Re[3]: [at-l] Windmills

[Bob Cummings <ellen@clinic.net> (Bob Cummings)]

Well, the Maine windpower saga continues. I spent yesterday investigating the
subject. No. Not in one of those dreary meetings, but hiking to the summit of
the Redington Range (once trailless, but now the developer has built crude
trails to the site of towers used to measure wind velocity.)

 Along were representatives of the National Park Service, AMC, ATC and the
 developer. After leaving the trail we bushwhacked the ridgeline.

My conclusions: The Appalachian Trail is the jewel of the National Park Service,
in eastern United States at least. Saddleback provides a sense of remoteness
found in few places along this 2,160 mile trail. It's 32 miles between public
roads, a remoteness rarely found elsewhere (Great Smokies and the 100-mile
wilderness ... though even in the latter are heavily used private logging
roads). The wind power development would have a major impact on this sense of
remoteness.

The claim is made that the towers would be largely invisible from the trail. But
from one turbine site I could see every tree on the horizon of the nearest
Appalachian Trail ridgeline. Is it credible that looking from the trail I would
not notice a 260-foot tower? 12 feet wide at the base, six feet wide at the top
and topped by three whirling lighted 130 foot blades. (The developer revealed
that new tower designs might be 60 or 70 feet higher. He hasn't decided, yet.)
Somehow I suspect I might notice an array of 28 such things.

To test this conclusion, when I arrived home I looked out my living room window.
By happenstance across a tidal estuary and some abandoned farm fields stands an
ancient church, located just a mile away.

The church steeple, as usual, loomed high in the horizon. The turbine towers and
whirling, lighted blades would be six times higher than the church steeple.
About another mile down the bay is an abandoned light house. The light tower is
about 12 feet wide at the base, same as the proposed wind towers, but less than
25 percent as high. As it has for the 40 years I have lived here, the lighthouse
tower remains highly visible from two miles away.

The wind turbines would be within two miles of about 10 miles of open AT
ridgeline. JT Horn, the representative of the AT conference on the walk,
estimated the wind towers would have a severe impact on 20 miles of the AT and
be visible from open ridges along 50 miles of the trail, from the Baldpates to
the northern end of the Bigewlow Range.

Well, anyway, I've done my field work. Next, I suspect, will come a lot of
dreary meetings and letter writing. Far less fun I'm sure than either the
Georgia or Pennsylvania Rucks.  As usual, volunteers are welcome in matters
dealing with the trail.

Weary