Maine news, sports, weather from Waterville Morning Sentinel

Wind project generating opposition

By Erin Rhoda erhoda@mainetoday.com
Staff Writer

SKOWHEGAN -- There is a "beautiful wetland" on Witham Mountain in Highland Plantation, with a spring and a little stream that leads to Greg Drummond's house.

Drummond has been going to the peaceful place filled with black spruce since he was a teenager. Recently, he noticed surveyor's tape there. Nearby, written on a ribbon: "Turbine #27."

"The only thing I own is that land and that property," Drummond told a group gathered for the Somerset Economic Development Corporation meeting Friday at the community center.

The land around his home and business, Claybrook Mountain Lodge, on Howard Hill Road in Highland Plantation, is where people can "freely enjoy a wild land environment," he said.

The landscape will be forever altered, he said, by a proposed 48-turbine wind-generation project, which is still in the permitting process.

If approved, it will be "the largest wind project permitted in Maine," said Alan Michka, a resident of Lexington Township and chairman of the board of the organization the Friends of the Highland Mountains.

Highland Wind LLC has submitted a permit application for a 129-megawatt wind farm west of the town of Moscow and the Kennebec River. In addition to 48 wind turbines, the project would include access roads, a collector line, a substation, and an operations and maintenance building.

The Highland project would be located on two ridgelines, including Stewart Mountain, Witham Mountain, Bald Mountain, Briggs Hill and Burnt Hill, according to the permit application.

At one of the economic development corporation's meetings last month, former Maine Gov. Angus King touted the project's benefits.

King said power options that include oil, natural gas, coal, hydro, biomass and nuclear power all have problems. The proposed turbines will not harm wildlife and will be far from homes, so residents will not hear the blades.

He said the $230 million project will bring construction jobs to Somerset County -- and as many as seven or eight permanent jobs once the facility is running.

It is expected to produce the equivalent of 20 to 30 percent of Maine's power needs for 22 to 25 years. The former governor added that the project will pay $450,000 a year in county taxes and give the 50 or so residents of Highland Plantation free electricity.

However, Friday, people directly affected by the potential wind project spoke to a room of about 20 to say the project's pitfalls outweigh its benefits.

The proposed project would put 26 turbines in view of Drummond's front porch, he said. With 250 guests coming to his lodge each year, seeking pristine views, turbines would ruin his business. "I doubt that I can compete with similar businesses that are not dominated by turbines," he said.

Karen Pease, of neighboring Lexington Township and a member of the Friends of the Highland Mountains, said the wind project will cause real estate values to drop.

As owner of Narrow Gauge Realty in Kingfield, she said people have told her they would have made offers on houses, but opted not to because they believed the wind project was imminent. People have also told her, she said, that they would sell their homes if the wind turbines are built.

The project will detract from what tourists seek, she said. It will be "economic suicide" if the mountains and peace and quiet are destroyed, she said.

Michka said there is better potential for wind projects off the coast of Maine, according to wind maps. "That's where the real potential is," he said, and developers should focus there, not in-state on the "scenic mountains."

Noise from turbines is a potential issue, he said. People have complained about noise from other turbines in the state "and there hasn't been a turbine shut down yet," he said.

In order to install turbines, crews need to blast "a tremendous amount of material," he said, which ruins the landscape.

The project will only create four or six permanent jobs, according to the application, not seven or eight, he said. And the 38 weeks of construction required is "fairly short-term" for employment. Jobs are a weak, stand-alone reason to do the project, he said.

There is also no guarantee on any tax changes, he said. If Somerset County receives $450,000 a year in county taxes, that equals $9 per resident. "When you consider what we're giving up here, $9 doesn't sound like a lot to me," he said.

There are about 50 permanent residents in Highland Plantation, he said, who will receive electricity benefits, but the residents in the communities surrounding the project "will receive nothing."

Erin Rhoda -- 474-9534

erhoda@centralmaine.com