National Wind Watch: Wind Energy News » Hoodwinked

As Elvis once said, "Friends" of Sheffield Wind Farm "ain’t no friends of mine" – or yours, if you live in the Northeast Kingdom. It’s doubtful whether they are friends of anyone except maybe Massachusetts, Connecticut, a Burlington public relations firm, and a few UPC employees. It is clear that they are not friends of the townspeople in Sheffield and Sutton, according to recent letters to the editor. Nor do I think they are friends of neighboring towns.

Clearly, the much-touted "grassroots campaign" is really only "ass-tro" turf. Maybe you’ve seen some of the recent newspaper ads. They have been made by a public relations firm in Burlington. The low level of deception that UPC is engaging in is to try to hoodwink Sheffield residents into believing that the "friends" is a group of real people, instead of a company whose services UPC is paying for. To give it a little reality, the owner of the advertising firm contacted the few people in Sheffield who are in favor of the project.

One thing is clear, The Caledonian-Record editorial of Oct. 14, 2005, titled "A Deceitful Strategy," exposes UPC for what it is. The paper says: "UPC is guilty of the worst kind of bad faith in this move in their snake-oil chess game. The company knows the majority of citizens in the Northeast Kingdom, and especially in their target towns of Sheffield and Sutton, are opposed to trashing our ridgelines." Note that this editorial was written before this latest underhanded deception of the fictitious "friends" group.

Now, a sign in the center of Sheffield reads, "Real Vermonters Can’t Be Bought." Perhaps the developers from Massachusetts had failed to realize this difference between the two states.