Wind turbines and environment
Toolbox
Published: May 18, 2009
"Our physical environment is the sum of everything around us" is the opening sentence of Executive Order 7, authored by Gov. Deane Davis exactly 40 years ago — May 14, 1969. This order established the Governor's Commission on Environmental Control, which became known as the Gibb commission, which provided the framework for Act 250.
The concern was that the "magnitude of (the) changes taking place in Vermont" and the "unplanned growth and development" required the enactment "into law a set of comprehensive and meaningful statutes to preserve and protect our environment."
Today Vermont is once again facing a significant threat to its environment and one which, ironically, was specifically dismissed as essentially unimaginable 40 years ago in the commission's report. In section 3 of their recommendations, the commission states: "Generating plants for electrical energy do not differ appreciably from other manufacturing installations." They couldn't imagine back then wind turbines as a generator of electrical power, scattered about our ridgelines and mountains, standing over 400 feet tall and consuming hundreds, if not thousands, of acres. Wind turbines (euphemistically known as "wind farms") do, unquestionably, differ appreciably" from the common manufacturing plant as they are scattered about our landscape.
Currently, there are in existence (Searsburg) or planned between 173 to 188 wind turbines in more than 20 communities throughout Vermont. In Rutland County, 60 wind turbines are being planned for the communities of Ira, West Rutland, Clarendon, Tinmouth, Poultney and Middletown Springs. However, between 38 and 40 of those turbines are planned for the town of Ira.
Ira, with a population of a little over 400, is about eight miles long and four miles wide, divided down its center by a range of the Taconic Mountains, capped by Herrick Mountain. On its eastern border exists a ridgeline separating the town from Clarendon. It is this very mountain range, running through the center of town, as well as the ridgeline separating Ira and Clarendon, where the turbines are proposed.
In the appendix to the Gibb commission report, while again reiterating that transmission plants do not "differ appreciably," and that, therefore, the commission "considers it illogical to single out electrical power manufacturing installations for special legislation," that it be incumbent upon our governor, our legislators and the Public Service Board to recognize the loophole that has been created because a process was not imagined 40 years ago.
Lastly, to the Public Service Board, I would hope that in reading that same appendix (Appendix H) they recognize that "it should be made clear to the Public Service Board that this commission endorses and supports an increased weighing of the environmental factors (including aesthetic values" as it existed in Title 30 of the Vermont Statutes Annotated.
The argument is not about renewable energy. It is, as Gov. Douglas stated, that "these things we must, as a government and as citizens, control in an orderly fashion if Vermont is to retain its truly natural beauty."
PETER COSGROVE
Ira
36