anyone who might think up something new or try something different are stomped on thoroughly and with such force that no new thing occurs.
The thing about history is that it is a process we are all in small ways a part of and contributing to. How ironic it would be if this is part of the path to something better and we simply aren’t recognizing it?
I am reminded about the joke with the man in his home as flood waters rise around him. His neighbors offer to drive him to higher ground but he says, “No, the Lord will protect me.” The water rises and a rescue person in a boat comes and offers to take the man to safety, again he refuses. Finally he is on his roof and a Coast Guard helicopter lowers a rope to take him to safety but he refuses again, “The Lord will protect me.” Eventually the man drowns and goes to meet his Lord. He is very confused, “Lord, why did you not protect me?” He asks. The Almighty replies, “I sent you a car, a boat and a helicopter, what more did you want!”
Waiting around for a miracle breakthrough while not looking at being part of making that new thing come about or even being hostile to it seems to me to be much like that man who drowned in the joke, we aren’t recognizing our own role in taking part in a solution.
Ms. Itchkawich: The only problem with having a policy to address a serious issue is when it is based on assumptions that it will work when empirical evidence and forecast models predicated thereon show that it doesn’t. May I recommend reading “The Impact of Wind Energy on Home Energy Prices” by Gordon Hughes of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. Mr. Hughes conducted a comprehensive analysis of the U.K. market in its attempt to achieve a 30% renewable based energy portfolio by the year 2020. Mr. Hughes agrees with you that we need alternatives but found that wind energy is too expensive, inefficient and didn’t displace emissions from fossil fired power plants. He points out that more than 10% wind energy will actualll increase CO2 emissions. He suggests there are better ways to spend our dollars and achieve the same goals. Happy reading.
I am reminded of what they said about airplanes…”It will never fly Wilbur!”
As an Air Force veteran I have always found that one really fun to think about.
Or the people who once honestly believed that if a car could ever be built that exceeded 55mph the human body would be so stressed that it would result in the death of the operator!
Flash news, airline travel will never overtake the use of trains for passengers! :)
I go back to the example of the cell phone. In 1991, the year my daughter was born, I recall seeing people with the first “cell phones”. One was a priest whose congregation had gotten it for him so that he could be summoned for last rites, the others were senior members of my military unit. The phones were the size of a brick! They mostly didn’t work. They cost a fortune. They were ugly!
I couldn’t imagine ever owning one personally! I couldn’t imagine ever
being important enough or being in a position where I’d need one. I
couldn’t imagine ever affording one!
By the time my daughter was a pre-teen, not only did I have one but my child was pestering me for one! A request that I actually (given where we lived at the time and her after school activities) granted a year or so later for safety reasons.
In 1991 I would have bet a fair bit of money I’d have never done that! And I’m not a gambling kind either.
Technology evolves and conditions change.
Thank you for the reading suggestion. I have a fair few friends in the UK and I’m somewhat aware of the debate there as well. I can only suggest that you focus not just on short term cost, but on long term costs and alternatives.
Best wishes, and I will try to find a copy of the work cited.
Stephanie Itchkawich testified in favor of First Wind’s ill-sited Bowers Mountain project. See: http://www.maine.gov/doc/lurc/agenda_attach/120711/Withdrawal_public_comments_thruDec6.pdf
Although she sounds sincere, albeit ignorant of the facts, keep in mind that she lives in the Vinegar Hill subdivision. She and her Vinegar Hill neighbors are close enough to the Bowers site that First Wind offered to provide money to maintain their system of private roads for the next twenty years in return for their unquestioning support. Whenever First Wind needed some testimony or letters in support, the people on Vinegar Hill are summoned into service.
Doesn’t it seem odd that every Vinegar Hill owner supported the Bowers project? What are the odds of all those people agreeing unanimously on anything unless they were being paid?
Oh it doesn’t take so long before the ugliness appears…
First, I have received ZERO dollars from First Wind.
Second, a vote was held among our land owners and a majority supported the project however it was not unanimous. Land owners on both sides of the question have spoken up.
Third, Vinegar Hill was offered a small sum if the project went through as reimbursement for a portion of our road system that would be impacted by their construction effort. This was offered because we privately maintain more miles of road surface than the town of Carroll while receiving zero dollars for their upkeep. Our roads are in hideous condition and we play host to every local and out of state sportsman that cares to drive down them and get stuck in mud season. As the project is on hold no money has been received by the association and we project none at this point.
You might well note that the sum proposed would just about barely cover the damage projected from bringing in the turbine pieces. Anyone who thinks we would materially benefit is up in the night. They also are not considering that keeping that road open is a legal obligation to us that we meet privately but which the community, hunters and sportsman at large benefit from.
Lastly, is it so hard to imagine that someone might honestly have a pro-wind opinion?
That you insult me to make out that I would take money in exchange for an opinion or testimony is wrong. I suggest you apologize. You will notice I have not implied anyone here on the other side of the question is taking money for their remarks.
I live here, I am pro-Wind. I am not intimidated by the name calling, smears, intimidation and nasty garbage that has been directed to me.
You might consider that the Town of Carroll also voted in majority to support the project and most of our select persons are pro-wind. You want to say we were all bought? If so you are needing to come here and apologize to me, the town and our neighbors.
This is an insulting and false allegation. I suggest you retract it.
First Wind are masters at bribing people and then trotting them out as supporters. But they are being rivaled by Patriot Renewables in the western Maine mountains. It is like Santa Claus at Christmas to snowmobile clubs, groups like Vinegar Hill, a mere pittance of bribe money to grease the skids. Chump change (and a tax write-off) to the wind developers.
But then, there is the KING of all bribe-sters: Angus King himself, who brilliantly bought out the folks in Roxbury with paying their first 500 kwh of the electricity portion of their bill. Yippee! A motherlode to the peasants from KING! Yes, the payments started. 500 kwh X the standard rate of .074380=$37.19 per household (about 165). That approximates $18, 409. per quarter. According to FERC, Record Hill Wind had $1.27 million in revenue for the first quarter of this year. Record Hill Wind paid less than 1% to the bribe.
For Record Hill Wind, it is the equivalent of me giving every household in Roxbury a penny every month. Yeah, I can spare a dollar each month to get no opposition to destroying three mountain peaks.
Stephanie, it sounds like you and I live the same lifestyle. I, too, live off grid and have for the past twenty five plus years, remotely, very remotely. However, I disagree that wind power is the answer to the planet’s hunger for electricity. We shouldn’t be destroying more of our precious wild places to sate our greed, especially when the returns in energy from industrial wind are so very inadequate. Small thorium reactors are safe, powerful and will leave the mountain ridges and the airspace around them to the raptors, migratory birds and bats that desperately need them.
Penny,
I think it is part of the answer and potentially a step towards other answers.
Mostly I think we need to stop thinking that a miracle answer will somehow occur to someone out of the blue, fully formed, perfect in every way, that is cheap, easy, and unobjectionable in every way. I don’t think many answers like that come along in life, but that is a point I’d be more than happy to be wrong about!
I would like to see more of us step off the grid, even those that don’t live remotely. I think it would hugely reduce demand and allow the grid resources to be focused more to hospitals and industry or commercial applications that need it most. It would also give people more independence and less vulnerability.
I am sure you know how freeing it can be to realize that you make your own power, know what you use, and are able to budget for it. It is a huge relief to me to know that as I age or if I ever lose my job or have a tough time that I won’t be worried if my lights will come on! Its just an extra comfort, like more in the savings account.
Its also both comforting and distressing to realize that many grid events don’t affect me. A car hitting a power pole, ice storms, and the things that cause so many to suffer without power just don’t happen for me. I was working when my colleagues in DC were out of power or unable to report to work because of electrical outages. I was watching tv when my friends in town were suffering a power outage due to ice. (Which made me feel very badly when I found out. If we do nothing else I think the northeast should make battery backups for the electrical thermostat controls on furnaces mandatory…it broke my heart to be warm and safe and know my neighbors in town were in the cold and dark because their furnace that they’d scrimped to pay for oil in wouldn’t come on without electricity! Unfortunately they are too elderly to safely make the trip to my place by snowmobile in winter.)
I would like to see more people enjoy this freedom of a roof over their head and at least rudimentary power that would keep their food and medicine safe and their heat on.
I wonder if you get people who tell you that its impossible to live well off the grid? It happens to me a lot, especially when I travel and strike up conversations. People don’t believe it is possible to be clean, tidy, comfortable and even modern without paying a fortune for a set up. I use only solar but at some point I’d like to try a personal wind application as supplement. I think there is a strong future in this.
I agree that it can’t be the whole answer though, especially not to greed. Probably you have gone through what I have over the last few years learning just how many of my electrical gadgets are completely unnecessary and even silly. I have developed my installation to the point where I am generating surplus enough to run most things at least now and again, but I find I really just don’t need to. I find that my quality of life hasn’t suffered even a tiny bit for it. That said, I work from home and run my computers and the internet via satellite as a business necessity and it works just fine. This post brought to you by alt energy! :)
Changing what we think we need and want is a part of the issue, but I think that will be hard for many to accept. And even bringing it up seems to make most people think they are being asked to live with rocks and sticks or something!
I have read a bit about the thorium reactors. I have mixed feelings about them. I would agree that they look a bit better than conventional reactors and may have some distinct advantages. I’m concerned though about the long term storage of waste byproducts that occur even with the thorium reactors. I was stationed in the west for several years. I am very familiar with the concerns raised on the part of many of the states there that were looked at as potential waste repositories for nuclear waste, medical/nuclear waste, and toxic waste from manufacturing. That stuff has to get housed somewhere and typically the east does not have the kinds of locations that are best suited to long term containment…that means shipping our problem to someone else. The folks there were more than a little tired of the idea of being a dumping ground for the rest of the country’s waste, and tired of the cost and fuss of worrying over and guarding it. And especially tired of turning all that cast beautiful land into places that were roped off as waste dumps and ordinance littered bombs ranges.
One of the things I had to learn living there, being from the east coast originally was that all that empty space has a beauty all its own. Its not as empty as it looks and parts of it are exceedingly delicate. I came to appreciate this but I know the fastest way to get slapped by someone from the rest of the country is to say that “nothing” is there. They value their beauty as much as we value our lakes and mountains and I wouldn’t dare to say whose is more worthy. If anyone reading this ever tries it expect to get a real earful about arrogant, over bred, east coast snobbery. :)
For me it is about the small picture and the large picture. I don’t feel my mountain is better than the mountain of another American’s home. That would be rude and arrogant. I don’t feel my right to clean well water is more important than the right of a friend in Pennsylvania coal country to turn on a tap and let their kid drink from it. When I use electricity here, at a restaurant or a business, that may have been generated from that coal or natural gas. I am mindful of what it cost those families in terms of the beauty and safety of their homes.
I agree with much of what you say, Stephanie. Simplify, Simplify, Simplify, and none of this energy crisis would even exist. I live on a mere 500 watts of solar and am quite content. I also agree that the wild empty spaces have a beauty all their own, and the footprint of industrial wind and solar would smother it. The sprawl of the turbines over mountain ridges and solar panels over “wasteland and deserts” isn’t acceptable. The cost/benefit analysis of industrial wind doesn’t work, no matter how hard you try to make it work. We need to protect what we’re trying to save, not destroy it. There are far better answers. We’re smart enough to figure out how to do it right. Small thorium reactors are the best green solution for this planet right now because not all that many people would choose to live the way we do, and China and India are going full speed ahead with coal.
Penny,
India are looking at Thorium and have the first Thorium based reactor Kakrapar-1? It has a go live date in 2013 I think. They are also sitting on a large portion of the known Thorium reserves on the planet and have a lot of folks to take care of. They have a goal of thorium use of 30% by 2050.
Stephanie, I have lived off the grid for 12+years. We installed a small wind turbine as well as solar and I have regretted it since. Why? Too noisy. Solar is silent (no moving parts). when the wind rustles, the sound is soothing and then the turbine starts whirring.
Remote places like Garland Pond in Byron Maine have agreed to no generators and enjoyed quiet, beautiful days and nights until King Angus built a WIND project in the next town. Now the West shore camps see and hear all 22 turbines. No more star studded skys. NOW red floating, blinking lights, all night long…..Wakes some people up.
This project blasted Record Hill ledges. Ledges with springs. Ledges with quartz viens running through them. No nuclear waste in Western Maine because of these viens. They crack. When these ancient water viens crack; so does the spring water contained above. You cannot fix these cracks and water will not grow back up the ledge.
What about wildlife? Transmission lines are needed where unneccesary. Habitats fragmented. Who cares? I suppose they do.
Many hippies bought into solar power years ago. Many live in remote areas. Many, as we do, maintain there own roads. You are not alone.
On site solar is the way to cut electricity consumption in half, even if u do live on the grid.
People need to take this issue into their own hands. You did. We are Mainers, we love independence. Simplify and install as modules and anyone can do it. Feel un safe with your work? Have a knowledgeable meter reader test your connections. Have an electrician advise you. Our solar systems are basic and we installed them ourselves.
WIND has been around for 20+ years. It is not working, “The Germany Experience”.
Show us numbers of power generated and reduction in toxics.
-amb
Alice,
I’m interested to hear about your turbine, would it be rude to ask what type you have? As I mention elsewhere I’m all solar but have been considering one and experience seems to vary with type and siting considerations. Does yours have a brake for wind speeds that exceed a certain mph?
During the enlisted portion of my service I fixed avionics systems for aircraft so I had some electrical background. Installing solar was really easy as you point out and quite common sense. No moving parts, simple to troubleshoot when needed, easy to take care of. I did use an electrician for the well pump installation as I was less confident there and for insurance purposes I had him bless my set up as he is licensed for residential work and I am not. I’ve been very pleased with the results so far and have faced many people who said that solar in this climate and so far north would never work…they were mistaken.
Wind has been around in one form or another for thousands of years really, the present industrial form is more recent and a departure from previous usage. I think if had a time machine and went back to ask people about the plans to install an electrical grid across the country in 1890…about 20 years or so after grid based power first started appearing in some locations…we’d find a similar attitude, that it was an immature and possibly dangerous idea that was enormously wasteful and frivolous. Time and effort have now changed that viewpoint. This is relatively young in terms of technical advancements.
I applaud the people of Byron for their decision to eliminate generators. I am quite sure my seasonal neighbors here would never agree. When I first arrived I had one installed and it made me nuts. I haven’t turned one on in years now and it was never really worth the effort, it ate fuel, was hugely noisy, and broke as often as not. I was much relived in my first year to just go with the solar even if it meant struggling a bit in the first year until my system “grew up” a bit.
For the Bowers Project when it was proposed the lights were a concern for many in the community. By the time the plans had started to mature the new technology and approvals from the FAA for the radar operated lights and automatic beacons for the towers had become a reality. I know it was a relief to my mind in a big way that we wouldn’t have to experience that except in short episodes when an aircraft was in the immediate vicinity. Perhaps this is something that could be retrofit to the project near you? Have you asked if this is possible or if there is a timetable for conversion or upgrade to the new system to eliminate the lights?
It is a good example of how things are moving in directions to make the turbines less objectionable as much as possible and to answer the concerns of people like us. I enjoy the night sky here and am continually amazed by it.
I have become more aware since I have been here about the various things that can unexpectedly cut swaths in habitat. Power lines are certainly one, but logging which is a staple industry of the state is another. It was ironic to me that one concern about the Bowers windmills was its potential effect on the “undeveloped” shoreline of Shaw Lake. I live just up from Shaw and the intervening stretch of land, owned by Lee Academy, was described to me as a protected set aside that could not be developed when I bought my land. What I missed out on was the fact that the land that was supposedly this environmental set aside could and would be logged. It was logged two years ago. No one finds this upsetting in the least, in fact, it is considered normal and desirable. I think we have more than windmills to consider when it comes to these kinds of events in the woods here.
Thanks to all who support my contention the turbine forest fires are much to be feared. It is too late to submit to DEP more testimony, but I think we need a public awareness campaign that calls upon DEP to address forest fire issues. Brads Blake’s news clips show there have been two such fires in California in the past three weeks! Clyde MacDonald
Mr. Willey, all I can say is BWAHAHAHAHAHA… LeBUFFOON is an incompetent walking JOKE. From what correspondence course did you earn your law degree? PS: Come November, we’ll see how much most Mainers think he is the “best governor in our state’s history” when we CRUSH the TeaPublicans at the voting booth.
In your dreams.