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| Lowell Mountains |
By Steve E. Wright, The New York Times, September 29, 2011
BULLDOZERS arrived a couple of weeks ago at the base of the nearby
Lowell Mountains and began clawing their way through the forest to the
ridgeline, where Green Mountain Power plans to erect 21 wind turbines, each
rising to 459 feet from the ground to the tip of the blades.
This desecration, in the name of “green” energy, is taking place in
Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom on one of the largest tracts of private wild land
in the state. Here and in other places — in Maine and off Cape Cod, for
instance — the allure of wind power threatens to destroy environmentally
sensitive landscapes.
Erecting those turbines along more than three miles of ridgeline
requires building roads — with segments of the ridgeline road itself nearly
half as wide as one of Vermont’s interstate highways — in places where the
travel lanes are now made by bear, moose, bobcat and deer.
It requires changing the profile of the ridgeline to provide access to
cranes and service vehicles. This is being accomplished with approximately
700,000 pounds of explosives that will reduce parts of the mountaintops to
rubble that will be used to build the access roads.
It also requires the clear-cutting on steep slopes of 134 acres of
healthy forest, now ablaze in autumn colors. Studies have shown that
clear-cutting can lead to an increase in erosion to high-quality headwater streams,
robbing them of life and fouling the water for downstream residents, wild and
human.
The electricity generated by this project will not appreciably reduce
Vermont’s greenhouse gas emissions. Only 4 percent of those emissions now
result from electricity generation. (Nearly half come from cars and trucks, and
another third from the burning of heating oil.)
Wind doesn’t blow all the time, or at an optimum speed, so the actual
output of the turbines — the “capacity factor” — is closer to about one-third of
the rated capacity of 63 megawatts. At best, this project will produce enough
electricity to power about 24,000 homes per year, according to the utility.
Still, wind does blow across Vermont’s ridgelines. The Vermont Public
Interest Research Group, for instance, has suggested that wind power could
provide as much as 25 percent of the state’s electricity needs, which would
require turbines on 29 miles of ridgeline. Other wind advocates, notably David
Blittersdorf, the chief executive of a wind and solar power company in
Williston, Vt., has urged that wind turbines be placed along 200 miles of
ridgeline in the state.
But it is those same Green Mountain ridgelines that attracted nearly
14 million visitors to Vermont in 2009, generating $1.4 billion in tourism
spending. The mountains are integral to our identity as the Green Mountain
State, and provide us with clean air and water and healthy wildlife
populations.
Vermont’s proud history of leadership in developing innovative,
effective environmental protection is being tossed aside. This project will set
an ominous precedent by ripping apart a healthy, intact ecosystem in the guise
of doing something about climate change. In return, Green Mountain Power will
receive $44 million in federal production tax credits over 10 years.
Ironically, most of the state’s environmental groups have not taken a
stand on this ecologically disastrous project. Apparently, they are unwilling
to stand in the way of “green” energy development, no matter how much
destruction it wreaks upon Vermont’s core asset: the landscape that has made us
who we are.
The pursuit of large-scale, ridgeline wind power in Vermont represents
a terrible error of vision and planning and a misunderstanding of what a
responsible society must do to slow the warming of our planet. It also
represents a profound failure to understand the value of our landscape to our
souls and our economic future in Vermont.
Steve E. Wright, an
aquatic biologist, is a former commissioner of the Vermont Fish and Wildlife
Department.
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