August 14, 2015
Massachusetts

Milton wind turbine project is officially dead

By Johanna Seltz, Globe Correspondent | The Boston Globe | August 14, 2015 | www.bostonglobe.com

Milton selectmen have officially abandoned the town’s long-stalled wind turbine project and will ask voters to confirm the decision at a Special Town Meeting scheduled for Oct. 26.

Town Meeting voted in 2010 to build a $6.2 million power-generating turbine on municipal land near the Granite Links Golf Club, which straddles the Quincy-Milton line and is operated by a private company with a 50-year lease to use the publicly owned land.

Granite Links sued to stop the turbine in 2011, and in 2013 an arbitrator ruled that Milton could build the turbine but could not operate it during golfing hours. The restriction meant the turbine, which had been expected to provide up to $800,000 a year for the town, would no longer be profitable, according to Milton’s planning director, William Clark.

“I’m very disappointed,” Clark said. “We’ve looked everywhere” for an alternate location, he said, “but we really don’t have another place.”

Selectmen voted last month to abandon the project and to ask Town Meeting to repurpose the approximately $1.3 million already borrowed for the project, and forgo borrowing the remainder, he said.

URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2015/08/14/milton-wind-turbine-project-is-officially-dead/