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September 3, 2010

It's not just a breeze anymore

Not long ago, an Australian company leased the Indiana Turnpike system for 75 future years. Iberdrola, a Spanish company, fourth-largest utility in the world, owns Central Maine Power Co. America is for sale to outside interests.

A little group has formed in Central Maine. Calling itself Friends of the Highland Mountains, it was incepted when the threat of industrial wind loomed over fragile, old mountains in Highland Plantation. This group is pushing back against industrial wind; outsiders with partners among us.

Industrial wind, like so many other business entities, seeks big profit, but this one also defaces uniquely beautiful natural environments and unilaterally changes people's surroundings in its way.

Iberdrola announced it had, to date, already milked the U.S. government cash cow of $867 million in grant money for renewable energy inside the United States, and Iberdrola has now cast its huge shadow across the mountains of Highland's neighbor, Lexington Township, with its recent application to LURC for installation there of a string of wind speed test towers, precursors to turbines.

Lexington is Friends of the Highland Mountains territory, and its ancient hills have sustained natural life for eons; by comparison, the "shelf life" of wind turbines is very, very brief. As they strobe and churn away on the wreckage of once-pristine mountains, at our expense and right in our faces, they will generate a lot -- a lot of money for the promoters.

My husband, Steven, stunned me with his musing, "Where should it stop? What American institution might be sold out next? Our Social Security system, maybe?"

Arlene Gray Trudel

Highland Plantation

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