Ira Powsner spent part of his 26th birthday in the back of a police cruiser today after a protest at the construction site of a 21-turbine wind installation in Lowell sparked an exercise in civil disobedience. 

Powsner, 26, of Ira, Vt., (pictured in red hat) was among dozens of protestors at Green Mountain Power’s Kingdom Community Wind project who stepped onto Route 100 this morning to physically block a tractor trailer carrying a section of a massive wind turbine onto the construction site. The protest held up traffic along the highway for two hours, backing up cars between two and five miles in either direction. Photos from the day’s action are up on the Lowell Mountain Talk blog. 

Protestor Steve Wright of Craftsbury Commons says demonstrators had planned a roadside rally — similar to one that took place last October — to draw attention to what Wright calls “the bad energy policy that ends up blowing up Vermont mountains.”

By 9 a.m., more than 100 protestors had flocked to the roadside. And when the truck showed up, Powsner says, a murmur went through the crowd. Wright was among the first to step out into the road, carrying a Vermont state flag, and he was quickly followed by Powsner and his younger brother, 21-year-old Jacob Powsner.

“I was feeling frustration and anger, and that I was left with nothing else to do but a symbolic act,” Wright says.

As an organizer with Energize Vermont, Ira Powsner had been leading the chants that echoed from the crowd, and felt compelled to join the movement into the road. When a law enforcement officer told Wright to move from the road, he moved — but the Powsner brothers stood their ground. Both brothers were arrested and issued citations for disorderly conduct, with a summons to appear in court in September.

All in all, between 20 and 25 law enforcement officials responded to the scene — including officers from the Lamoille and Orleans county sheriffs’ offices, the Vermont State Police, the Department of Homeland Security, and other agencies. “All of whom came in separate vehicles, so they need their own climate change consultant to work with them,” quips Wright.

Despite the arrests, protestors are calling today’s action a success, and say the large turnout is proof that dissatisfaction with industrial-scale wind power is mounting in Vermont.

“I think this is what the decision makers, who continue to try to cram these things down local folks’ throats — this is what they’re going to see,” says Wright.

Dorothy Schnure, a spokesperson with project developer Green Mountain Power, called the protestors’ decision to disrupt traffic “unfortunate,” adding that the Lowell wind project has been reviewed in great detail and was ultimately granted state approval. Despite the disruption, she says that GMP is on budget and on schedule to finish the ridgeline wind project by the end of the year.

As for the birthday boy? Powsner says he “felt like (he) needed to step up,” and he’s glad he did. “My feelings are immediately that if you have 50 to 100 people in the road blocking the truck, you have to revisit the policy that created this wind power industry,” says Powsner, who works with a group that encourages “community-scale” energy projects in Vermont while fighting industrial developments. He’s grateful the protest was peaceful. As for spending his birthday in a police cruiser? “It couldn’t have been any better,” Powsner says. 

Photo of Powsner from the Lowell Mountain Talk blog. 

This article appears in Jul 11-17, 2012.

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Kathryn Flagg was a Seven Days staff writer from 2012 through 2015. She completed a fellowship in environmental journalism at Middlebury College, and her work has also appeared in the Addison County Independent, Wyoming Public Radio and Orion Magazine.

14 replies on “Wind Protest At Lowell Sparks Two Arrests”

  1. The turbines are going up. Can’t stop them now. Perhaps the protesters should focus on stopping Mitt instead.

  2. My husband and I drove through there yesterday on our day off, thought we’d head to NEK for some kayaking. Never thought we would waste time in a traffic jam for an hour on our day off to enjoy the outdoors in our state. One car- a Volvo SUV full of protesters littered right out the car window while driving in front of us after leaving the rally!

  3. The point of the protest was to prevent future mountain-rape fiascoes in Vermont.
    Developers are lined up at the RE trough with projects proposed for more and more ridgelines across Vermont, NH and ME. These industrial sized wind projects do little to offset global warming but they do divide communities, destroy mountain ecosystems that are vital to our futures, and are causing a lot of health problems where they’ve gone up in the wrong places. It’s easy to think of wind as green, but please look deeper, folks (mainstream media is woefully behind on this curve).
    http://www.wind-watch.org/news/

  4. OMG, they were in a Volvo?! They must be wrong! One of them littered?! They must be wrong. They delayed your fun?! They must be wrong!

  5. Dotty Schnure is lying when she says the project is on budget. A GMP construction manager told me they were millions over budget and that it was a “real mess” on the mountain.
    Check out videos of the protest: http://lowellmountainsnews.wor…

  6. “I think this is what the decision makers, who continue to try to cram these things down local folks’ throats — this is what they’re going to see,” says Wright.
    The People of Lowell, where the wind farm is located, voted at Town Meeting to support this wind farm project.

  9. So, Ms. Leonard, since you are against industrial scale wind power, you must be in favor of large, “always on,” baseload electricity generating stations — whether nuclear, oil-fired, coal-fired, gas-fired, or biomass, right?

    The NIMBYist credo: I want electricity, I just don’t want it to be generated.

  11. The more you look into big wind, the more you question the purported benefits, especially when you tally the damage to land and health. I’ve minimized my personal electricity use and the sun generates most of what I do use. Sutton_Hoo, have you gone to http://www.wind-watch.org/news/ to see what I refer to? What’s your power footprint?

  12. Ms. Leonard, your self-appointed energy sainthood is admirable. Keep it up. But the rest of us choose not to live your lifestyle, and you have no right to impose it on us or preach it to us. My personal energy footprint is very light, but I do not seek to impose it on others, nor should you. You obviously use electricity for the computer you are using to type your blogposts, and you expect the electricity to be available whenever you feel like flipping on the switch. The fact is, no matter how much each of us reduces, we still need baseload, 24/7 power sources. Moreover, industrial scale power is much more efficient for society than each homeowner attepting to be his/her own power plant.

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