I live in a rural town in New Hampshire that was targeted by Iberdrola for an industrial-scale wind project on our ridgelines.
Residents of my community learned that we could not trust a word from Iberdrola. Its representatives gave us the same speech: “If the town votes against the project, we will leave.”
Well, we had a 60-percent - yes, 60 percent! - voter turnout that year, and there was overwhelming opposition to the project - at least 3-to-1 opposed.
Iberdrola's interpretation of our vote of opposition was that since 100 percent of people did not vote, then there was support for the project! They claimed 40 percent of voters supported the project because they did not vote in opposition - but they didn't vote at all!
We found that the people from Iberdrola would twist every point of opposition around, calling us all sorts of names and using intimidation tactics.
We fought hard against them as a region. The project spanned four towns with an approximately 6,000-acre footprint that would have had the potential to seriously contaminate our watershed, with its numerous rivers and tributaries that residents depend upon for survival.
Iberdrola claimed to care about these environmental impacts, but then the company planned to build its substation directly on top of our drinking water.
We learned not to trust a word they say.