Protect quality of life
Sun Journal, www.sunjournal.com 21 October 2010
Rumford residents have a unique opportunity to protect themselves from intrusive noise, environmental damage, loss of property value, tourist dollars and quality of life. It’s easier to loosen restrictions on a zoning ordinance “after the fact” than it is to tighten them once a development is built.
What if the residents vote down the zoning ordinance, wind turbines come and people can’t abide them?
What if they do cause health problems? What if residents learn this is not as much about clean, renewable energy as it is about huge government subsidies? What if people discovered they had lost their iconic ridges for a false promise?
Rumford voters have the opportunity to take control of what happens to their mountains and to keep their quality of life. Many Mainers don’t have the same freedoms.
In Maine’s unorganized territories, residents can’t determine siting for wind developments. We cannot ban them. We’re at the mercy of an overworked Land Use Regulation Commission, inundated regularly by proposals for wind turbine developments all across Maine.
Wind developers are in this for public tax dollars. Science and economics prove that these are not the panacea the industry and Maine’s administration claim.
Rumford must keep its sense of community. Don’t get angry at those who are doing what they believe is right. Be proud that there are people who will stand in the face of big money and power, protecting others against all odds.
I wish I had the same opportunity to protect everything that’s special about Maine.
Karen Bessey Pease, Lexington Township
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2010/10/21/protect-quality-of-life/