[at-l] Wind Power in Maine

[ellen at clinic.net (Bob C)]

My apologies for a long post, but Steve's Clark's analysis is by far the best I've seen.

Weary

By Stephen Clark
TRY IF YOU CAN, to visualize six hundred to a thousand huge wind turbines mounted on towers, each almost four hundred feet high, sprawled on mountain tops and high ridges throughout the Western and Central Maine mountains in a string almost two hundred miles long.
 
Soon, very soon, Maine people will be asked to trade the beauty and spirituality of their treasured Maine mountains for the presumed public benefits of minor economic development, claimed reductions of air pollution and some minute, mainly symbolic, reduction of global warming. 
In fact, this process has already begun: the residents of the small Aroostook town of Mars Hill have succumbed to enticing promises of prosperity and tax reductions, voting to allow the construction of nearly 30 huge, approximately thirty-seven story high wind turbines on nearby Mars Hill Mountain. Gone, will be the beautiful rounded mountain that has greeted its residents every morning for over a century and a half. In its place they will view a huge industrial power production facility, with rotating blades during the day and blinking strobe lights at night.
 
As is the strategy with most developers, wind developers promise certain public benefits, while the real objective of making money is never mentioned. And make money they will as the construction and operation of wind turbines is heavily subsidized with your (taxpayer?s) money. So electrical users pay for wind power twice, first through Federal, State and Local subsidies and second, through monthly electrical bills.
 
Now, making money is not in itself an evil thing. In fact, it is the juice that energizes our American economic system. But wind power developers in Maine must sell the public and our leaders, the nebulous concept that wind power has substantial public benefits. They must do this in order to obtain access to a public resource, in this case, the Maine mountains. Past history has shown us that developers? claims of public benefits often are grossly exaggerated. Wouldn?t it be refreshing to hear a developer state that the main reason to build, is that he/she wants to make money!

Wind developers label groupings of electrical wind turbines as, ?wind farms? and individual units as ?wind mills,? giving these huge commercial units a  folksy and homey illusion. These labels conjure up visions of quaint, benign Dutch wind mills in pastoral settings. This helps to guide people away from the reality that they are in fact, industrial electrical generators, proposed to be plunked onto Maine mountain tops.
 
A new generation of wind turbines is contemplated for use at Mars Hill and later in the Western Maine Mountains. These are truly giants! The support towers are well over 300 feet high and the radius of the three rotating blades is an additional 130 feet, making their total height more than four hundred feet high. This is about twice as high as the State Capitol building in Augusta, or half as high as famous Mt. Battie behind the town of Camden. 
The size of the turbine towers and rotating blades would dominate the viewshed for many miles around any mountain tops or ridges. And they would be very visible at night, as many of the turbines are required to be lighted with powerful blinking strobe and red lights. They will compete very effectively with the night stars!
 
The turbine towers will be about seventeen feet in diameter at their bases and will require deep drilled holes to anchor the tall towers, or if the bed rock is too fractured, it will have to be blasted out and huge concrete bases poured. From each tower, power lines will have to lead away to carry the power through the wild lands to the nearest grid connections. And, of course, new heavy duty roads will have to be constructed up steep mountain slopes to reach each tower.

Such turbines are being proposed by developers for the tops of Maine mountains and mountain ridges because these fragile locations have the second best wind resources in Maine. These remote locations are chosen as places where the developers and their investors can maximize their profits and presumably have the least public opposition.

The best wind source sites in Maine by far, the place where the wind in Maine blows most consistently and with the greatest force, is the treasured Maine coast. But wind developers are well aware that convincing residents of these coastal communities to allow the installation of hundreds, maybe a thousand, of these mammoth turbines along the scenic Maine coast, would be extremely difficult, if not impossible.

The good citizens of Harpswell recently had eight million dollars a year dangled in front of them to allow a large Liquid Natural Gas plant and marine terminal to be constructed in their coastal town. They had the backbone to vote a passionate, resounding no to this degree of industrialization of their beautiful town. This has been followed more recently by similar no votes in Gouldsboro and Perry. Developers and their investors have taken careful note of these decisions. 

It is hard to imagine the residents of Camden, Mt. Desert, Owls Head, Kennebunkport, Vinalhaven, Pemaquid, or the many Maine islands, ever seriously considering installing hundreds, or even thousands of these tall turbine towers and accompanying power lines and roads, along the relatively windy Maine coast, even if the best wind resource is there. Plus here, there is advantage of being close to the point of electrical consumption. 
So the next best targeted wind recourse for the developers is on the tops of inland Maine mountains. Presumably, the less affluent and less influential residents living adjacent to the mountains, hungry for any development, would greet the wind power developers with open arms. This scenario has already taken place in Mars Hill.

To fully understand what is at stake, we must consider the long term goals of the wind power enthusiasts and developers. A recent Public Utilities Commission report has stated that the total wind power potential within the Maine mountains is in the vicinity of 1000 megawatts (MW). This estimate is similar to a wind power industry representative?s estimate made at a 2003 wind power conference here in Maine.

Let?s do a little simple math. If each of these huge turbines has a maximum generating capacity of 1.6 MW, that would mean that to fully utilize the Maine mountain wind resource, it would require the construction of 625 turbines. And because wind turbines actually produce much less than their maximum capacity?perhaps only 30% or even less?the number of turbines would in fact be considerably larger, possibly twice as large! Neither the wind industry advocates, nor knowledgeable State officials dare to talk about this scope of wind development, for fear of stirring up the ire of locals.
 
An even more surprising wind power advocacy emanates from no less than the Maine Natural Resources Council, our presumed state environmental guardian. Wind enthusiasts within this organization have advocated that 5% of all Maine?s power consumption be generated by wind turbines. To reach that goal, it would fatten the estimated number of required turbines to greater than an unbelievable thousand or more towers spread throughout the Maine mountains. 
Rotating blades during the day and blinking strobe lights at night, would be seen essentially from horizon to horizon, along the entire Maine mountain range from the New Hampshire border to the end of the Appalachian mountains, and beyond into Aroostook County?s lower mountains. It would mean the end of the wild Maine mountains and their conversion into a continuous huge two hundred mile long industrial power production facility. Such a vision is almost too ludicrous and painful to contemplate! Yet that is exactly where wind power enthusiasts desire to take us. 
Wind power advocates and wind industry developers do not speak in these terms of development, as such a massive scope of potential development, when understood by Maine citizens, would present a formidable impediment to their plans. Their approach is, and will be, to construct one group of turbines at a time, without indicating their overall massive goals. This process is illustrated clearly by the opening salvo of the Mars Hill project, to be constructed in the summer and fall of 2005. They already have their public and governmental approval at this site.
 
Next on the agenda will be the long studied Redington, Black Nubble project located in the heart of Maine?s four thousand foot mountains, southwest of Stratton and east of Rangeley. If approved, this project will come at its closest point, a mere mile away from Maine?s scenic Appalachian Trail, and will be visible by Trail users for over twenty miles along the Trail, day and night. Redington is one of Maine?s few four thousand foot mountains and adjacent Black Nubble somewhat less high.

Because of their height, turbines located on and around the tops of these high mountains will be visible from Route 16, parts of Stratton and Eustis, parts of Rangeley, the Sugarloaf and Saddleback ski areas, Saddleback Lake and many other parts of northern Franklin County. But to achieve the full potential of wind power, such developments will be repeated throughout the Western and Central Maine?s mountains.
 
It is not known how many birds and bats will be killed by the rotating blades of the turbines. These mountains are nesting country for eagles, hawks, and many other species of birds. Bird migrations also occurs in these mountains. At the tips, the blades will rotate at well over a hundred miles per hour when the wind is strong. Wind developers tend to minimize or ignore this point. Making it more difficult to assess this concern is the fact that the danger to birds varies from one site to another. There is no doubt that many birds will be killed. Obviously, the more turbines that are constructed, the greater the overall kill. But how many bird kills is too much?
 
At the Mars Hill site hearing, the Maine Department of Environmental Protection was asked by the Maine Audubon Society to postpone issuing permits until adequate studies could determine the potential danger to birds and bats. The DEP and the applicant in their wisdom felt this would unreasonably delay the project, so Audubon was told that some vague studies would be done after construction and if there was a ?problem,? the wind power company would take mitigating action of some sort, Also, the studies will be controlled and paid for, by the developer, rather than the DEP (?He who pays the piper, calls the tune.?). Since this precedent has been established by the DEP, it is presumed that future wind power applicants will be treated in a similar manner, i.e. no bird studies need be completed regarding bird and bat mortality, prior to a construction permit being issued.

The concept of the developer shutting down the turbines to save a ?few low-value birds or bats,? is highly unlikely, as this would threaten their profits if the turbines are not turning. 
So let the birds and bats beware.
 
This is one of the main selling points of the wind industry and its advocates. The premise is, if the public allows an unknown number of turbines to be constructed, there will be a substantial reduction of thousands of tons of air pollution that will presumably benefit Maine citizens. 
Since there are no commercial coal or oil generating plants in Maine except for the sparsely used Cousins Island Plant, the presumption is that some out-of-state fossil fuel plant elsewhere in New England will have to throttle back its output when wind power generators come on line, thus achieving this hypothetical air pollution reduction.
 
However, when wind power advocates are asked to state what percentage of reduction in air pollution in Maine will occur from a given wind power generating facility, their answer is in purely hypothetical reductions in pollutants by calculating tonnage reductions. They cannot or have not stated how much cleaner our air will be. Nor can they state what fossil fuel plant(s) will be cut back. When asked that question as to what plant(s) will be affected, they vaguely respond that the Independent System Operator (ISO), the New England Electrical Grid manager, would have to answer such questions.

When asked if reductions at some unspecified out-of-state generating plant will measurably reduce air pollution breathed by Maine citizens, they do not respond because they do not know whether the fossil plant that is forced to cut back will be a ?clean? or ?dirty? plant. When asked how many turbines will have to be constructed to significantly reduce air pollution in Maine, they do not respond. When asked who will monitor these hypothetical air pollution reductions in Maine to assure that the promises of air pollution reductions are kept, they do not respond. 
In other words, promises by wind power advocates of presumed air pollution reductions in Maine cannot be defined nor measured. As a result, any attempt to weigh the certain loss of the beauty of our Maine mountains and wilderness, against the unknown and unmeasurable benefits of air pollution reductions from wind power is rendered virtually impossible. Apparently that is the way the wind power advocates would like to keep it.

In the 1950?s when advocates of the fledgling nuclear electrical power generating industry were selling us on the great merits of allowing them to build a nation wide system of nuclear generators, their best line was, ?if you allow us to build these wonderful plants, electrical power will be so inexpensive, it will be too cheap to meter.? It did not quite work out that way, as the angry citizens of Nevada will attest. There, the new national nuclear waste depository is being built, and taxpayers will shell out billions for the facility for hundreds of years to come, long after the nuclear plants have been shut down and dismantled. This story seems to have some similarities to the advocacy of wind power.
 
In the end, to judge this critical decision,?whether to go ahead with vast wind power development or not? we are asked either to trust the word of the wind power advocates and developers, or to use our own common sense. The loss of the natural beauty and spirituality of our wild Maine mountains is a very, very high price to pay. It reminds this writer of a story once heard as a youth, about a very fine musician who played his enticing tune quite convincingly. I believe his name was the Pied Piper.

Steve is an honorary member of ATC; a former MATC president; the only person in history to chair two ATC conferences, and chair of the MATC wind power committee.