April 8, 2011
Letters, Maine

The wind rush is here

Rumford Falls Times, www.rumfordfallstimes.com 8 April 2011Rumford Falls Times, www.rumfordfallstimes.com 8 April 2011

Wake up please!

How can we, the residents of the Western Foothills, not realize our communities and our peaceful mountains, waters and wildlife are about to become a thing of the past. Perhaps many have lived here their whole lives and have become complacent with the richness and beauty of the Western Mountains of Maine.

The wind rush is here. Industrial Wind turbines – not wind mills, some 400 feet tall (four times higher than phone towers with outreaching, churning blades), will be our new landscape. Our Maine Department of Environmental Protection, in all its wisdom and corruption, has wrongfully opened the flood gates to erect hundreds of industrial turbines all around us.

Just think, Roxbury, Rumford, Dixfield, Carthage, Peru, Canton, Woodstock and beyond are all being propositioned by wind developers to pave the way for industrial development. Collectively there are more than 300 miles of Maine mountain tops earmarked to be blasted, forever destroying what many good stewards of Maine Mountains have protected for lifetimes. Why?

The few maneuvering this wind rush business venture stand to make millions of dollars.

It is understandable many residents and especially landowners are tempted to buy what Patriot Renewable, First Wind, Angus King and Rob Gardner are selling – lower taxes, lower electric bills, TIFs, jobs, clean energy, and lease agreements to land owners, etc. Who wouldn’t be tempted in these hard times?

I submit we must look at the big picture, evaluate the cumulative effect of this industry on ecology, weigh the pros and cons, do the math, and don’t be fooled or tempted by the wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Last week’s Letter to the Editor (March 30, 2011), “The true economic value of Maine’s mountains,” by Penny R. Gray, Maine Master Guide, Carthage, outlined the harmful realities destruction of the mountains will have on” Maine’s stellar quality of place,” ecology and tourism.

Gray talks of the dam rush of the 1970’s and 1980’s where Maine lead the nation in research with the “Maine River Study” and prevented dam construction in the Dead, Kennebec and Penobscot River.

Where are good stewards of Maine in 2011? Why are we allowing this to happen in “God’s Country?”

Kate Chiasson,

Dixfield


URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2011/04/08/the-wind-rush-is-here/