GRAFTON — The message was clear:
“We're in favor of renewable energy to fight climate change. But wind energy in Vermont is not worth the long-term cost (to the environment and communities), and doesn't address Vermont's highest carbon emitters: home heating and transportation.”
That was Sen. Robert Hartwell, D-Bennington, speaking for himself, the two co-authors of S.30, and two anti-industrial-wind activists at an information meeting last Friday that drew approximately 60 residents of Grafton and Windham to discuss the details of S.30, aimed at providing greater local control over whether and where to site wind electric generation plants in the state.
The bill is of particular interest in these towns, as residents there are wrestling with proposed siting of developer Iberdrola Renewables' Stiles Brook Wind Project between them on a ridge line owned by Meadowsend Timberlands, LLC.
The bill would make town plans binding, so that if a town plan bars industrial wind development, such projects can't proceed. Windham's town plan prohibits such projects.
At the meeting, Hartwell and S.30 bill co-authors Sens. Peter Galbraith, D-Windham, and Joe Benning, R-Caledonia, said they represented bipartisan support for “a pause” before proceeding with developing more of Vermont's ridge lines for commercial wind energy.
Lisa Linowes, founder and executive director of the Industrial Wind Action Group, also presented at the meeting.
Benning told the 60 or so residents, including some selectboard members present, that the word “moratorium” had been removed from the bill. He said it had advanced from his Natural Resources and Energy Committee last week and was headed to the Appropriations Committee for funding.
Hartwell explained that the word “moratorium” was seen as too extreme, but that he had worded it that way to begin with, as “I felt Vermonters had been left out and brushed aside in the process.”
The text and status of S.30, “An Act Relating to Siting of Electric Generation Plants,” are available at bit.ly/13Apzv9.
The informational meeting, held at the Grafton Elementary School, was hosted by Friends of Grafton's Heritage, a grassroots group of residents formed in response to the proposed Stiles Brook commercial wind project.
Hartwell told his audience it would be better if everyone “worked together” to decide what is best for Vermont and Vermonters.
With the word “moratorium” included in the bill, the pushback from energy developers and utilities had been “rather extreme,” Hartwell said.
As revised, the bill lets voters decide whether such projects are appropriate for their communities. One component requires that commercial wind projects comply with Act 250 criteria for environmental and community impacts.
The Vermont legislature passed Act 250, known as the Land Use and Development Act, in 1970.
Quoting Hartwell, Benning pointed out that even a proposal for an outhouse on a mountain ridge line would have to go through Act 250. Wind farms, he said, do not.
“This doesn't make sense,” Hartwell said.
The bill also proposes “to move siting jurisdiction over all in-state electric generation plants, except for net metering systems, from the Public Service Board to the district environmental commissions and local land use authorities.”
Additional wording requires assessments to determine the impacts of ridge line wind projects on habitat, water resources, human health, the grid, property values, planning processes, and greenhouse gas emissions.
Gailbraith noted that ridge lines are important ecological corridors for wildlife to use where they are undisturbed.
Stiles Brook cleared its first hurdle in February when it received Vermont Public Service Board approval to erect three meteorological towers, or MET towers, which measure a site's wind speed and direction.
From the trenches
Noreen Hession drove down from Newark, some 30 miles from the Canadian border. “We don't have a store to buy bread and milk, or a gas station or a stop sign, and we only have one paved road. It's quiet there at night, and I can see the night sky. We're in the middle of nowhere and we're there because that's the way we like it.”
She described the day after Town Meeting last year when commercial wind developers of the Seneca Mountain wind project announced their intent to apply for a Certificate of Public Good (CPG) from the Public Service Board. She said that when she asked why the developers hadn't brought the proposal before voters, “they said they didn't know about the Town Meeting.”
Hession scoffed: “Right.”
She said she then discovered that the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources had been “working with that developer for months and nobody knew.
“These are public officials. There's no transparency with these guys and I find that annoying,” she said.
As Hession explains, Newark residents promptly went door-to-door, asking residents whether they wanted a wind project in their neighborhood, and gathered signatures. “Fifty percent of the residents said they didn't want it there,” Hession said.
They organized and started spending money fighting the project, which has yet to win PSB approval.
“I've spent every penny I have [on the effort],” she added.
Hession said she warned Grafton residents to prepare for a long fight.
“You have to fight them with everything you've got right away, because once they've got their foot in the door, it's a done deal,” Hession concluded.
Confronting 'true costs'
Speaker Lisa Linowes, executive director and spokesperson for the Industrial Wind Action (IWA) Group, told residents that the cost of commercial wind energy “is one of the most expensive out there - up to three times more expensive than hydropower or even nuclear energy.”
Linowes said IWA focuses on impact/benefits analysis and policy issues associated with industrial wind energy development, tracks news and research pertaining to industrial wind, and facilitates information-sharing on the issue.
She explained that to supply 20 percent of New England's federal renewable energy mandate, 700 MW needs to be generated. Right now, Vermont has installed 125 MW and New Hampshire has installed 171 MW. To fill those energy needs with wind power, 3,000 wind turbines would have to be erected in Vermont alone.
She said that any energy the wind farms generate is not used to offset carbon emissions: “RECs (renewable energy credits) are sold to states like New York for a coal-fired plant that needs the credits.”
She said while Vermont is the only New England state that does not have this legislation, “the rest of the New England states have caught on” and are selling their RECs to the benefit of the corporations, and on paper are complying with the 20 by 2020 renewables federal mandate.
“Once you strip away” these “shenanigans,” she said, “that makes wind energy as black as coal.”
And, she said, if renewable energy tax credits for energy developers were to disappear, “so would the developers.”
Health concerns
Sheffield resident Steve Therrien was present with his family to testify about his experience with the sound of the turbines that are little more than three quarters of a mile from his Caledonia County home - and about his health.
He said he had supported the turbines until they went up. He was formerly a forester and sugarer, but he now appeared in ill health: His face was red, and his hands shook as he showed photos of his home with the turbines behind his house.
“I knew when it started up in the fall it was not going to be good. (The turbines) sounded like a jet. I called (First Wind) up as a good neighbor to see if they would do something. They came down and talked to us, which amounted to just gobbledegook. I asked them again to please put a monitor at the house and they refused.”
When sound monitors were mounted, Therrien said they were stationed uselessly far away. “If I wanted to get away from the sound of the turbines, that's where I would go.”
The sound of the turbines jerks him out of his sleep, and then he can't get back to sleep. He said his son had sat on his lap shortly before the meeting and told him he's afraid of the turbines.
“We're sick. We don't need studies. These things make you sick and it compounds itself through time and it gets worse,” Therrien said. He reported his doctors said such effects can be deadly.
For someone like Therrien, whose only option might be to move, the three senators say they want to see compensatory costs included in assessments of property values, and written into any contracts with developers.
Therrien's story struck a nerve with Grafton residents, who asked what they could do to help his family “tonight.”
Benning replied, “He hasn't told you everything: there's more. There's job loss and no work. It took all their money to come here tonight to talk to you. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.”
In true Vermont neighbor-to-neighbor fashion, residents passed the hat, collecting $349 for the family. The next morning, Therrien's wife, Luann, tried to express her thanks in an email:
“I'm having a hard time putting the events of last night into words. My brain keeps coming out with, I...... We....... Wow!!!!!!...When we got back to the hotel we had a call from the office that the town had sent us a gift. Steve walked down to the office and was floored. Betty Frye and another lady were there with our gift. Apparently the towns people were very upset after we left about what the state is allowing to happen to us...the end result was these sweet, generous people passed a hat and collected money out of their own pockets to give to us. Simple words cannot express how this has touched us. [Signed] Luann.”