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Highland Wind Project: Group Seeks Allies to Block New Wind Farm

February 12, 2010 - The mountaintop turbines in western Maine would ruin views and disturb residents, opponents say.


PORTLAND — Residents of rural Somerset County say they need help blocking plans for a mountaintop wind farm in Highland Plantation, within view of the Bigelow Preserve and the Appalachian Trail.

"This is dramatic for us," Alan Michka of Lexington Township said Thursday. "And it's huge for the state of Maine."

Michka is chairman of Friends of the Highland Mountains, which held a news conference in Portland to mobilize opposition in southern Maine to the $230 million project, which would be the state's largest wind farm.

He and others said the 48 turbines would destroy the region's tranquility, ruin residents' views of the mountains and the night sky, and mar the views from some of Maine's premier natural attractions.

One of the project's developers, former Gov. Angus King, said some of the criticisms – such as the amount of blasting and the potential for neighbors to be disturbed by noise – are exaggerated or untrue. But he acknowledged that the turbines would change the view from homes and the surrounding mountains.

"There's no denying that these things are large, that they are on top of the mountains, that they are visible," King said. "I guess we have to make a decision. What are we going to do if we are serious about energy independence and climate change?"

Highland Wind LLC, led by King and Robert Gardiner, filed an application at the end of January with the Maine Land Use Regulation Commission. The commission is now taking requests to hold a public hearing before deciding how to proceed.

A hearing is considered likely this summer because of the objections raised by neighbors and others, including The Friends of Bigelow and the Maine Appalachian Trail Club.

Their opposition is part of a backlash against the state's effort to speed development of wind power, both in the interior mountains and along the coast.

The Somerset County residents said Thursday that disputes over existing wind farms, and a case pending in the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, show that Maine residents aren't being protected from the visual impact and noise of the turbines.

"I don't want to be treated the same way," said Heidi Emery, who lives with her family in Highland Plantation, one to two miles from the proposed wind farm. "It feels like the death of Highland is coming, and I feel so helpless."

The residents said the project would require extensive blasting and tree clearing, and would generate noise that could carry for miles. The views that attract visitors to the region would be ruined, during the day and at night, because of lights mounted on the 400-foot-tall turbines, they said.

Opponents said the turbines would be visible from the Appalachian Trail as it passes through the Bigelow range. Proximity to the Appalachian Trail helped to block a proposed wind farm several miles away, in the Redington Mountain range, in 2007.

King called Stewart Mountain and the other ridges where towers are planned some of Maine's best sites for wind energy.

And, he said, noise wouldn't be a problem because "the nearest year-round residences are something like a mile and a quarter away."

Residents of the area said Thursday that noise could be a problem several miles from a turbine, but King said the fear is unfounded. "The only real impact is the view," he said.

The turbines would be nearly eight miles from the peak of Bigelow and at least four miles from the Appalachian Trail, he said.

The 129-megawatt project could supply enough energy for all of the households in Portland when operating at capacity, King said
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King and Gardiner face an appeal of a smaller wind farm proposed in Oxford County. King said Thursday that the general backlash against wind power worries him.

"It's very easy to assess the impacts of a particular project," King said. "It's almost impossible to assess the impact of not doing something. And if we keep saying 'no,' what are the impacts of that in terms of global climate change?"

Jonathan Carter, director of the Forest Ecology Network, lives near Highland Wind's site and is helping to organize the opposition. Carter, coincidentally, was the Green Independent candidate for governor in 1994, when voters elected King, an independent.

By JOHN RICHARDSON, Portland Press Herald, February 12, 2010


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