OAKFIELD, Maine — Nearly eight years after talks of erecting wind turbines on the hills of Oakfield were first broached, the $369 million project is now complete.
All 48 of the 3-megawatt Vestas turbines have been erected and the turbines will soon be online, according to Peter Garrett, superintendent of the Oakfield wind project for SunEdison Inc.
“The turbines are now going online and three of the four circuits are now energized,” Garrett said on Sept. 9. “Within the next couple of weeks, people should be able to see all of the turbines making power.”
Situated approximately 2.5 miles from the center of Oakfield, the turbines will be capable of generating a total of almost 150 megawatts of power, which has been contracted to companies in Massachusetts.
The massive turbines, which stand 280 feet tall, with blades that are 180 feet long, have the capacity to produce energy to power more than 50,000 homes. A total of 500 acres were cleared for the wind farm, making it the largest such project in the state to date.
Electricity generated from the turbines will be transmitted along a 59-mile line to a substation in Chester, near Lincoln.
“This project has gone very well and we are slightly ahead of schedule,” Garrett said. “At our peak we had about 200 employees a day, totalling 390,000 man hours on this project. We expect to be fully operational within the next month.”
Construction began in December 2013 and involved nearly 900 employees, predominantly sub-contractors and many of whom were local workers. Those workers were busy building new roads, the electrical collection system and creating the bases for the turbines. Many of the roads that were built during the construction phase will be closed and reseeded to a natural state, leaving no trace of the building stage.
Garrett said during construction, crews regularly saw a multitude of wildlife, ranging from deer to rabbits and birds.
“The wildlife really seems to adjust to us,” he said. “They are always here when we are working.”
Thomas Frazier, wind farm support specialist, is one of the many local residents who was employed by the project. Frazier, a resident of Island Falls, worked with many of the subcontractors and environmentalists who came on site to do bird and bat studies.
“Being able to come back to my hometown and work on a project of this caliber has given me a good feeling of pride,” he said.
The project began with First Wind, which was originally granted permission from the town and DEP for 34 turbines along Sam Drew Mountain in September 2009. Construction never commenced as the Martha A. Powers Land Trust challenged the project. Maine’s Supreme Judicial Court rejected the Land Trust’s appeal in March 2011.
SunEdison bought First Wind for $2.4 billion in January, acquiring with the purchase the Oakfield project and the company’s five wind farms in operation in Maine — one in Mars Hill, two sites on Stetson Mountain, Rollins Wind near Lincoln and Bull Hill Wind near Eastbrook in Township 16.
John Lamontagne, now a spokesperson for SunEdison in Boston, who has been with the Oakfield project since the beginning in 2008, was at the site this past week to see it to completion.
“It has taken us a long time to get to this point, so it is kind of a thrill to see the project done and the turbines up and running,” he said.
Close to eight years in development, the Oakfield wind project has seen developers work closely with the town to solicit significant community input in designing the project. As part of the local review process, First Wind made numerous commitments that go beyond what is required under state law and incorporated those changes into the DEP application.
Oakfield was chosen, according to Lamontagne, because of its location and the level of town support the concept generated.
“We worked with the town for a bunch of years to develop some community benefit plans and it is also a good wind resource,” he said.
Benefits to the Oakfield community
The wind project has brought, and will continue to bring, significant economic benefits to the town of Oakfield. The town will receive $14.7 million in tax revenues over 20 years, and an additional $12 million in community benefit payments during that time span. The money the town receives goes to a special municipal fund, and can be used for town priorities such as a public safety building, fire engines and road improvements. Each year, at town meeting, residents will be asked how they wish to spend that year’s funds.
Town Manager Dale Morris said the town will receive an annual $540,000 payment, which is required to satisfy the community benefit clause of the environmental permit application with the Maine Department of Environmental Protection. The first $540,000 Community Benefit payment already has been received by the town, while the second payment will be received once the project goes online in late-September or early-October. The town will then receive 18 additional annual payments.
Town officials previously identified 14 projects the community would be able to fund over that 20-year period with the money received. Among those projects are the construction of a centrally-located fire station to replace an aging facility. Initially, Morris said the plan was to include a new town office as part of the public safety building, but according to state statute, tax increment financing funds cannot be used for a town office.
A row of wind turbines located in Oakfield is visible from the playground at Southern Aroostook Community School in neighboring Dyer Brook. The structures, which each rise 456 feet from the base to the highest point of an extended blade, can clearly be seen in Houlton, about 20 miles away.
“I believe there are some who would like to see us attach a new town office to the fire station,” Morris said. “That is something that I do see being talked about in the coming years.”
At this year’s town meeting, residents approved spending $40,000 to hire a firm to begin the process of designing a new fire station. The new structure will be located at the intersection of Smyrna and Ridge roads. That location, at one time, was a hardware store, but has been a vacant lot for a few years. The existing building was torn down and the town has a clear deed to the property, Morris said.
“Our current fire station, which is more than 50 years old, is in a very bad state of disrepair,” Morris said.
No specific timetable has been given for the construction of the new fire station, since the project is only in the design stage.
Some of the other projects initially envisioned by the town include:
— Acquisition and replacement of fire station equipment, including two new fire trucks, at a total cost of $750,000.
— Local road reconstruction of about 21 miles, at a cost of $7,525,000. Included in that plan is reconstruction of the Town Settlement Road at a price tag of $1.8 million.
— Capital improvements for the village area of town ($750,000).
— Construction of a town salt shed and materials ($900,000).
“The No. 1 revitalization has been to our public works department,” Morris said. “We have invested well over $400,000 in new equipment. Without that infusion of tax dollars, the public works department would be different than the way it is today. It has revitalized and transformed that department.”
He added the town also was able to donate $15,000 to a veterans’ memorial.
Morris said any full-time resident who receives a Homestead Exemption on his tax bill also will receive a check in the amount of about $2,100 a year for 20 years from the town. Seasonal residents — there are about 100 — will not receive the tax rebate. There are about 240 full-time landowners in Oakfield receiving the benefit, which must be claimed as taxable income.
With the average property tax bill in Oakfield at $970, most homeowners will have money left over after they pay their taxes, according to Morris. The current mil rate is $17.96, but that also is expected to go down starting in 2016 when SunEdison makes its first tax payment on roughly $216 million of taxable property, Morris said. The property up to this point has not been taxed at its full value, and thus has not reduced the mill rate for the town. Morris estimated the town stands to receive about $1.3 million in property tax revenue, in addition to the the community benefit payments.
Developers also had to negotiate private agreements with many landowners in Oakfield to put the turbines on private property. A side benefit of the project is that it forced the town’s board of selectmen to come up with several new zoning ordinances.
“We had nothing in terms of ordinances for land use management prior to this,” Morris said.
A sound review also took place to determine what distance the turbine noise may travel, but that study was done prior to all of the turbines being erected and operating at the same time.
“If the tests showed sound went beyond the state requirements, [the company] had to negotiate with private landowners to get permission to exceed that state requirement,” Morris said. “The majority of people who were offered (a deal), approved it. The town did not have a part of that negotiation.”
Morris admitted there were some people who expressed concerns about the sound that would be generated by the turbines once they were all in operation. Should the sound exceed the state level requirements, Morris said measures are in place to address that issue.
“I would say (SunEdison Inc.) did a pretty good mitigation plan,” Morris said. “But that is all up for debate with some people. There are some non-participating landowners, who are close to the turbines. We will have a sound complaint protocol in place, which is something the town negotiated with (SunEdison Inc).”
Morris said he conducted a study of properties within a 3,000-foot range of the impact area to identify any landowners who may have concerns with sound issues.
Morris said his office has received a few complaints over the wind turbines, especially after the first units went up. He said the majority of those people were residents of surrounding towns who expressed displeasure seeing the turbines along the hills of Oakfield.
“I have not really heard very much from the local residents,” Morris said.
