November 2009
1 post
June 2009
2 posts
Rebuttal of NRCM's misguided support of RHW
Mr. Voohees, I have read with dismay your ill informed comments to the DEP regarding wind power in general and Record Hill Wind LLC in particular. It is clear that your organization has transformed from a force for the protection of Maine’s precious natural resources to a force for the destruction of Maine’s mountains in the name of some hoped for future benefit based on the...
May 2009
11 posts
A Discussion of the Wind Industry's Flawed Noise...
Following is testimony submitted to the DEP for the Record Hill Wind LLC application. Exhibits referenced in the text can be found in the “More Information” section of this website.
Ms. Beth Callahan, Coordinator, Record Hill Wind LLC application.
Maine DEP
Dear Beth, Having read the decisions on the Stetson II and Rollins projects I feel the need to submit additional testimony...
Photos
French Island
The Howard Camp on Sunset Cove
Hedgehog Hill
Flathead Mountain, Roxbury Notch, and Black Mountain. Will dozens of four hundred foot tall arm waving behemoth machines improve this view? King and Gardiner say they would look “simply awesome”. How about “simply HORRIBLE!!”.
The picnic table waits patiently for summer as ice fishing off French Island fills the winter...
April 2009
4 posts
More outrageous legislation.."An Act To Establish...
I listened to the testimony on this bill today on the Legislative webcast. Speaker Hannah Pingree introduced the bill. “Decisions we make today will shape the future”. The bill essentially requires anyone thinking of putting a shovel in the ground to first analyze what impact the project will have on global warming and plan accordingly. It is very broad in its reach but hazy in its...
Demand for power falls with economy
CMP’s industrial customers used 14 percent less in the first quarter, reflecting slow times in manufacturing. By TUX TURKEL, Staff Writer Portland Press Herald April 10, 2009
Electricity sales to Central Maine Power Co.’s industrial customers fell 14 percent during the first quarter of the year, a stunning decline that helps illustrate how hard the...
Industrial wind project targets southern Vermont
It was standing room only tonight at the Tinmouth Community Center, as Per White-Hansen, an entrepreuner from Charlotte, Vermont gave a power point presentation showing 60 turbines covering 13 miles of mountain ridges in the towns of Ira, Clarendon, Poultney and Middletown Springs. The company’s website describes this as the “northern” portion of a larger project that extends as...
Those pesky turbine contracts: Important questions
By Nancy Murphy
As I prepared for this month’s column, my initial thought was to present brief quotations from industrial wind turbine contracts that had crossed my desk. I quickly discovered that approach would be woefully inadequate and insufficient. Just reading quotes and clauses from these contracts would not fully convey the underlying risks to landowners who choose to enter into such...
March 2009
10 posts
Smart grid or not, wind power is unwise
There is much discussion these days about how the “smart grid” will even out the supply demand curve by “load balancing”, thereby allowing intermittent sources like wind power to be efficiently integrated into the electrical delivery system. The assumption is that if wind power can be accommodated it therefore is justifiable to subsidize the wind industry since it...
A village of idiots?
The following comment was left on today’s Sun Journal online article about the Maine Medical Association meeting regarding wind turbine health issues. Mac makes some good points about the noise levels at Roxbury Pond. I hope he is wrong about his characterization of the citizens of Roxbury. When the time comes in the near future to reconsider the decision to allow industrial wind turbines...
"HYSTERIA: Exposing the secret agenda behind...
The U.N. recently announced global warming is leading inexorably to global catastrophe. Al Gore won the “best documentary” Oscar for his disaster film “An Inconvenient Truth.” The news media beat the drum of “climate catastrophe” daily, all but ignoring scientists who say the threat is overblown or nonexistent. And across America, school children are frightened...
After 50 years of environment protection MNRC...
The following announcement from MNRC is a perfect example of how far the organization has fallen from its long legacy of environmental protection in Maine. My response to this announcement follows:
“Please join us on March 25th at 7:00pm at Bates College for the 2009 Muskie Environmental Lecture. This year’s talk, “Protecting the Environment: Reflections on the Role of...
Saudi Arabia Warns on Rapid Shift to Renewable...
2009-03-16 16:20:57.331 GMT By Tara Patel March 16 (Bloomberg) -- Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, cautioned against falling investment in fossil fuels and a “premature shift” to renewable energy, which may leave the world short of fuels when the economy recovers. All energy sources have a role in meeting the energy demand though the fossil fuels of oil, natural gas and...
Renewable Energy Symposium at University of Maine...
Today was very worthwhile. We participated in 4 different group think tank discussions where we discussed prepared statements on foreign oil, energy independence, renewable energy, government’s role in energy policy, nuclear power. From these discussions we formulated questions for the morning panel which included off shore wind power advocate, and ocean energy task force member...
Follow the climate change debate going on in...
News
Welcome to the press room for the second International Conference on Climate Change, March 8-10, 2009 in New York. The theme of the conference is: “Global warming: was it ever really a crisis?”
If you are a journalist seeking more information about the conference, speakers or co-sponsors, please contact Dan Miller (dmiller@heartland.org) or Tammy Nash (tnash@heartland.org) (312)...
More Maine doctors concerned about wind turbines
Wednesday, March 4, 2009 For Immediate Release: At its monthly meeting held Tuesday, March 3, 2009, the Medical Staff of Northern Maine Medical Center unanimously approved the release of the following statement: Health Concerns and the Need for Careful Siting of Wind Turbines Members of Northern Maine Medical Center’s medical staff endorse the use of alternative energies. We echo the...
Wendy Todd and the golden rule
Ignorance is bliss. I wish I could go back and find the bubble that I was living in before industrial wind. We grow up here in the states thinking that we are safe and reasonably well protected. If we follow the golden rule that life will somehow be kind and that what is right will prevail. The residents of Mars Hill assumed that their town leaders and the Maine DEP would never let anything bad...
Offshore windpower is 16 years old in Europe -...
This is the first in a series of blog posts about alternative and renewable energy that works, does not destroy precious scenic resources, degrade wildlife habitat, or harm communities with turbine noise. Dong Energy, Denmark’s largest electric utility does not build land based wind projects, and most of Europe has moved away from the blight of wind farms that have ruined much of the...
February 2009
21 posts
Maine's Greatest Lakes survey incomplete,...
This letter was sent to the Maine State Planning Office, the agency responsible for the 1989 Report #90 entitled “Maine’s Greatest Lakes”. This document is the centerpiece of the expedited permit legislation passed in April 2008 that paves the way for the “wind rush” that is beginning to sweep the state. Lakes on the list are afforded protection from scenic impacts...
Mountains not Windmills
Portland Phoenix Letters : February 27, 2009
I just read your article (“Transmission Troubles,” by Deirdre Fulton, February 13) in the Portland Phoenix. A great article that points out the fact Maine is not ready yet to dive headlong into the alternative-energy business. Without much more planning, the results will be disastrous for the Maine ratepayer. Other aspects of the...
Wind Farms Threaten Endangered Whooping Crane
If US Fish and Wildlife can’t protect the last 266 whooping cranes in the US, why don’t we save the taxpayers a whole lot of money and fire the lot of them. They can go to work for the American Wind Energy Association counting dead birds.
Posted on: Friday, 29 February 2008, 00:20 CST News Wire
Federal officials warned today that wind farms have become a potential new threat to...
The Evidence Shows Alternative Energy is Expensive
Wind power is subsidized at $23 per MW compared to 25 cents for clean burning domestic natural gas. Your tax dollars at work.
Wall Street Journal
By MAX SCHULZ
In signing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act this week in Denver, President Barack Obama claimed that the law — which among other things will ramp up funding for renewable energy development — is “laying...
Living with turbines - a personal account
If the email I received today from Wendy Todd does not convince you that turbines are bad for people (and other living things), either your names are King and Gardiner, or your paycheck is signed by the wind industry. In preparation for the Roxbury DEP hearing on Wednesday I contacted Wendy to see how things were in Mars Hill, more than a year after the turbines went on line:
Steve,
Health...
Wind turbines make people sick: professor
Havas, who studies environmental toxicology at the university in Peterborough, has added her voice to the call by Dawn-Euphemia Township council and others who want Ontario to study the impact of the growing number of wind generation projects sprouting up across the province. “Why would you want to put a lot of these wind turbines near people, have some percentage of them get sick, and then...
Rumford mountain eyed for wind farm
By Eileen M. Adams , Staff Writer Friday, February 13, 2009
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RUMFORD - The company that built Maine’s first wind turbine farm in Mars Hill wants to build a smaller project on the back side of Black Mountain. John Lamontagne, spokesman for the Newton, Mass.-based First Wind, said Thursday that meteorological towers have been installed along the side of the...
Rumford Community Hospital medical staff calls for...
Following is the statement issued by the staff of the Rumford Community Hospital, and sent to Gov. Baldacci, Dr. Mills of Maine Center for Disease Control, as well as the Rumford Falls Times, where it appears today, and the Lewiston Sun Journal. HEALTH CONCERNS GENERATED BY WIND TURBINES As members of the Rumford Community Hospital medical staff we endorse the concept of ...
Rumford Community Hospital medical staff calls for...
Following is the statement issued by the staff of the Rumford Community Hospital, and sent to Gov. Baldacci, Dr. Mills of Maine Center for Disease Control, as well as the Rumford Falls Times, where it appears today, and the Lewiston Sun Journal. HEALTH CONCERNS GENERATED BY WIND TURBINES As members of the Rumford Community Hospital medical staff we endorse the concept of alternative energy...
Wendy Todd's Testimony to the Legislature
Wendy Todd and her husband live near the turbine project at Mars Hill.
Sent: Monday, May 07, 2007 1:37 PM Subject: Fw: testimony - living with wind turbines ——- Subject: testimony - Living with industrial wind turbines Testimony made on April 30, 2007 to Maine legislature by Wendy Todd of Aroostook County, Maine. Ms. Todd lives near the Mars Hill wind “farm”, which went on...
Wind Turbine Syndrome in Japan
Something in the wind as mystery illnesses rise
BY TSUYOSHI TAKEDA
ASAHI SHIMBUN SENIOR STAFF WRITER
2009/2/6
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Residents living near wind turbines are increasingly complaining of headaches, dizziness, insomnia and other ailments, sparking fears that the new energy source could pose a risk to public health.
Although the cause of the problem remains unclear,...
Videos
Life Under a Wind Plant
The Voices of Tug Hill
Wind Turbine Syndrome and wildlife
Wind Turbine Syndrome is becoming more widely recognized as a serious medical issue for many people living near grid scale wind turbines. In her soon to be published, peer reviewed study titled “Wind Turbine Syndrome” Dr. Nina Pierpont carefully and systematically analyzes people’s biological response to turbine noise and blade movement. Her findings show, among other things, ...
Correspondence with Rob Gardiner
Following is an email correspondence between Rob Gardiner of Independence Wind and Steve Thurston of Concerned Citizens to Save Roxbury:
On Sat, Jan 24, 2009 at 11:59 AM, Steve Thurston wrote: Dear Angus and/or Rob, I am hoping you will be able to answer a few questions for me. Thanks for the contact link on your website. Do you agree with the NYSERDA study, and German studies that indicate...
John Stossel says to Al Gore, "Gimme a break!"
The wind industry, which includes Governor Baldacci, his appointed department heads, and Angus King and Rob Gardiner are forcing turbines down the throats of Maine’s citizens, claiming that wind power will slow down global warming and for that reason we must be willing to sacrifice thousands of square miles of Maine’s scenic vistas to thousands of behemoth arm waving wind machines.
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January 2009
17 posts
Offer of free electricity demeaning to Roxbury...
In a successful effort to convince Roxbury voters to support a zoning change to allow wind turbines, Angus King and Rob Gardiner proposed to make direct payments to Central Maine Power to provide a 500 kilowatt credit to the electric bills of every property owner in Roxbury. This blatant form of bribery is demeaning of the citizenry. By encouraging a sense of entitlement to undeserved benefits...