Pre-Mourning...

If you’ve ever watched someone you love slowly lose their health and vitality -- knowing that they were going to die and there was nothing you could do about it – you’ll understand the concept of “pre-mourning.”

Even while reveling in and cherishing the last two years I spent with my father, I was also in pre-mourning.  I knew I was going to lose the man who’d raised me, who’d instilled in me my principles and code of honor, my sense of humor, my toughness and my love of the outdoors. I was missing Dad -- even before he was gone.

To a lesser extent I’m feeling that same sense of pre-mourning now, as I begin to truly understand the scope and scale of the industrial development proposed for the mountains of rural Maine. It is staggering.  Almost incomprehensible.  Seemingly insurmountable. And I look at the numbers and the proposals…and then I think of this beautiful state I’ve called “home” for my whole life…and I have that same feeling of loss – even before it has come to pass.  I’m watching the potential destruction of something real and living and vital -- something that has been an essential part of my life -- and I worry again that there is nothing I can do to stop it.

Perhaps you think I’m foolish -- or you simply disagree.  Perhaps you believe that grid-scale industrial wind turbine facilities will do all that the Wind Industry and its supporting government agencies proclaim they will do, i.e., ‘get us off fossil fuels,’ ‘counteract global warming’…or you believe that wind is ‘free,’ it’s ‘green’ and it’s ‘cheap’.

It’s okay if you disagree with me.

You see, I once believed all those tag lines, myself.   But after 7 years of intense involvement in -- and research of -- this topic, I have the confidence to say “That’s not true, it’s not factual -- and it is folly for Mainers (or citizens anywhere) to accept it at face value without first educating/equipping themselves with the scientific and economic data pertaining to this issue.” 

No matter your convictions on global warming/‘climate change’ or any other topic that pits one energy generation system against another -- or one citizen against another -- I think we call all agree on this:

Maine has natural resources that are unparalleled anywhere else in the Continental United States east of the Mississippi River.  Maine has the last and largest vast tracts of forests, of undeveloped lands, of wildlife living in its natural habitats, of dark night skies unsullied by the light pollution that exists all along the eastern seaboard from Augusta, Maine to Miami, Florida. 

Rollins Wind project lights in Lincoln, Maine

Maine still has many regions where man-made noise does not intrude…places where you can hear a leaf detach itself and fall from a tree -- or the snow gently land on a bare branch or the back of your hand. Precious sounds…sounds that are not ‘noise.’ Maine also has a $10Billion per year tourism industry, which is grounded in those same natural resources and rare “Qualities of Place.” Not only do visitors from all around the world come to Maine to experience what we take for granted…but many of us stay here and endure hardships and extra expenses simply because we recognize the value of what is right outside our front doors.  

 

Turbine blade in Kingfield, headed for the Kibby Wind Project, above Eustis

Did you know that Maine is one of the cleanest energy producers in the Nation; and that in 2012, Maine had the highest Renewable Portfolio Standard in the U.S.?   

Did you know that Maine produces far more energy, already, than we consume -- and that we export up to 45% of the electricity we generate? 

Did you know that Maine only has one small coal-fired generator, which powers a Rumford paper mill? 

Did you know that less than 2% of the electricity generated in Maine comes from oil-fired generators? 

Did you know that the entirety of Maine’s 2700 megawatt ‘wind’ goal, which would place industrial-grade wind turbines (500+ feet tall) along approximately 300 miles of Maine’s mountain summits, could be provided by the construction and operation of a SINGLE, moderately sized, clean-burning natu­ral gas generation plant…and at 10-15% of the cost? (…IF we needed it, which we do NOT at the present time.)

My point is…Maine does not need new generation, nor do we rely on fossil fuels for our electricity.  

My point is…rural Maine is being sacrificed – not because we need new electrical generation, but because our national government has given favored status to wind generators without paying any attention to the true science, economics or ethics of large-scale wind development. 

That favoritism comes in the form of huge and excessive tax-payer subsidies, tax-payer grants, tax credits and other incentives. And because of this “free” money (yours and mine), wind development is an extremely lucrative corporate enterprise.  

It doesn’t matter to that Corporate Enterprise that wind is not a reliable or constant or dense energy source.  It doesn’t matter that wind’s ‘carbon footprint’ tips the scales when compared to the amount of emissions it might displace from fossil-fuel-generated plants (those same ‘base-load-generating’ plants which will always have to remain online and operating at less-efficient [i.e. higher-polluting] levels while waiting to kick in at a moment’s notice when the wind dies down.)  It doesn’t matter what harm grid-scale wind does to a natural environment, or to that environment’s wild and human inhabitants.  It doesn’t matter that the sprawl of wind makes no good, common sense.

Rollins Mountain Lincoln, Maine

My point is…Maine’s proposed build-out of industrial wind on our rural mountains is propelled entirely by money.  Not by need or by conscience -- but by money. Tax-payer money for a few large out-of-state and multi-national corporations.  This same build out is not driven by Maine’s need for electrical generation, but by the ‘renewable energy mandates’ put in place by the governments of CT, MA and RI. These states require a percentage of their electricity to be provided from ‘Renewables’…but they do not want industrial wind on their own rural lands or ridge-lines, so they have requested proposals from the Wind Industry in MAINE to furnish THEIR government’s mandates for renewable energy.  These states will purchase REC’s (renewable energy credits) from Maine wind…so that they can continue to generate their power from higher-polluting sources and still meet the mandates set forth by their state governments.

It is necessary for me to say this: I have friends who work at the completed Kibby Wind project; others who work at the under-construction Bingham Wind project, and others who work for the wind industry’s largest contractors: Reed& Reed and Cianbro.  I don’t begrudge any Mainer his/her job.

But the following words haunt me.  Words spoken by a Maine man who sunk his and his wife's life savings into their ‘dream’ retirement home…only to have a wind turbine development built nearby, shortly thereafter.  The infra-sound and low-frequency noise from the project almost destroyed his heath and that of his wife…and they abandoned their home – unable to sell it (for who would want to live under the conditions which drove them out?) but unable to live there. When at a public hearing in Augusta and confronted by a man who supported the build-out of wind in Maine because it gave him a ‘good job’ (under oath, this same man admitted that he was paid by his employer to testify), the man who abandoned his home had this to say:

“Yes, well…Your JOB has ruined my LIFE.”

So, while I don’t begrudge a hard-working Mainer his or her job, I DO embrace this philosophy. If your employer can compete on a level playing field, BRAVO.  If your industry can support itself, GOOD ONYA. If the benefits of the product you produce or maintain outweigh its negative impacts, THANK YOU.

 If none of the above hold true, please excuse me (and please try to understand me) while I attempt to protect and preserve the mountains and communities of rural Maine.  

Bigelow range from Eustis Ridge

As I look at the proposals for grid-scale wind turbine facilities on Maine's rural mountains, I can't help the fact that I find myself in "pre-mourning." Eustis...Jim Pond...Alder Stream...Moosehead/Misery Gore/Chase Stream/Johnson Mt/...Eastbrook. Concord, Lexington, Highland, Pleasant Ridge, Moscow...and more.

Hutchins Hill, Lexington TWP, Maine

Please educate yourselves.  Please get involved.  Once these Appalachian ridges have been dynamited, blasted, leveled and 'tamed'...there is no going back. Pre-mourning is painful.  But true mourning, after a real and finite loss, can be crippling.  Educate yourselves.  Look beyond the feel-good rhetoric to the facts.  I believe you will never regret it, if you do.

Thank you.  Many, many thanks!