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VIDEO! – Save the Mountains of Highland Maine
A Highland Resident's Opinion
In the fall of 2009, the residents of Highland Plantation and the surrounding area heard from a pair of wind energy developers that this rural community was where they were planning to build what, at that time, would be the largest industrial wind facility in the state of Maine. More importantly, they also made it known that there was essentially nothing that anyone could do to stop them. It was abundantly clear that they had little interest in the concerns of anyone in these communities.
In November of 2009, Friends of the Highland Mountains, a Maine non-profit corporation, was formed by residents and property owners in the area who were alarmed by the implications of the proposed development – and dismayed by the regulatory environment that had been awarded to the wind industry in order to bypass the concerns of those who would have to live in the shadow of the intrusive development. We have since been granted intervenor status by the Maine Land Use Regulation Commission, and in that capacity will work to prevent the loss of some of our community’s, and Maine’s, most treasured assets.
Highland Wind submitted its first permit application to the Maine Land Use Regulation Commission in January of 2010. The application had a significant deficiency that resulted in the removal of the application from the review process in April of 2010. The developer spent the following 8 months repackaging the project and submitted a revised application to the Commission on December 28, 2010.
The primary substantive changes to application included: 1) Removal of nine turbines from the project in an effort to mitigate one of the most obvious of the many shortcomings of the project – its visual assault on the Appalachian Trail and the Bigelow Preserve. 2) The inclusion of additional perks for residents of Highland Plantation in order to meet the minimum state mandated level of host community benefits, a new statutory requirement. 3) The alleged resolution of a title issue with a critical land parcel within the project’s footprint.
The greatest accomplishment during those eight months, however, appears to be the development of an elaborate public relations campaign. Highland Wind LLC rolled out its “new” plan with a great splash of overstated benefits, understated impacts, and undeserved self-importance. In the opinion of those who were originally opposed to the proposal, the revised plan remains a reviled plan.
Our western sky with no turbines - yet
In the year that transpired following the original application submission, the residents and property owners in the towns and townships outlying Highland Plantation have discovered that their communities are the target of a much larger plan that will eventually scatter perhaps hundreds of forty-story wind turbines across what had once been a remarkably beautiful and emblematic Maine landscape, accompanied by miles of new and expanded transmission lines needed to serve the sprawling developments. The rare darkness of the night sky and the natural silence of this peaceful landscape will be lost to flashing red lights and unwelcome noise. Many of the environmental and wildlife impacts are less visible, but no less significant.
These proposed developments have shown no demonstrated redeeming qualities. They have been marketed and remarketed as the wind industry has searched for the line they can best employ to pitch these white elephants to the Maine public. The environmental and energy security benefit aspects of the projects have been so thoroughly debunked at this point that they are not even commonly used anymore in the developers’ marketing campaigns.
Wind industry promoters now rely most heavily on a disingenuous promise of economic salvation for Maine. When the environmental and energy security arguments started to unravel, the promoters moved to inflate and exaggerate the economic benefits of wind power development. Wind projects produce notoriously few permanent jobs. This is well-documented. What economic activity does occur is brief and fleeting. The damage to the community is permanent.
Opposition to Maine’s wind development policy and siting statute has grown rapidly in the last year and is sure to grow as more communities are lost to wind power development and more Mainers’ lives are disrupted. The expedited permitting law was crafted by attorneys, politicians, special interest groups and wind industry insiders. The burden of the fallout from this ill conceived policy is falling upon Maine’s rural citizens. The wind industry and their allies are comfortable, apparently, with this fiasco and want to maintain the status quo. They continue to push to cover Maine’s rural countryside with thousands of wind turbines – at the expense of the lives of its residents, property owners and Maine’s quality of place.
Friends of the Highland Mountains