Big Wind is Coming to Thoreau Country
First Wind (now Sun Edison) has applied for meteorological (wind testing) towers for Misery Ridge in Somerset County, just a few miles from the shore of Moosehead Lake. Maine's Department of Environmental Protection will approve the "met towers" next week.
(See Misery Ridge at the red dot left of center.)
What does this mean? They want to build a wind project there. They'll have to measure and analyze the wind data for at least a year before they apply for a wind project permit, but you need to mobilize now.
Moosehead: Pristine. North Woods. Gorgeous. Black at night. Thoreau.
Where Winnepesaukee and Sebago folks won't go. Too many bugs. Too far to drive. No WalMarts.
A few years ago most of us were OK violating Maine to save the planet. But now we know how this wind energy fad doesn't move the needle and it costs taxpayers and ratepayers billions.
Remember how much time and money was spent by Natural Resources Council of Maine for over a decade fighting against the Plum Creek Development plan at Lily Bay? Because that area needed to stay pristine, unspoiled, wild?
Look at the map again. It's straight across Moosehead Lake from Lily Bay.
Remember how incensed NRCM was that Plum Creek would develop its shore on the Lily Bay peninsula? How horrified NRCM was about the intrusion on the North Woods?
Of course you do.
Remember how NRCM has pretty much blindly supported every wind turbine ever proposed in Maine, despite zero evidence that wind energy does anything to reduce CO2 emissions?
What will NRCM do about Misery?
(BTW ... How appropriately named is this site?)
Too many Mainers have waited too long to act. Too many communities have sat back while Big Wind's advance-people infiltrate the locals. The wind weasels put on their shiny Bean Boots and starched barn jackets. They leave their BMWs in Portland and they drive their rented Ford F-150s to the North Country to make deals with landowners and selectmen eager to enhance municipal revenues.
This is not fiction. It's real drama. And it's tragedy.
Look at this map and imagine sitting on the beach at Lily Bay State Park. Beaver Cove. Blair Hill, Spencer Bay. Norheast Carry. Kineo, Brassua...
Black flies, waves lapping the shore, black water and starry sky looking exactly like it did when Henry and Joe paddled there 160 years ago.
But wait.
Who the heck moved LaGuardia airport up here to the North Woods??? The red lights flashing across the black Moosehead horizon make it look more like Canobie Lake State Park that Lily Bay State Park.
You get the (ugly) picture. If industrial wind energy was capable of putting a dent in fossil fuel use...if it could actually do something to get us off oil...if wind could reduce our electricity costs...we might tolerate and even welcome its Prudential Tower-sized intrusion on Maine's Quality of Place, on our North Woods. So that Massachusetts can feel good about its profligate energy usage.
But Big Wind is unnecessary, unaffordable, unsustainable, and useless.
So ask your self this:
Will you allow Moosehead to be violated by a massive industrial complex that adds a tiny fraction of 1% new electricity to the grid?
If you love the North Woods, it you love Moosehead, if you love Maine, it's time to be like NRCM;
BE A NIMBY.
What is YOUR message to Big Wind?
Get involved NOW. Join the opposition group. Scare them off before their roots dig in.
Contact FMM here and we will connect you with the opposition group that is now forming.
Don't wait. Big Wind has a way of gaining a beachhead before opponents even know the beach has been touched.
Get informed and get involved now.
To join the opposition group click here.
To encourage NRCM to oppose this travesty click here.
