Could Industrial Wind Ruin Vermont?

[cali]

Maybe not, but it sure is wreaking havoc on the Kingdom. That's the Northeast Kingdom, an area so beautiful it's hard for me to describe. The first time I came here I felt I was entering another world. Every vista seemed.... magical. It was nothing like the Southern Vermont ski towns I was familiar with. I moved here 30 years ago, about 5 years after I first laid eyes on the place. It's draw was so powerful it was almost tidal.

So yes, I harbor a passion for place.

Here's a bit about the Kingdom:

The Northeast Kingdom has been listed in the North American and international editions of "1,000 Places to See Before You Die", the New York Times best-selling book by Patricia Schultz. In 2006, the National Geographic Society named the Northeast Kingdom as the most desirable place to visit in the country and the ninth most desirable place to visit in the world.[4]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_Kingdom


It's historically a poor place. And most of the Kingdom doesn't fit the Vermont stereotype of a beautifully manicured town green surrounded by gracious old houses and white church steeples- though we have our share of those. It's often a ramshackle place. A place of dairy farms and a hotbed of sustainable forward looking agriculture. There is tourism here- more and more over the last couple of decades, and it's a good kind of tourism. Lots of geotourism. What some say is the best mountain biking trail network in North America is here:

http://www.kingdomtrails.com/

"Kingdom Trails (East Burke, VT)
Simply put, heaven. By acclaim the best place for mountain bikers of every stripe: Half of the system’s 100-plus miles are wide, easy double-track (including VAST and River Run), and all trails are marked for difficulty. kingdomtrails.org

http://blogs.yankeemagazine.com/best-of-new-england/best-mountain-bike-trails/

And now industrial wind has come and is destroying the ridges. In a tiny little village called Lowell, on Lowell Mountain, they're putting up 21 400 foot tall turbines. And they're destroying the ridge line and portions of the mountain itself.

http://www.facebook.com/Savethelowellmountainsnow

It's not just Lowell. It's already happened in Sheffield, another little Kingdom town where First Wind out of MA installed these huge turbines. They're pushing like hell in other tiny villages. Although they're meeting with a lot of resistance, industrial wind is winning. Our Congressman, who in most ways is damned good has sided with industrial wind. So has our guv. And Bernie hasn't been great about it either:

http://lowellmountainsnews.wordpress.com/2011/11/06/mountain-supporters-meet-shumlin-and-sanders-2/

Here are some ariel photos taken a few days ago by Steve Wright, a longtime environmental educator:

http://7d.blogs.com/blurt/2012/05/wind-opponent-gets-birds-eye-view-of-lowell-development.html

Here's an opinion piece written by a republican state senator from the Kingdom:

Editor’s note: This op-ed is by Sen. Joe Benning, a Republican from Lyndonville.

Recently I hiked up to the top of Lowell Ridge to see where 21 400-foot wind towers will be placed. As I crested the mountain, I came face to face with an energy policy that is at war with itself. The environmental destruction taking place there pits those seeking to reverse climate change against those who wish to preserve Vermont’s pristine natural resources. While that battle rages, the economic cost to Vermont has been pushed aside as irrelevant.

Our new energy policy calls for a 90 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2050. Targeting our entire energy spectrum (including transportation), it relies on instate renewables to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. At the same time we’re eliminating Hydro-Quebec, nuclear power, fracked natural gas and less efficient biomass electricity as acceptable “renewables.” Industrial wind, currently the darling of the present administration, has become the power that now drives our legislative policy.

What price are we willing to pay for this new policy? Vermont currently does a better job than most states at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, so self-imposed mandates are not even necessary. And to those who believe Vermont will “lead the way” in reversing climate change, any hope that Vermont alone can cause a worldwide domino effect to achieve this lofty goal should be carefully balanced against the very real environmental destruction taking place right now in the cherished natural solitude of the Northeast Kingdom.

And more wind farms are coming as corporate investors, motivated by tax incentives and artificially inflated electric rates, seduce small towns with infusions of cash. Since wind is intermittent and has no storage capacity, our policy alone will require more wind farms and many miles of transmission lines to achieve our energy goal. If regulatory authorities fall short insisting on decommissioning plans, our ridge lines will end up littered with 30-story rusting hulks when this technology becomes obsolete. These new wind farms are encroaching on our wildlife corridors, destroying pristine mountain environments and radically changing the aesthetics of our state. They pit citizens of towns against each other, and towns against towns in a given region.

<snip>

http://vtdigger.org/2012/04/26/benning-a-change-in-the-wind/

If it was just one of these industrial wind farms, I could live with it, but it's not.
http://www.aweo.org/windprojects.php

It just makes me feel ill- and so sad.


Just because I've posted this long thing, I want to add that one of the reasons I love this place so much is it's so quirky. Some of my favorite Kingdom places:
The Dog Chapel- Welcome all Creeds, all Breeds. No Dogma allowed
http://www.dogmt.com/local-area/dog-chapel.html
https://www.google.com/search?q=the+dog+chapel&hl=en&prmd=imvns&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.,cf.osb&biw=1280&bih=547&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=WCKnT7ymM8fXgQfkxuHRBg

Bread and Puppet Museum

Tucked away inside a decrepit old barn in the tiny hamlet of Glover, Vermont is a little-known, but none-the-less astonishing attraction. It's called the Bread & Puppet Museum, and there is nothing on the outside of this weathered edifice to prepare visitors for what they will see inside: perhaps the largest collection of some of the biggest puppets in the world.

Founded in 1975, the massive contents of the museum are the result of 40 years of creativity and hard work inspired by essentially one man - sculptor and choreographer Peter Schumann, who began the Bread & Puppet Theater in New York City's Lower East Side in the 1960's. Until recently, the theater had performed tightly composed theater pieces presented by members of the company, as well as massive outdoor spectacles with hundreds of volunteer participants, all over the world. Production themes started out with small puppets enacting standard NYC concerns about such things as rats, police and problems with the neighborhood. But over time, they started to address broad social, political and environmental issues, and the puppets began getting bigger and bigger. Inspiration sprang from the poverty of the poor, the arrogance of war mongers, and the despair of the victims.

<snip>

http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Bread--Puppet-Museum-by-Bill-Cain-101229-572.html

A major Tibetan Buddhist Meditation Center
http://www.karmecholing.org/index.php


The St. Johnsbury Athenaeum
http://www.stjathenaeum.org/VLB-hudson-river/hudson-river.htm

[NYC_SKP]

1. I'm sorry. The choice is visible healthy power or hidden nasty power.

And, in effect, the blight on the landscape, anywhere, is homo sapiens in unsustainable numbers.

I find wind turbines to be pretty.

As pretty as covered bridges and old water powered mills, only shinier!

[cali]

2. I don't think you understand

what this is doing here. It's ruining wildlife habitat. It's affecting people who live close to the turbines. There's a problem with runoff.

This isn't just NIMBYISM. It's bad policy. It's bad for the economics of the region.

[NYC_SKP]

3. For the equivalent amount of power generation for these particular residents, what would you prefer?

Hydro and solar and biomass all have different and, arguably, more striking impacts on the environment and wildlife.

What in your opinion would be a better way of generating that energy?

[cali]

4. Yes, I do prefer hydro

and solar and biomass as well geothermal energy for heating.

[Fumesucker]

5. I'm not sure solar is a good choice for northern Vermont..

Geothermal requires specific conditions that are probably not existent in Vermont, hydro also requires specific conditions and has it's own set of environmental impacts..

[cali]

8. well, here's bernie talking about geothermal in Vermont

Vermont U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders says geothermal energy is helping heat more Vermont homes, businesses and schools.

On Monday Sanders, an independent, outlined some of the successes of geothermal heating projects in Vermont.

He says investments in geothermal energy will reduce the $350 billion a year that Americans spend to import oil from foreign countries.

Geothermal systems use underground temperatures to heat buildings in the winter and cool them in the summer. It costs only one-third as much as oil and tax credits are available to help defray installation costs.

The systems are in use in a number of Vermont buildings, including the Interstate 89 rest area in Sharon, three Vermont National Guard buildings.

<snip>

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505245_162-57419041/vermont-senator-to-discuss-geothermal-energy/

and there are several companies like this one:

http://www.independentpowerllc.com/

[NYC_SKP]

10. It's terrific, it reduces use of fuel oil and gas and electricity, but it won't run the lights...

...or power industry.

Something other than imported hydro and nuclear is going to have to provide electrical energy.

You're pretty far north for solar, but solar should be deployed.

I think you're going to either have to import (which is NIMBY) or do some wind if you want to be independent and low impact.

[cali]

13. Hydro Quebec is a done deal.

so yeah, we use it.

and Vermont energy consumption is the lowest in the country.

http://205.254.135.7/state/state-energy-profiles.cfm?sid=VT

[NYC_SKP]

14. Nope, Vermont is 42. California is the lowest PER CAPITA user of electricity.

http://energyalmanac.ca.gov/electricity/us_per_capita_electricity-2010.html

Now if you're talking about ALL energy, electricity and petrol, etc., Vermont is in the top ten, California top five, and NY is the lowest per capita user.

http://www.usnews.com/news/slideshows/the-10-states-that-use-the-least-energy-per-capita/11

[Fumesucker]

12. Ground source heat pumps are not the same thing as geothermal energy production..

My own area sits on billion year old granite, geothermal energy extraction is out of the question here but ground source heat pumps are fairly common since our air temperatures are high for five to six months of the year and the ground is often much cooler than the air.

There is no one technology that's going to give us all the renewable energy we need at every location, my own area is pretty decent for solar, useless for geothermal and nearly useless for wind. We are seeing more and more solar installations here but I have yet to see a windmill.

[NYC_SKP]

6. Checking on this, I see Vermont was 71% Nuclear in 2005 for electricity. Wow!

I don't know that the state has much capacity for geothermal, and much of it's hydropower electricity is imported from Canada.

It's a messy topic, but I do support more solar and better building codes to include solar and passive geothermal, but industry and commerce needs megawatts, not sure where they're going to come from.



ETA link: http://apps1.eere.energy.gov/states/electricity.cfm/state=VT#fuel

[FarCenter]

7. The Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, which Vermont wants to close

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermont_Yankee_Nuclear_Power_Plant

They want no nukes and no fracking and no wind? So they'll freeze in the dark.

Biomass might work -- most of New England was cut over before the loggers moved west to Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota and then to Washington and Oregon. There's a lot of firewood on those mountains.

[cali]

11. We really will freeze if industrial wind ruins the Kingdom

we are increasingly dependent on tourism. And people won't be coming here for all the activities I wrote about in my OP if the Kingdom is one big industrial wind farm.

[FarCenter]

18. Tourism won't last

With the price of energy going up, tourism will be declining significantly over the next two or three decades.

Vermont Comprehensive Energy Plan
http://www.vtenergyplan.vermont.gov/

Section 5.8 deals with wind energy.

It looks like the plan is to buy in electricity from Canada, adjacent states, continue to use in-state hydro, and implement more wind and biomass.


Biomass (wood) heating is already important and is likely to grow. I think that the reference to geothermal above is with respect to geothermal heat pumps, not geothermal power generation.

[cali]

9. you've got that wrong.

you're confusing what VY produced with what Vermont consumed. NOT one and the same. It provided 35% of the power used in the state in 2008 and that's way down today. None of the power companies in Vermont are purchasing power from VT Yankee.

Neither GMP or CVP is buying power from VY

The federal decision to allow Vermont Yankee to stay open is not impacting Green Mountain Power's immediate plans for energy.

GMP's contract with the state's only nuclear power plant expires in March. Yankee has provided power to Green Mountain Power for the last 40 years, but the two groups failed to reach a new agreement last year, in part due to uncertainty involving Yankee's future.
http://www.wcax.com/story/16567489/vt-yankee-ruling-wont-impact-gmp

From Wiki:
It provided 71.8% of all electricity generated in Vermont in 2008, which is 35% of the overall electricity used in the state.

[NYC_SKP]

15. 35% is still a big piece of the pie, more by far than the national piece of pie...

I stand corrected, states all import and export electricity, except for Hawaii.

And Hawaii is installing a LOT of wind energy.

I visited turbines on Oahu and Maui just the week before last, they don't ruin the landscape in my opinion.

Especially when you realize that Hawaii gets close to 80% of their electricity from petroleum.

[cali]

17. uh, did you miss the part where I said that

Vermont is no longer using power from VY at all?
And where on Maui?
Hopefully not any where near Hana.

[NYC_SKP]

19. South of Lahaina, far from Hana.

Conditions are superb for wind on Hawaii, and the people are smart enough to go with it because they see the alternatives.

Statewide, they're right at 10% renewable, but the big island is 33%.

Each island is independent.

If Vermont was an island like Maui or Oahu, the discussion would be quite different, but all the continental US states enjoy the ability to shift impacts.

It's good for load balancing, but bad for facing realities.

In any event, the more people learn the better!

ETA photo:

[johnd83]

16. I think what is lost here is that any form of energy production results in something undesirable

The law of entropy basically says that when you convert energy it results in something undesirable. Of course it is far more complicated than that, but the point is that any form of energy production has significant drawbacks. We just don't know what the drawbacks of wind and solar are yet because they haven't been deployed on a wide scale. The automobile was considered a clean device because it didn't leave piles of manure all over major cities. In time, we know it causes a lot of damage. I worry that a lot of "clean energy" advocates overlook the potential downsides of the technology. I am not saying that fossil fuels are any better, I am just very dubious about how well we have thought out the long term impact of removing several dozen terawatt hours from the environment.

[FarCenter]

20. Scale matters

Annual energy usage in the US is about 100,000,000,000,000 BTU.

[JDPriestly]

21. The wind turbines can't possibly do as much damage as leaking gas tanks

in old gas stations did some years ago.

And by the way, back when cars guzzled a lot more gas than they do today, crumby looking mom and pop gas stations were pretty ugly on the main streets of small towns. Sometimes there would be one on each corner of an intersection.

Energy is not pretty.

Nowadays, cars are more efficient and we don't have nearly so many ugly gas stations. That will happen with alternative energy such as wind energy also. Bear with it. Deal with the pain, and things will improve.

Sorry that the beauty of your state is being sacrificed. But wind is actually good for the air and the water. So it's a trade-off.

[Mopar151]

22. Coupla things about the Kingdom, and bad people

Some of the people who run Kingdom Trails are rude, nasty "dogs in the manger" to our club - we run the hillclimbs at Burke Mountain, and need to control the trail where it crosses the Auto Road on Burke, for the safety of trail users and our competitors. In a variety of ways, some of which place Kingdom Trails users at serious risk, these people have fought tooth and nail to be rid of us. And our members have been competing here since at least 1956.....

And one of the best wind sites in the Kingdom (the old radar station), has been blocked from development by purchase of the "view rights" by Ginn Resorts / Bobby Ginn, the shady Florida developer who controls the Burke Mountain ski area.

We are not bad people - ask any of the local folks we deal with, like the Constable, or the fire chief, Wayne Greer.

[cali]

24. I actually wouldn't object to East Mountain being used as a

site for wind. It's the ONLY site I can think of offhand that is well suited to such a proposal. And I'm quite familiar with the site- I've hiked it and skied up it. The road is already there as well. As for your beef with Kingdom Trails- I'm not getting in the middle of that.

And who called anyone "bad people"?

[Mopar151]

26. I did.

Much of the reason East Mountain is a great wind site is that the road, and some other infrastructure, is already in place. No need to tear up near-virgin forest to build roads capable of holding up to the "heavy haulers" needed to move the tower parts, and necessary cranes to erect them.

We seem to have ongoing problems with bicyclists - Ironic, considering the number of former bike racers in our club. And we seem to get along with most individual bicyclists - but there are a significant minority with an odd sense of virtue/entitlement. And, no, "civilians" won't be allowed next to the road at our events - years of experience have shown us that most are not to be trusted to keep themselves safe, as they cannot comprehend the speeds we can attain on these roads.

[MadHound]

23. Oh Noes!

So by showing an unfinished construction site, these people hope to convince us that somehow "Big Wind" is destroying the mountains.

Every single road through those mountains destroyed more of the mountain than these wind turbines are. Yet I doubt there was much, if any, complaint about those roads.

This sounds more like a bunch of people getting sucked into throwing in with the real "Big Energy" folks in order to try and stop a green, renewable energy resource. Which does more harm to the area, wind turbines or year after year of coal pollution? Wind turbines are year after year of leaking radioactive material? Wind turbines or flooding thousands of square acres for hydro?

Rather than disingenuous pictures of construction sites, let's take a look at the finished product instead.


Sorry, but that doesn't look so bad to me. I'd rather have that than coal smoke everywhere, or radioactive material leaking everywhere.

This is nothing but NIMBYism.

[cali]

25. You have NO idea what you're spewing about. None.

I originally supported wind projects in the Kingdom. It wasn't until I saw what was going on and heard from people who know a great deal more than I do about the ecology and environment of these sites that I changed my mind.


And it sure as fuck is not a bunch of suckers who were duped. But then again YOU don't have a fucking clue.

[Throd]

27. I think the towers are graceful in appearance.