Wind plan stirs up environmental conflict

By ALAN CROWELL, Blethen Maine News Service

Copyright © 2006 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.


A proposed wind farm high atop some of Maine's tallest mountains has set the stage for a clash of environmental values that could define the future of wind power in Maine.

The Redington Wind Farm's 30 turbines would generate electricity without greenhouse gases and offer Maine people a stable source of affordable energy, while lessening dependence on fossil fuels.

But environmental groups worry it also would push development into pristine sub-alpine habitat that is home to several rare or threatened species and erect a chain of lighted windmills 41 stories high about a mile from the Appalachian Trail.

The plan will be debated at a Land Use Regulation Commission public hearing in August. Behind the controversy, however, is the much larger story of wind power in Maine.

The Redington project would produce about 90 megawatts of power - enough to power about 40,000 homes - but it is only one of several projects in various phases of development in Maine.

The Mars Hill project in Aroostook County, the first utility-scale wind power project approved in Maine, will produce 50 megawatts of power at peak production when completed.

The Linekin Bay project in northern Aroostook County calls for installing wind turbines capable of generating 500 megawatts of electricity in a phased process that could be completed by 2010.

The Kibby Mountain project in western Maine, which is also in the very early stages, would have between 100 and 200 megawatts of capacity, possibly by the end of 2008.
In Freedom, residents voted last month to back Portland-based Competitive Energy Services' plan to erect three wind turbines on Beaver Ridge.

If those projects live up to their potential, they would create roughly 800 megawatts of generation capacity, or about 40 percent of the energy Maine residents use during peak periods.

Wind turbines operate well below capacity most of the time, but those proposals still represent a potentially enormous expansion of generation capacity, all the more striking because wind power was not economically viable until recently.

Driving the development is a combination of improved technology, federal tax credits, the volatile cost of fossil fuels and a growing market for green power in the New England power grid.

Maine has the 19th-greatest wind resource in the United States, well behind North Dakota and Texas, but by far the most wind power potential of any New England state, according to the American Wind Energy Association.

BRIGHT FUTURE IN WIND

Kurt Adams, chairman of the Public Utilities Commission, said Maine also has an advantage in siting generating capacity.

Maine has more potential sites for developers to choose from than its neighbors. And Adams said both Maine's governor and the Legislature advocate generators that use renewable resources. Over time, those geographical and political factors should pay off, Adams said.

Siting new wind power generators will increase the already-sizable surplus of energy generated in Maine, and it should reduce prices for Maine consumers, said Adams.

"There is a real economic driver here that is, at the end of the day, going to be very good for Maine if we can find suitable places to put it," Adams said.

That critical question - What is a suitable site? - largely will define the scope of Maine's wind power, and it also will be at the center of the Aug. 2-3 Land Use Regulation Commission public hearing on the Redington project.

The commission is charged with deciding whether to rezone about 1,000 acres on Redington Pond Range and Black Nubble Mountain so that land can be used for a wind farm.

And while the panel's decision officially affects only the Redington project, it could set precedents for other generators and help define wind power's future.

It is a fact not lost on the environmental community, in which wind-power siting issues have exposed deep fault lines.

Maine Audubon, the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, the Natural Resources Council of Maine and the Conservation Law Foundation are among the environmental groups that have been granted intervenor status in the proceedings.

BALANCING ENVIRONMENTAL VALUES

Pete Didisheim, advocacy director for the Natural Resources Council of Maine, said there are valid environmental reasons to support or oppose the project.

"It is almost a perfect storm for a conflict between a desire to move toward clean energy and a desire to protect some of the few remaining wild places," he said.

Didisheim said his organization backed the Mars Hill wind power project in Aroostook County south of Presque Isle - Maine's only large-scale generation project - before other environmental groups.

"We think it is a good thing for Maine to become a leader within the region in developing clean power," he said. But at the same time, Didisheim said the Redington project would be built in an area prized for its beauty and isolation.

"It is a competition of two goods, two things that society needs more of and doesn't have enough of, and that is wilderness and clean power," he said.

Harley Lee, president of Endless Energy Corp., one of the two partners of Maine Mountain Power, which is developing the Redington site, got involved in wind power in the late 1970s, when technological problems made it an economic nonstarter. Now, with global warming increasingly seen as a reality and wind power technology vastly improved, he said the time is right for the Redington project.

The Redington Pond Range and Black Nubble Mountain are well suited to wind power, with long, level, north-south ridges.

"Mother nature did not make a lot of mountains like that," Lee said.

He said the project has attracted broad support, according to surveys of local residents and even hikers. Controversy about the site emanates largely from a small number of very vocal critics, he said.

"We have a very well-designed project with very low impacts and very large benefits," he said.

Lee said his company has worked hard to minimize environmental effects, shrinking the 20 acres of wetland impacts in the initial design to three-tenths of an acre.

Road and power line locations have been moved to minimize visual effects and a buffer will be created around the habitat of the northern bog lemming, a species considered threatened in Maine.

The area around the mountains is beautiful, but not roadless, said Lee, who describes it as a working forest in an area between two ski resorts.

"What we are doing is getting another renewable resource out of Maine's forests," he said.

BIG EFFECTS ON SPECIAL PLACES

J.T. Horn, New England director of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, said the Redington Mountain project is the only one his organization opposes out of several proposed wind power projects near the Appalachian Trail.

Horn said his organization believes wind power can play an important role in addressing global warming and air quality issues, but other factors must be considered.

"Not all sites are appropriate, and some sites are really fragile and special and remote and scenic," Horn said, adding that Redington Mountain is one of those.

To reach the long ridges where the turbines will be built, about 12 miles of new road would have to be built. The turbines would be visible from many points along a remote 50-mile section of the trail.

"If you backpacked this section, it would take you over a week to hike; and every time you came to a viewpoint, you would be able to see this wind farm," he said. And he said 15 of the turbines will be equipped with aircraft warning lights.

"Not only will you see them on the horizon, but they will also be spinning and flashing," he said.

Jody Jones, a Maine Audubon Society wildlife ecologist, said the project would affect a fragile area that is a core habitat for Bicknell's thrush, a bird that lives only in mountainous regions of the Northeast, as well as the northern bog lemming.

While Lee has proposed different road and turbine sites to avoid the lemming habitat, Jones cited concerns that the roads could exacerbate rainwater and snowmelt runoff and drive the lemmings out of the bog.

Only a handful of Northeastern locations are identified as northern bog lemming habitat, Jones said.

"To me it is a grand experiment in the wrong place," Jones said.

GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE

Robert Gardiner, director of the Conservation Law Foundation's Maine office, said wind power's effect on the global environment should be considered carefully.

Gardiner said his organization is technically a neutral intervenor in the application process, although much of its testimony will tend to favor the Redington project.

If more wind power isn't developed in places such as Redington Pond Range, Gardiner said, mountaintops in Appalachia will be dug up for coal, and acid rain and global warming will threaten habitats throughout Maine.

The problem, he said, is wind power projects need two things to be viable: a good wind source and access to power transmission lines.

"There are very few right places, and this is one on a very short list of places that could be right," he said.