| Wind Watch is a registered educational charity, founded in 2005. |
Guides, sporting camps oppose wind farm
Credit: By Tux Turkel, Staff Writer, Kennebec Journal, www.kjonline.com 16 December 2010 ~~
Translate: FROM English | TO English
Translate: FROM English | TO English
A coaltion that includes professional Maine guides and sporting camp owners has joined an effort to stop a proposed wind farm in eastern Maine.
The group also is asking Gov.-elect Paul LePage for a moratorium on large wind projects until cost-benefit studies of existing wind farms can be carried out.
The group, the Partnership for the Preservation of the Downeast Lakes Watershed, held a news conference today in Bangor to announce their plans.
The focus of the effort now is stopping a proposed wind farm near Route 6 in Carroll Plantation and Kossuth Township. Known as Bowers Mountain, it is being planned by a subsidiary of Boston-based First Wind, the state’s dominant wind energy company.
“First Wind has a track record of carefully siting and successfully developing excellent wind projects that have enjoyed broad support from the environmental and outdoors communities,” said John Lamontagne, First Wind’s director of communications. ” For our Bowers project, we’ve had solid support thus far from the Appalachian Mountain Club, Natural Resources Council of Maine and Maine Audubon.
“We’re very confident that this project would not negatively impact the activities in which these organizations engage.”
Opponents say the tall, lighted towers spread along ridgelines will be visible across the Downeast Lakes region and harm the outdoors-based economy that includes guides, sporting camps, outfitters and supporting businesses. They also worry that blasting and road building will wash silt into headwater brooks that host landlocked salmon.
“Visitors who have been coming to the region for generations will simply decide to go elsewhere,” the group said in a news release.
The opponents include the Maine Professional Guides Association and the Maine Sporting Camp Association. They say they aren’t opposed to wind energy, but that improperly placed, large-scale projects threaten their businesses.
They are calling on the state to revisit its current regulations for siting industrial-scale wind projects.
This article is the work of the source indicated. Any opinions expressed in it are not necessarily those of National Wind Watch.
The copyright of this article resides with the author or publisher indicated. As part of its noncommercial educational effort to present the environmental, social, scientific, and economic issues of large-scale wind power development to a global audience seeking such information, National Wind Watch endeavors to observe “fair use” as provided for in section 107 of U.S. Copyright Law and similar “fair dealing” provisions of the copyright laws of other nations. Send requests to excerpt, general inquiries, and comments via e-mail.
| Wind Watch relies entirely on User Funding |
 (via Stripe) |
 (via Paypal) |
Share:
[ Short URL: https://wind-watch.org/news/?p=44612 ]
