March 3, 2014
Letters, New Hampshire

Support our community right to sign-off on energy projects

The Laconia Daily Sun | 3 March 2014 | www.laconiadailysun.com

Prepare for another potential industrial wind project, Newfound.

EDP Renewables is working to meet all the requirements to place a meteorological tower in Alexandria for their proposed Spruce Ridge industrial wind project spanning the towns of Alexandria, Hebron, and Groton. This comes on the heels of Iberdrola announcing a “pause” in their Wild Meadows project planned for Alexandria and Danbury.

Coincidence? I think not.

Any progress a corporate entity makes benefits every other corporate entity. One might think two different industrial wind companies would be in competition with one another, but it doesn’t work that way. Instead, these corporate giants work together to keep pressure on the towns they come to invade. The more pressure they can maintain, the more effort it takes to hold them off. By working together, industrial wind developers are able to claim more community support for their projects.

The math is simple yet deceptive. There are more private land leases secured by multiple industrial projects within the town, so therefore the developers claim more local “support” for the project.

Newfound is not new to the deceptive ways of industrial wind companies. The project in Groton is the reason why the Wild Meadows project was put on “pause,” according to the developer, Iberdrola. The “issues” with the project in Groton stem from the corporate giant making changes to their project, allegedly, without the proper approval from the proper agencies. Now they expect other Newfound towns to welcome them with open arms and believe every promise they make – and when we don’t, they say we are “misinformed.”

It would seem surrounding Newfound towns have learned something from watching the town of Groton receive an industrial wind project. It seems we have learned that these corporate giants are not to be trusted. We do not want any industrial wind projects destroying our rural environment, our tourism, our property values, our peace and quiet, our watershed, our birds and bats, our wildlife, our forests, our ridgelines, our communities, our rivers and streams, Newfound Lake, or our health.

Vote “yes” for a Community Bill of Rights (RBO) on March 11 in the towns of Alexandria (Article 16), Danbury (Article 9), and Hebron (Article 4).

A Community Bill of Rights is a binding law, enforceable by the selectmen and the residents. Support our right to decide what type of energy projects we want, our right to protect our ecosystems from the harm of industrialization, our right to protect the rural character of our towns, prevent industrial pollution of our waters, and our right to govern by consent. We say “no” to industrial wind turbines.

Michelle Sanborn

CARE Group

Alexandria


URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2014/03/03/support-our-community-right-to-sign-off-on-energy-projects/