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Post by buckshot (Ben) on Jan 25, 2011 23:07:20 GMT -5
I went to the meeting in my home town of Readsboro Vt. A company is trying to get permission on putting up 15 410ft wind turbines across a ridge that connects Readsboro and Searsburg. I have hunted most of the area they will be building on. Our town has voted to have the project go forward. Now it is just a matter of the National forest to sign off and give or don't give there blessing. It is quite a big deal for everyone because National forest belongs to everyone not just the people who live here. This could prove to be a big deal as this is the first time a wind farm could be allowed to be built on Green Mt National Forest in the country. I would be for large scale wind facilities if they didn't cause so much destruction to the land scape and have such a small impact on our energy needs. We have had and existing wind farm for 17years in the same area and not one of the people at the meeting could tell us if the wind farm has actually turned a profit. Its seems as long as the government pays subsidies for them to go up someone will be there to scoff up the dollars weather they work or not. I have done a lot of research on wind farms and what I have learned has been with and open mind. Most of what I have learned is that the environmental impact of them for the payback is just not worth covering Vermont's ridge lines with them. Blinking lights and a wiring of blades is not what I wish to see unless they are going to really make and impact. Also it seems the 154,000 dollars my town of Readsboro is going to receive is what has driven our towns people to buy into this wind project. Environmental impact or feasibility makes no difference to them. The company picked a good time to move forward with this project(recession) To me that doesn't sit well. Well just wanted to inform more of the outdoors man and women of Vt and everywhere. The national forest is taking comments for two more weeks or so send and email if you wish. GMNF is all of ours Buckshot464 Here is some more info on the wind site, www.essgroup.com/government-nepa-vermont.htmlwww.iberdrolarenewables.us/pdf/PPM_Deerfield_Newsletter.pdfrealwindinfoforme.com/blog/iberdrola-stealing-our-national-forests/www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2009/04/iberdrola-opens-texas-wind-farm-receives-approval-for-vermont-project
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Post by fishinmachine on Jan 26, 2011 6:42:31 GMT -5
you mean to tell me they can build a huge wind farm on GMNF but you can't drive your ATV on it!!!,,How stupid is that!!!
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Post by bootstrap on Jan 26, 2011 9:39:46 GMT -5
I am sure shummy will stick his nose in this and make the decision for all of us. Has seems to think he is the keeper of the forests here in vermont.
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Post by backforty on Jan 26, 2011 9:50:29 GMT -5
I have property in New York with hundreds of these large turbines in the area. They dont seem to bother the wildlife whatsoever. Turkeys roam and roost normally and very close to the turbines. Deer act as they normally would. Alot of the land owners plant grow plots in the openings and deer and turkeys are in them no problem. I,d love to have a couple on my propery. The prices i hear from individuals i know get $8000 anually per turbine. They maintain the gravel roads that lead to them and they gate them if you would like. The property taxes are very low in the towns that have the turbines. So far the negative ive heard and seen is there is a small flashing or blinking light on them. You can barter with he companies and make thm work with you. I would have THE COMPANIES plant and maintain grow plots along the sides of the access roads, plant some apple trees and other food and donate to a wildlif fund. Squeeze them---they will pay if they wwant in! Look what st.Albans City is doing to the Company that wnts to put Wal mart in. I think you could call it a legal form of extorsion!
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Post by buckshot (Ben) on Jan 26, 2011 16:48:44 GMT -5
Thats interesting back forty, Thanks for the positive spin. But the real thing is do they really work or is government subsidies paying the bill which in turn means we all pay. We are all trying to find ways to dig our country out of the hole and I think these wind projects are just digging us deeper. If they work so great why does all the countries that have been doing wind power for years getting away from it and saying its not viable? Glad to hear the low impact on some wildlife. The other problem is they are covering our Ridge lines with them. Not cool in my book.
Here is where to send a comment.
Follow up on where to send comments on this wind turbine project. The Forest Service reuires very specifically how to make your comments so they will count. Here is their instuctions: In order to be considered, comments should be provided orally or in writing (phone, facsimile, mail, or email), and received (postmarked or facsimile imprinted) no later than the closing date of the comment period, February 18, 2010. Written comments are preferred. Please make your comments as specific as possible as they relate to the Proposed Action, alternatives, and anticipated impacts of the proposed activities. Please include your name, address, and, if possible, telephone number and email address. All comments should be sent to: Bob Bayer, Project Coordinator, USDA Forest Service, 2538 Depot Street, Manchester Center, VT 05255 (mail); (802) 362-1251 (facsimile). Comments submitted electronically via email should be sent to “comments-eastern-green-mt-finger-lakes-manchester@fs.fed.us” (no quotes). Electronic comments should be in TXT, RTF, DOC, PDF or other Microsoft Office-compatible formats, with the Subject titled “Deerfield Wind SDEIS Comments”. Comments may also be submitted by telephone to 802-362-2307 ext. 218 (voice mail is available) during normal working hours of 8:00 to 4:30. Comments received in response to this letter, including name and address of those who comment, will be considered part of the public record for this Project and will be available for public review1. If you would like more information concerning the Project or this Invitation to Comment, please contact Bob Bayer at (802) 362-2307 ext. 218 (voice) or rbayer@fs.fed.us (email). Email comments on the SDEIS will ONLY be accepted to the comments email address in the paragraph above, “comments-eastern-green-mt-finger-lakes-manchester@fs.fed.us” (no quotes), and NOT at the “rbayer@fs.fed.us” email address.
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Post by backforty on Jan 27, 2011 10:01:49 GMT -5
My understanding is that most of the turbines are built in China. I find this a definite downer!
it would be interesting to see if these were really worth the investment made.
They can still put a couple on my property for the $$$$ they pay annually! ;D
Paint them cammo and the blades sky blue with white clouds!
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Post by mikep on Feb 9, 2011 21:54:14 GMT -5
Buckshot...
I agree with you, Vermont does not need 400 foot whirling, ugly, bird killing towers on its ridges. Wind Power is not adequate for base load, is inefficient and no more than a fad. Our public service Department expects us to pay 30 cents a kilowatt to make them profitable versus about six cents for Hydro and nuclear. (Wind turbines, they are not profitable, they cost probably seven times what hydro does) To pay them 30 cents is welfare on steroids for the developers who seem to not be from Vermont in the majority in the first place. Who in their right mind thinks paying 30 cents a kilowatt is going to be good for the homeowner and the Vermont economy. We have plenty of cheap clean renewable (Hydro+nuclear). No one seems to care if wind power will help to bankrupt home owners and small business.
Wind should go nowhere until and unless they can produce wind power at competitive rates , unsubsidized and off our ridges.
ON the way from Swanton west on route 11 toward Malone, near Chautauqua there is a forest of these out of earth monsters that have destroyed the landscape and scenic beauty. If you get out of your car you can hear them , a low rumble that I don't know how the adjacent homeowners stand the sound. When I saw that I felt the town had sold its soul for tax abatement and destroyed nature as its consequence. The area looks like a moonscape. The towers look like giant alive robots.
All the tree huggers in our state who want to limit Vermont traditions, including zoning out our right to build homes above 1400 feet, some how are strangely silent on this. They are hypocrites on the first order. Believe me they work together , have a communication network and they decide what they support and oppose (VPIRG, CLF, VNRC, Vermont Law School , as examples). then they lobby the Legislature who again has a net work of these types elected to represent their thinking.
this week I saw an older man from Lowell, who opposes his town's sell-out for tax dollars to approve wind on this remote range of beautiful mountains, actually have tears streaming down his face. Tears of sorrow for the loss of the green mountains to this farce. I feel the same way he does.
I use to hunt searsburg a lot in the sixties and when GMP put the two test towers up long ago, I got sick to my stomach to see that intrusion into a remote forest. I had fear they would want to grow these things, and foul our ridges everywhere. Governor Douglas had it right, not to destroy the unique beauty of the ridges , for a few dollars and no over-all real gain to our energy needs.
ON a cost benefit basis, there is no benefit but an outrageous burden of cost to the public and to our natural resources on the ridges. If someone where to say , the benefit is some power of our own; its not our own, its the owners at too high a price given our states powerful alternative to buy cheap clean power.
These people in charge of our permitting at PSD should have to consider the alternative of cheap abundant clean power available to us (Hydro Quebec, NY Power (Hydro), Vermont Yankee) that could move this state forward and keep the scenic ridge beauty intact and unmolested.
Buckshot , why they didn't tell you the profit at the meeting is the existing towers did not turn a profit because they could not get the rates they needed for that power production. Its a capital and operating loss. this is what gets me upset, is the probable misrepresentation by these people who should know and be expected to know the basics.
MikeP
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Post by vthunter79 on Feb 10, 2011 9:39:49 GMT -5
Can't use atv's on state land, cause they're noisy, smelly, and drunk rednecks will cause erosion and destroy the natural beauty of the forest. (the basic position(s) I've heard against) Let's carve access roads throughout the land and install 400' tall wind tubines instead. (typically the people against the ATV's are in full support of these turbines) Can't wait to run my A/C unit on a calm, humid day in July from these "green" windturbines then maybe I can be more politically correct.........wait, what??? They don't make electricity on days like that.....sounds like a great source of power......soon you'll only be able to have electricity when it's windy or sunny. I know I never use electricity any other time. GMP and the whole "green" energy groups apparently haven't noticed that Spain has already tried this and it didn't work. A conventional generating plant runs 24/7/365 putting (x) amount of power out on the grid. These "green" energies put varying amounts of power onto the grid at varying times.....very unpredictable. Hard to run anything electric when you don't really know when you're going to have an ample amount of electricity; or for how long. And then to top it off.....I pay "energy efficiency" charges (aka TAX) on my electric bill, my rates go up cause these damn things are so expensive; plus I subsidize their installation through the taxes I pay!!! Here's a couple videos of what they're good at!!
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Post by sleepswithdafishes on Feb 10, 2011 11:21:35 GMT -5
Its all about feeling good!!! Our goverment has done a good job of bs us into thinking these are a great source of energy!!! Green and clean!! These companys are making fortunes off of tax payers dollars!! This fall I had a bunch of the people that worked on the wind towers here in sheffield stay with us at our hotel!! Great bunch of guys spent a ton of money in this area!! So With that said its hard for struggling local areas to say no to them!! Maybe short sighted?As far as the national forest in my opinion they should stay off!!!!! Sleeps
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Post by simongerty on Mar 7, 2011 17:11:43 GMT -5
Ben,
The windmills in searsburg have been there for almost 15 years and they don't work for crap.
The Poor Record of the Searsburg, Vermont, Wind Plant
A report on the poor performance of Vermont's Searsburg wind project was published in The Caledonian-Record of St. Johnsbury (Vt) on December 17, 2003. It is not available on line. It was written by Eleanor Tillinghast, an environmental advocate in southwest Massachusetts, and originally appeared in slightly different form in The Berkshire Eagle of Pittsfield (Mass) on November 30.
The wind project in Searsburg, a southern Vermont town of 85 people, began operation in 1997 and consists of 11 towers with a total rated capacity of 6 MW. It replaced a forested ridge top. Tillinghast examined annual reports of Green Mountain Power (GMP), the utility that owns the project (it was built by the multinational Enxco), and evaluations for the federal government by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI).
[Click for PDF files of GMP's annual reports: 2002 (540 KB), 2001 (600 KB), 2000 (840 KB). Click for EPRI's large PDF reports: 3rd year (1.7 MB), 2nd year (4.3 MB), 1st year (8.1 MB).
For 2002, GMP reported the plant's output as 1.2 MW in the winter and only 0.5 MW in the summer (when demand is higher). Its average annual output has consistently been less than 25% of its rated capacity and has decreased every year.
During the three years evaluated by EPRI (July 1997 through June 2000), Searsburg generated electricity, even a trickle, little more than 60% of the time. Besides the intermittency of wind, Vermont's notorious weather ("if you don't like it, just wait a minute") took its toll. Tillinghast quotes the person responsible for maintaining Searsburg: "Lightning is the big monster up here on the mountain." Lightning damage was responsible for 24% of all downtime during the three years of EPRI's study. In May 1998 one storm damaged eight turbines. In January 2000, a damaged turbine couldn't be fixed until April because a crane couldn't get up the mountain in the winter.
Wind also caused downtime, with the number of faults increasing with wind speed. Electricity output was found to decrease as wind speed increased.
On average, each of Searsburg's 11 turbines was down an average of 83 hours every month (more than 11% of the time). GMP reported a maintenance cost four times the industry norm in 2002.
Proponents of the Searsburg project said in 1996 that it would provide 0.5% of Vermont's electricity. In 2002 and 2001, it represented 0.5% of GMP's energy source, which provides about a third of the state's electricity. Its net production was 11,459 MW-h in 2002, 12,135 in 2001, and 12,246 in 2000. EPRI reported that an average of 3.3% of the power generated was used by the turbines or lost in transmission to the substation. (The Royal Academy of Engineers in the U.K. assumes 12.5% loss will occur.) It is not recorded how much electricity the turbines themselves use, nor do their meters run "backwards" to otherwise reflect net output [click here for more about this issue].
They still claim that it provides the power for 2,000 homes. In the summer of 2002, its average output of 0.5 MW would have provided an average of 250 watts for each of those 2,000 homes. Over a year, GMP's average residential customer uses 7.5 MW-h. Therefore, the plant's annual output of about 12,000 MW-h is equivalent to the electricity used by 1,600 homes. The electricity produced, however, varies tremendously and does not correlate with actual demand. The grid into which the power is fed also supplies nonresidential electricity, which uses 72% of GMP's electricity, so the annual figure should more accurately be 450 homes, and the summer 2002 figure should be 160. These are averages, however -- when the wind isn't blowing close to the ideal 30 mph, the plant is providing the power for 0 homes and businesses. [Click here for more about wind and electricity use in the U.S.]
(Developers of a wind project in northeast Vermont's East Haven applied in November 2003 to build 4 "demonstration" towers whose 6 MW of rated capacity (the same as Searsburg) they claim will provide the power used by 3,000 homes!)
The residents of Searsburg were generally supportive of the project as it was presented to them, and many of them still say it's a good thing. The site is not prominent, limiting its visual impact. GMP and Enxco now want to enlarge the plant. As John Zimmerman, Enxco's eastern regional director, is quoted in a March 3, 2003, Boston Globe article, "Wind has become a serious way to make money." They want to add 22 (or more) new 1.5-MW towers that are 1 2/3 times taller than the current ones (requiring lights day and night and much noisier). The larger project will spread to another mountain in another town. Reportedly most residents of both towns oppose the expansion. According to GMP, it may create one more full-time job.
Finally, Tillinghast addresses the challenge of wind advocates: "What is the alternative?" [It's a bogus challenge, of course, because wind power has no impact on the use of other energy sources -- click here to read how little the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change regards wind power for the mitigation of CO2] she describes the example of the Dallas-based Kimberly-Clark company cutting its energy use by 11.7% since 2000. It would require industrializing 50 mountain tops with wind plants to produce the energy saved by this one company. Vermont itself, through its office of energy efficiency, reduced electricity consumption in 2002. Tillinghast concludes, "It's time for our leaders to enforce strict pollution controls and help businesses and communities conserve energy, instead of subsidizing an unproductive technology that will forever scar our wilderness."
-- Eric Rosenbloom
More pages on this site about wind power in Vermont: • letter to The Caledonian-Record (St. Johnsbury), by Bill Eddy • letter to The Caledonian-Record, by Bill Klein • editorial by the Burlington Free Press • notes on some surveys about wind farms • comments about proposed East Haven wind project and projects in Vermont in general • letter to the Manchester Journal, by Hugh Kemper, and response by Andrew Perchlik, with commentary • outline of large wind projects targeting Vermont and vicinity • letter to the Burlington Free Press, by Eric Rosenbloom Also: Vermonters with Vision
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Post by sleepswithdafishes on Mar 7, 2011 18:55:18 GMT -5
Wow!!!!!!!!!!!!! I say we need more!!! With a record like that our government should be proud!!Lets get real !! Sleeps
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Post by An Bradon Charters on Mar 7, 2011 19:05:56 GMT -5
I am sure shummy will stick his nose in this and make the decision for all of us. Has seems to think he is the keeper of the forests here in Vermont. Shummy sure does have a big nose. ;D He and is Shumlin shuffle are sure to have a negative impact on our state. Hell He has been in office just a few weeks and already has to go vacation to an UN disclosed place? As far as the wind turbines. I can understand that it brings money to the land owners to help with maintenance and taxes. But Projects like these that from what i have seen do not save money just raise more taxes. Write your representatives and say NO to wind turbines. Capt. Tony www.anbradoncharters.com
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Post by maefly on Mar 7, 2011 19:26:02 GMT -5
I am sure shummy will stick his nose in this and make the decision for all of us. Has seems to think he is the keeper of the forests here in Vermont. Shummy sure does have a big nose. ;D He and is Shumlin shuffle are sure to have a negative impact on our state. Hell He has been in office just a few weeks and already has to go vacation to an UN disclosed place? As far as the wind turbines. I can understand that it brings money to the land owners to help with maintenance and taxes. But Projects like these that from what i have seen do not save money just raise more taxes. Write your representatives and say NO to wind turbines. Capt. Tony www.anbradoncharters.com Shame on you Tony...Comments like this are not politicaly correct, and fail to acknowledge our efforts to save the planet at any cost! I'm going to have to lend you my copy of 1984 so you can learn Right Speak from Wrong Speak before the VT Law School comes after you.
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Post by fishinmachine on Mar 9, 2011 5:30:43 GMT -5
we don't need windmills,,we've got more oil than saudi arabia under the rocky mountains that would cost us $19 a barrel to get out, but the govt. wont drill for it...WHY???
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Post by sleepswithdafishes on Mar 9, 2011 9:01:55 GMT -5
Fishinmachine its very simple MONEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Sleeps
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