Big wind fails in Vermont
Living in Vermont is not like living in the rest of the east coast megalopolis that stretches from Washington, D.C., to Portland, Maine. The dominant identity of our state is found in and of the mountains. The past 40 years of citizen-legislative effort has been to preserve the breathtaking beauty of our home.
We don’t have billboards, we have extraordinary landscapes. We are surrounded by and have the privilege of living within our natural order and communities.
Big wind turbines, and developers trying to force them onto mountaintops, result in uproar everywhere in Vermont.
When big wind came to my town, I was caught by surprise. Tinmouth held a meeting in April after someone stumbled on a Web site for a proposal called Vermont Community Wind Farm (VCWF).
Spread over a half dozen towns, perched atop three prominent ridgelines, the project was fully developed, carefully mapped, with nearly all the necessary leases signed — all with no community input.
Like most people in Vermont, I like the idea of renewable energy for electricity, and producing energy here at home. But this proposal is huge.
Since the discovery of the project, VCWF owner Per White-Hansen and his public relations representative, Jeffrey Wennberg have presented their project and answered questions to Select Boards in Tinmouth, Ira, Poultney, West Rutland, Clarendon, Middletown Springs and the Regional Planning Commission.
The more I learn, the more opposed I have become to the business of big wind.
For maximum profitability VCWF wants 80 megawatts of power. Turbines would dominate the ridgelines of Herrick Mountain, hunting grounds for many area hunters, and environmentally sensitive, biologically diverse Susie’s Peak. VCWF proposes to erect 35 2.3 MW Siemens turbines, or 32 2.5 MW GE turbines.
Turbines would be 1,200 feet apart stretching from Poultney through Ira to West Rutland and Clarendon. VCWF recently dropped turbine sites in Middletown Springs and Tinmouth after landowners refused to sign leases. Four landowners found that VCWF trespassed and placed monitoring equipment, without permission.
Per White-Hansen is using the word “community” without earning it.
VCWF leased 4,000 acres (owned by Yale Endowment) managed by Wagner Forestry which can host the entire 80 MW project. As many as 25 turbines would be visible from Rutland, and for many miles around.
But it’s not just about the view.
The proposed wind turbines are now 400 to 500 feet tall, more than twice the height of Searsburg’s .5 MW turbines. How do they get the pieces, which weigh from 165 to 335 tons, to the construction site? They haul them on large trucks; simple in a flat cornfield, not so easy up a steep slope to a mountaintop.
Look at a mountain in your town, and think about it. Then you might begin to understand why people get so upset about wind projects proposed nearby.
Existing roads must be widened and rebuilt sufficient to carry 200,000+ pound loads, and additional access roads built on steep mountainsides for cranes to move turbines to ridgelines. These roads need a 36-foot cleared right-of-way that open to 60 feet wide on turns.
A million pounds of explosives were used in Lempster, N.H., to build 12 turbine sites and access roads. Thousands of tons of aggregate (blasted from someone else’s neighborhood) and cement requiring thousands of truck trips are necessary for roads and turbine platforms. Once the turbines are built the road is kept open for maintenance, but public access for hunting and hiking is restricted and recreationists who previously enjoyed the back country are met with “No Hunting or Trespassing” signs and locked gates.
At the Clarendon meeting, one man suggested the project would amount to a “permanent scarring” of the region. “It’s overbearing and much too big for our communities,” he said. At each meeting, residents expressed concern over the project’s potential impact on wildlife, farm animals, aesthetics, town roads and bridges, property values, loss of tranquility, water supplies, wetlands, mountain streams, clearcuts, endangered species, and the health ramifications for residents.
Turbines are beautiful to many people. The wind industry says there is no noise, but many people who live near large turbines and even up to 3 miles away experience noise, vibrations, and shadow flicker. Some people have serious health issues — headaches, insomnia, nausea and hypertension — causing them to walk away from their homes.
Predatory developers seeking to maximize profits are designing projects at a size and a scale inappropriate to the Vermont landscape and our communities.
We need to define our renewable energy future in a manner that is consistent with what and who we are, and define the “public good” in a way that replaces the hysterical approach that demands sacrifices with carefully designed and readily implemented community based efforts.
According to an article in the current issue of Fast Company magazine, “The evidence is growing that privately owned, consumer-driven, small-scale, geographically distributed renewables could deliver a 100 percent green-energy future faster and cheaper than big power projects alone.” But distributed power poses a threat to the business model utilities have depended on and they are fighting it. We need a paradigm shift.
We can draw from our talent pool within our communities, from people who live and work here, not from developers and large corporations who would take the profits and leave us with the consequences.
Renewable projects hardly need to be done in an industrial manner. In his book, Small Is Profitable, Amory Lovins says, “Micropower can be more reliable, given that 98% of all blackouts originate in the grid. And it creates thousands of local jobs near population centers in design, installation, and maintenance.”
We must think carefully about what we do here and not react just because the renewable train seems to be leaving the station. Efficiency and conservation must be a part of building community scaled new generation.
The healthy, sustainable world we want to create for our children should “do no harm.” Renewable energy in Vermont must be done in a way that does not destroy the planet in order to save it.
By STANLEY SHAPIRO
Stanley Shapiro is a cardiologist who lives with his wife Cathy on a farm that is in land trust in Ira.
5 July 2009
Tags: Wind power, Wind energy
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