The first wind turbine project in the country to be built on U.S. Forest Service land will break ground Monday in southern Vermont.
The 15-turbine project spans across parts of Readsboro and Searsburg, just north of the state border with Massachusetts, within the Green Mountain National Forest.
Construction comes after the developer Avangrid — formerly called Iberdrola — cleared a controversial permitting process that took more than a decade.
The developer has an agreement with Green Mountain Power to purchase 30 megawatts of power for 4.8 cents per kilowatt from the project once it is constructed.
Gov. Peter Shumlin and local officials are scheduled to attend the project’s 11 a.m. groundbreaking ceremony in Readsboro on Monday. Officials said the Bennington County site is on private property and open to the media and by invitation only.
Annette Smith, the executive director of Vermonters for a Clean Environment who has long fought the project, plans to attend the event without an invite. “A number of us will be there. They might want to hold their little ceremony on private property and restrict the public, but this is a project on public lands and the public will be present,” she said.
Smith’s organization sued in an unsuccessful attempt to halt the project. She said the effort cost more than $125,000.
Among her many environmental concerns about the project is erecting the turbines in a national forest. “It sets a precedent that opens up all wilderness areas to being surrounded by big wind turbines,” she said.
“We’re excited to see this project finally being built,” he said. “It’s exactly the kind of thing we need more of in Vermont, and is a great complement to the incredible success Vermont’s had recently in solar energy.”
The U.S. Forest Service will close a portion of the forest where road and turbine construction will take place. The map above shows two areas that will be off-limits to the public during construction.
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Clarification about the reference to wilderness: This is the first wind project on USFS lands, and it is also the first project next to a wilderness. The George D. Aiken Wilderness is less than two miles from the western ridgeline, and its wilderness characteristics will be degraded by noise and visual pollution.
Break ground? They will do more than break this ground to get those behemoths up there. Very sad.
GMP is enabling this project by purchasing the power. The price quoted in this article assumes the RECs are worth 4 cents, and those will be sold. The actual price GMP agreed to pay is 8.8 cents per kWH. It won’t be renewable energy for Vermonters — though Iberdrola/Avangrid publicly says it is, in violation of the AG and FTC guidance. I went to the blasting meeting tonight. Maine Drilling & Blasting and Iberdrola had the typical vague answers, not much specific. They’re going to figure it out as they go. For two companies so skilled at blowing up mountains it is astonishing how little information they give, because they know they don’t have to. The most distressing realization from tonight’s meeting is they plan to blast through the winter, with no plan for any consideration for black bear dens. In the past, ANR restricted skiing activity during the winter so as not to disturb denning bears. Now, they don’t even talk about any special plans for blasting away the entire mountain top, with cuts in the rock up to 31 feet. That info was not given freely, their presentation said the “average” blasting cuts would be 5 feet. It’s like pulling teeth to get them to give out real facts.
Just disastrous. What a horrible desecration of our mountains. I guess the next thing is to allow that dam in the Grand Canyon to be built after all. So long as someone is getting rich off it and VPIRG & the Legislature getting their donations, everything’s just A-OK. . .
We are very fortunate to live in a country where we can have our cake, eat the cake, and complain about how the cake is made. We are so isolated from the problems related to a planet being utilized to support an ever increasing population that is constantly demanding more. Let’s be realistic about how much of the problem U.S. consumerism creates. I love our mountains and our views but I am not naïve enough to think that I am not going to have to sacrifice something to make the future work, or that living in a capitalist society, someone is going to complete a business transaction without making money. We seem to think, as Americans, that we have the right to demand that the world must change around us and we can simply maintain the status quo. It cannot nor should not be that way. Peace.
Once again our governor has shown his willingness to throw Vermonters under the bus, to sell out to an energy cartel just as evil as OPEC, and to participate in the destruction of a national forest which is a state and national treasure. Greed rules, and our state government from the top on down has their snoot in the trough.
Leave no trace huh? The forests belong to the Vt taxpayers, not out of state developers. The destruction about to take place there is disgusting. Imbeciles.