FORT FAIRFIELD, Maine — Town officials and residents who led a wind power committee are gearing up for a robust debate about regulating potential wind turbines, among other things through the rest of the year.
Fort Fairfield’s Wind Power Technical Review Committee, formed last fall amid concern over possible wind power projects in the town, has released an ordinance proposal that will soon get a public vetting by wind energy critics and supporters.
“We did a good job,” said Dick Langley, a retired lawyer and chair of the committee. “I think this ordinance is a good place to start.”
After ten months of meetings and discussion, the 10 member committee has produced a 65-page technical review that serves as a guide ordinance the town council could use.
Among dozens of other considerations for approving and locating wind turbines, the model ordine would require that any turbine be at least one mile away from neighboring property lines. The ordinance also proposes standards to limit issues like noise, shadow flicker and blade reflection, which have led to disputes with landowners in Mars Hill.
Langley and members of the committee studied the wind farm in Mars Hill and toured the mountain and its 28, 400-foot-tall turbines. “I was struck by the enormity of the turbine,” Langley said. “They’re not going to get any smaller.”
In Mars Hill, the wind farm has had a mixed reception. Nearby residents said the noise of the 200-foot-long blades carried extensively, including during cold nights, and First Wind ended up offering more than a dozen homeowners a settlement.
Fort Fairfield’s wind committee was tasked with “creating standards, not setting up any places where wind turbines could or could not go,” but the ultimate ordinance could address those kinds of issues, Langley said. Built in 2007, “Mars Hill was the wild west; there was no ordinance.”
The Fort Fairfield council has scheduled a public hearing on the ordinance, set for Tuesday, September 8th at 6pm in the high school gymnasium.
In other matters, Fort Fairfield has a lot of other things going on.
The town is launching a community survey of residential and business Internet access. With limited connectivity in and around the downtown of Fort Fairfield, economic director Tim Goff wants to better map the Internet options in rural areas to prepare for expansions by Fairpoint Communications or other providers.
Goff estimates that more than half of the town’s landmass, home to about a third of the population living across some 45 square miles, are unserved or underserved by the previous definition of high speed internet, 3 megabits per second.
The Fort Fairfield Library (where a lot of people use the Internet, day and night) is also boasting of increased readership and attendance.
Over the last year there has been a 25 percent in book circulation, a 14 percent increase in patron count and 40 percent increase in computer use, said librarian Jennifer Gaenzle.
The library’s digital archives of newspapers, going back to 1995, has “continued to receive praise from around the country,” she added. People use the archive from places like Arkansas.
The Fort Fairfield Police Department is also welcoming a new full-time officer, Cody Fenderson. Fednerson has been working in Fort Fairfield part time since 2013, and previously served in Calais and Baileyville and with the Maine State Police communications division, taking calls on domestic issues, medical emergencies and complaints. Now that he’ll be on the road “he knows who to call,” said Chief William Campbell.
