Ira gets 'wind' of new project
|
|
Per White-Hansen talks to Ira residents at a meeting in Ira on Monday evening about a potential wind farm. Cassandra Hotaling / Rutland Herald |
Toolbox
By Gordon Dritschilo STAFF WRITER - Published: May 5, 2009
IRA — The town might see its future if it looks to Lempster, N.H.
The man who wants to build a wind farm in and around Ira appeared before the Select Board for the first time Monday. He told the 30 people who crowded into the Town Clerk's office the New Hampshire town's topography and wind turbines makes it a decent representation of what he wants to do.
At least one person from Ira has already made the trip. Before Per White-Hansen arrived, resident Steve Pietryka circulated photos he took there recently. Pietryka said the towers there were easily visible from the road.
While one of the towers made a squealing sound, Pietryka said the others were not particularly noisy, though it was not very windy.
White-Hansen has identified 60 potential sites for such towers, mostly in Ira, and wants to build a wind farm with an 80-megawatt capacity. He is still in the preliminary stages of the project, and plans to spend at least another year gathering data before applying to the Public Service Board.
The meeting came a few days after several people with concerns about the project met to discuss how they could oppose it. A number of the people from that meeting posed questions Monday, and while the questions were sometimes pointed, the tone remained civil throughout.
White-Hansen said he is applying to put up three towers to measure wind in the area, and that those towers — more like large poles held up with guide wires — would not require any blasting on the ridge top.
Peter Cosgrove asked White-Hansen why he did not plan to use a tower design that had a horizontal propeller, which he said he thought would be less intrusive than the vertical design. White-Hansen said the horizontal designs so far have proven less efficient.
Richard Pietryka said that with people in Ira getting water from wells, there was a concern that blasting on the mountains would disrupt the groundwater. White-Hansen said an engineering study would have to speak to such concerns as part of the permitting process.
Peter Favreau asked if the access roads built for the project would be open to the public, and said he had concerns about increased traffic and associated risks in town. White-Hansen said they could be open or closed as the community desires, though landowners would have a say as well.
White-Hansen also said he expects to have a staff of six full-time employees to see to the roads' maintenance.
White-Hansen said he could not answer many of the questions put to him before finishing more studies, and he had been slow to go public with the project because he wanted to have more of those answers before presenting his plans to the public.
Toward the end of the meeting, one man read a section from Thornton Wilder's "Our Town," which discussed how the small town where the play was set might not have much culture, but the people there appreciated the natural beauty around them.
"It's possible to come into a town like Ira and think there's nothing here," he said after concluding the passage. "In a sense, you're right, but we like that. We like the silence that lets us hear the birds and the dark that lets us see the stars in the sky."
gordon.dritschilo@rutlandherald.com
40