Facts-Collection
- There will be some jobs created on the short-term e.g. logging, hauling wood etc. On the long-term there will be 5 or 6 jobs to maintain these windmills. Also this is not going to attract additional business nor industry and there are no plans to do so.
- Why Green Party People Should Oppose Industrial Wind Power Development in Maine. A must read! link
- How environmentally responsible can a project like this be if forests have to be clearcut and mountain-ranges blasted? We have to be careful not to confuse any kind of alternative energy with green-energy just because it doesn't need oil! We all have to come a long way and learn a lot more about being green. Putting up wind-turbines in doubtful places does not solve any of our energy-problems.
- Industrial wind sites are not economically feasible nor environmentally sound. The industry would not exist if it were not for the tax credits, production subsidies, accelerated depreciation, guaranteed purchase of kilowatts by the grid, etc. Due to the unreliable, intermittent nature of wind energy and the inability of the grid to store electricity (unlike individual units with storage), the grid must power down fossil fuel baseline power plants because they are mandated to accept wind energy whenever it is produced. Thus, the powered down baseline plants operate at less efficiency, which produce greater pollution. So, your "green" energy ends up increasing pollution---how ironic! How green is an energy source that blasts away ridgelines and creates clearcuts in rural Maine?
- Windfuture, first of all, the tax subsidy plantation industry should just leave Maine alone--period. There is no justification to blast away and ravage hundreds of miles of ridgelines, clearcut tens of thousands of acres of woodlands, destroy wildlife habitat, and ruin the peace and health of hundreds of people to prop up an industry that can't compete in a free market economy.
- TIF is not a tax planning tool, it is yet another form of subsidy. If a sprawling industrial wind site is going to change the character of a community and destroy what people value, then not only should the company pay its full amount of taxes, there should be a substantial annual impact fee as well. Using TIF to prop up a company that many people do not want in their town is a bastardization of the intent of TIF.
- Regarding your perspective on subsidies and telling people to check the stats, here you go. According to the US Energy Information Office in 2007, wind energy was subsidized at a cost of $690 million, which worked out to $23.37 per megawatt produced. This compares to federal subsidies of 67 cents for hydroelectric and 25 cents for fossil fuel per megawatt produced. The industrial wind industry would not exist without tax equity financing, production tax credits, double balance 5 year accelerated depreciation, guaranteed access to markets from Renewable Energy Portfolio schemes from the states, and the ability to sell so-called renewable energy tax credits to companies that pollute. It is an incredible array of money making schemes and scams on the taxpayers and ratepayers.
- Thus, the industry is not about creating "green" energy and saving the planet. It is about how to co-opt concerns about global warming and dependence on foreign oil, and slick propagandizing to position wealthy investors and corporations to get rich as "pigs at the public tax subsidy trough". If industrial wind sites had to be built with only the usual standards of the free market economic system, there would never be a single one built. God save us from this blight on rural Maine!
- The powerline that both Stetson Mt. and Rollins are being plugged into is already at its maximum capacity. So, First Wind is going ahead and building both Stetson II (17 more turbines) and Rollins (40 turbines) without adequate powerline capacity! http://www.windaction.org/faqs/19682
- As we saddle our children and their children with huge federal deficits, created by our own collective selfish behavior, must we also take away their right to enjoy the God given beauty of our mountains, unspoiled as they have been since the glaciers receded? Turning our mountains into industrial zones with giant machines on the ridge tops is one more example of our collective greed, as the lure of reduced property taxes and electric bills makes us blind to our responsibility to pass on to future generations a landscape which has been treated with stewardship and the respect it deserves
- Regarding deer and other wildlife, how about a quote from Marie Williams of Mountain Road in Mars Hill: "It (the turbines) has cleared out all the animals. One reason we bought this property was to be in the country and have peace and quiet and be around wildlife. We used to see deer and fox in the yard all the time and have tons of birds. We have lived here 25 years and usually buy 1100 pounds of bird seed each winter. Last winter we used only 100 pounds." Will this be the effect on wildlife around Rollins Mt. and the ridges of Rocky Dundee?
- Wind turbines do not result in a net “savings” of energy. Because it takes so many wind turbines that produce so little electricity, it actually consumes more energy to manufacture the steel towers and install them than any wind tower will produce in comparable energy in its useful lifetime, which is 20-25 years. Because the turbine must continually rotate so it doesn’t freeze up, each turbine uses an enormous amount of petroleum based lubricants.
- Living with turbines - a personal account By Wendy Todd, Mars Hill, more than a year after the turbines went on line.
- First Wind is a company whose business model depends on subsidies and market manipulations to make money. They already have tremendous advantages from double declining balance 5-year depreciation for writing off infrastructure and equipment costs. They can write off windmills quicker than the mill can write off a tissue machine! They have 2.1 cents per kilowatt-hour production tax credit, which will reap them more than $4 million dollars per year from this project. They have the ability to sell the same kilowatts as “green tax credits” to polluting industries. Through Renewable Portfolio Standards, they have guaranteed access to the New England electricity market whether the electricity is needed or not. These investors are laughing all the way to the bank at taxpayers and ratepayers expense!
- Coming to Lincoln to blast away miles of our beautiful ridgelines to install a hideous string of 40 wind turbines, each taller than the water tower at LP&T, with aviation lights flashing 24/7. Replacing the calls of the loons with the incessant roar of turbine blades. Killing the eagles, ospreys, hawks and other birds with their blades and exploding the lungs of the bats with the pressure from the blades. Clearcutting hundreds of acres on ridgetops then applying herbicides that wash into our lakes. Ruining the health and sanity of the people unfortunate to live in close proximity. Putting up towers in a poor wind potential area because its not about producing electricity, its about how many different ways to raid the taxpayers and ratepayers for subsidies. Preying on gullible, unsophisticated town officials to pay for their investment with a TIF. Scornful! We will predict right here and now that should this Rollins project ever get built, there are lots of people in the Lincoln Lakes communities who are going to say "This is terrible what they did to this area! How could this happen?" It will be sad, indeed. Friends of Lincoln Lakes understands what it is about and we cherish and protect our natural surroundings.
- It is well known that there are questions about capacity and congestion on “Line 64", the 115kv line into which First Wind proposes to feed both Rollins and Stetson I & II. In June of 2007, RLC Engineering, LLC conducted an Interconnection System Impact Study under the ISO New England Inc. Open Access Transmission Tariff Schedule 22-Standard Large Generator Interconnection Procedures on behalf of ISO New England Inc. and Bangor Hydro Electric for UPC Wind (now First Wind) to construct and interconnect the 57MW wind project on Stetson Mountain in Washington County, Maine. The study showed that the existing transmission Line 64, into which Line 56 from Stetson Mt. and now the Rollins Project would feed, was at full capacity (151 MW) servicing Brookfield Power's 126 MW hydroelectric system and Indeck's (now Covanta) 25 MW biomass power plant in West Enfield- both base load renewable generators. With the introduction of Stetson energy into Line 64, energy output from Brookfield and/or Covanta would have to be significantly curtailed resulting in a 0 MW net gain in renewable generation for the region. Put another way, Stetson Wind and Rollins Wind, both intermittent and unpredictable generators, could displace existing reliable base load of renewable energy. Maybe that's why Stetson I is built but not operating---nowhere to put the electricity. First Wind is arrogantly pushing ahead, no doubt expecting that some political pressure causes ISO-New England to open the MEPCO line to these projects or that Obama bails them out with $$$ to expand the transmission lines. Either way, taxpayers and ratepayers subsidize this inefficient, unreliable, unpredictable source of power that we do not need in Maine.
- A site like the Rollins project in Lincoln Lakes will consume more than 700 acres of land, an acreage far larger than most Maine farms. It entails creating a 3-6 acre clearcut for each turbine site, blasting and leveling, digging down to bedrock and pouring tons of concrete to anchor each 262 foot tower which is topped by a 92 ton nacelle (turbine generator) and 253 foot wide blades. A huge, wide network of roads must be created up to and across ridgelines to get these huge components into place. At Rollins, more than 20 miles of powerlines will be cut. All of the turbine sites and powerlines will be kept cleared by the use of herbicides, effecting dozens of streams, all of the lakes around Lincoln and the watershed of three rivers. Siltation of streams and lakes will occur from erosion from all this construction. Lastly, important wildlife habitat will be fragmented and ruined.