December 25, 2010
Letters, Maine

Gone with the wind

Rumford Falls Times, www.rumfordfallstimes.com 23 December 2010

Long term community policies based on income from industrial wind projects is about as smart as firing bullets into your foot.

The wind experiment will eventually lose out in the free market and all the taxpayer money which sponsored them will be wasted. Gone with the wind.

As town government after town government goes ga-ga over industrial wind, one has to wonder what motivates them to unroll the red carpet out for this caper. In part, it is alignment and obedience to the will of state government, the rule-master.

Far too often, local officials allow the state’s heavy hand to reach deeper into the citizen’s pocketbooks, with not one word of forewarning ever issued to the people. We just end up paying.

The experiment with industrial wind in Maine is headed for downfall. The evidence of this is apparent in several facts.

The state moved to expand wind projects by adopting a renewable portfolio standard which mandates how much power generated within state will be produced by “renewables.”

With hydro-power and biomass ( i.e., co-gen at mill ), the state needs no wind to achieve “renewable” status, therefore wind power is shipped and sold out to states unwilling to meet their own state standards.

Understandably, folks from these states are questioning the wisdom of buying expensive wind power from Maine. The free market at work.

Wind is small amongst other proven electrical producers, Wind is unreliable and is an unnecessary add-on, unjustified by the political notion of the “great green savoir.”

Destined to face the free market, wind will disappear and be recalled as another experiment where social behavior tries to override reality.

So I ask, why would we buy into this short-sighted experiment, which will eventually lead to complete loss of associated municipal revenue and bring on huge taxpayer costs to maintain the bloated government it will create.

Have I got that right, Candice Anne?

Freemont Tibbetts

and Dan McKay,

Dixfield


URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2010/12/25/gone-with-the-wind-2-2/