Number Nine Wind Farm will bring
sustainable industry, advocates tell DEP
MARS HILL, Maine — As state regulators mull over an application for New England’s largest wind farm, supporters are on the offensive, pitching the project as an all around benefit to northern Maine.
More than 50 people came to Central Aroostook High School last Thursday night for a Department of Environmental Protection hearing on the Number Nine Wind Farm, the 119-turbine wind project proposed by EDP Renewables on commercial forestlands in central Aroostook County’s unorganized territories.
Most of the 22 speakers expressed support for the 250-megawatt wind farm, arguing that it would bring much-needed short-term economic stimulus and a sustainable industry, generating renewable electricity while partly offsetting the decline of traditional rural businesses.
“When I graduated from UMaine in 1979, I had a choice of teaching school, which was something I really enjoyed, or become a papermaker in my hometown, earning three times the salary,” Jim Nicholson, a former Great Northern Paper employee in Millinocket, told the DEP.
The mill closed in 2014, preceded and followed by others, but Nicholson and some of his peers have been able to reinvent their careers working in the wind power industry. Nicholson is now a safety specialist at Reed & Reed, a Woolwich-based general contractor that generates almost half of its revenue servicing wind farms.
“The wind industry has opened up new opportunities for me,” he told three DEP representatives.
In at least some places, wind farms are filling in economically where paper and pulp manufacturing failed to remain viable, especially as a tax base for local governments, said Peter Vigue, CEO of Cianbro, Maine’s largest construction company.
In Lincoln, the paper and tissue mill that previously paid 7 percent of the town’s taxes recently filed for bankruptcy. Although the 60-megawatt Rollins Wind Farm eight miles east of Lincoln does not employ as many as the mill, it does require skilled workers who are paid well, and it covers 16 percent of the town’s tax base.
Vigue, a native of Caribou, said the project could go some way to reversing northern Maine’s brain drain, as well as provide a business opportunity for the construction industry.
“When I was young, and that was a long time ago, Aroostook County was a very vibrant area, a place where people wanted to live and work and enjoy the surroundings,” Vigue said. “That is not the case today. The demand for social programs in northern Maine are very significant … There is limited opportunity.”
Named for the 1,617-foot mountain eight miles west of U.S. Route 1, the Number Nine Wind Farm would generate enough power for 70,000 average homes, power that two public utilities in Connecticut are purchasing to meet the state’s renewable energy portfolio standards.
EDP Renewables estimates that the project will total $606 million in value over its lifetime, including some 600 temporary and 25 permanent jobs, $2.4 million in annual property tax payments and a $2 million home heating improvement program for regional residents.
The 492-foot-tall turbines would reside among a series of mountains and forest highlands, spanning more than 15 miles north to south, all about three miles from the closest full-time home. There would also be eight meteorological towers, a substation, an operations and maintenance building, access roads, underground and overhead collection lines, and generator lead line, including the Bridal Path right-of-way between Houlton and Haynesville.
The group Friends of Maine’s Mountains urged the DEP to reject the permit for Number Nine, based on its potential impact to scenic views and bald eagle habitats. Friends of Maine’s Mountains “opposes all of these wind projects because of their negative impacts to ratepayers and taxpayers,” said Christopher O’Neil, a lawyer representing the group. “The environmental benefits as well as the outlook for the project are overstated, and the environmental impacts understated,” said O’Neil.
The forestland company H.C. Haynes owns the land where 100 of the 119 proposed turbines would be sited, and argues that the project is beneficial for its timber business, bringing in lease revenue, and for the public, by helping preserve access to hunting, fishing, snowmobiling and other recreation.
“Timber owners in Maine have been subject to tremendous disruptions,” said Dean Beaupain, an attorney representing Lakeville Shores, a part of H.C. Haynes. “Landowners need to diversify income from their timberland in order to survive.”
“If we are to maintain the working forest, which is so important to northern Maine’s economy, we need wind power,” Beaupain said. “If the project is approved, the investment will be secure despite turmoil in the timber market and the public will continue to have free access as they have in the past.”
Before making its decision on Number Nine, the DEP plans to hold a second public meeting in the next few months, along with a final public hearing. The agency also takes public comment in writing and via email.
