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View Full Version : Redington, RIP



moxie
01-24-2007, 21:57
Maine is buzzing, The Maine Land Use Regulation Commission voted 6-1 today against establishing a huge wind farm in a fragile alpine zone on Redington and Black Nubble mountain ridge. To get a permit the developers would have had to get wilderness zoning changed to put over 30, 400 foot lighted towers on a mountain ridge within a mile of the Applachian Trail and visable from over 30 miles of trail. LURC voted with the enviroment and chose to preserne this beautiful wilderness alpine area. Wind power MUST come to Maine and the world but it sites must be chosen that will do the enviroment more good than harm:sun . For now the Redington project is dead.

Frolicking Dinosaurs
01-24-2007, 22:19
Thank God this project was nixed. I hope they can find another site that will not spoil a wilderness area.

dperry
01-24-2007, 23:32
Don't DO that! I thought you meant that the mountain was dead. :( So is this settled for good, or is there any chance of an appeal?

weary
01-24-2007, 23:38
Don't DO that! I thought you meant that the mountain was dead. :( So is this settled for good, or is there any chance of an appeal?
Those of us who have been involved in environmental battles over the decades know that no victory is final. Sadly many defeats are final.

moxie
01-25-2007, 11:32
Don't DO that! I thought you meant that the mountain was dead. :( So is this settled for good, or is there any chance of an appeal?
There is a chance for an appeal but the vote was 6-1 and the appeal would be to the same commission that made the ruling. They also have the right to "tone down" the project, call it a new project and try again. However there are many places in Maine that are much better suited for a wind farm than Redington. That site was chosen because the area is zoned as wilderness, cannot be used for development or logging so the mountop was cheap for them to purchase. The developers bought the land cheap, then tried to change the zoning so they could develop it. Their proposal would have placed 30 turbines on the ridge line, 12 on Redington and 18 on Black Nubble. The towers would each been 262 feet tall with 144 foot blades with a total height base to tip of 410 feet. They would have put in 8.5 miles of ridgeline roads with a 12 foot wide surface but requiring a 90 foot clearing. A total of 307 acres would have been clear cut and 85 acres above 2700 feet elevation. As stated in my origional post it would be within a mile of the AT and visable for at least 30 miles or more along the trail. With it's vast hydro projects and biomass plants Maine now has a surplus of energy and is an energy exporter. Maine however has much better wind resources than many other parts of the country. I support wind power development in Maine but would prefer it be placed where the wind blows strongest along the coast, in the nothern counties where there are flat cleared developed fields and on the many mountains we have that are less fragile than Redington.

vipahman
01-25-2007, 11:44
Not sure if I should cheer or cry. We preserved a wilderness but an "unsightly" wind farm might get replaced by an environmentally worse energy source.:eek:

icemanat95
01-25-2007, 11:49
Wooo Hooo!

weary
01-25-2007, 12:12
Not sure if I should cheer or cry. We preserved a wilderness but an "unsightly" wind farm might get replaced by an environmentally worse energy source.:eek:
It's a question of balance. Do we grasp at any alternative energy source, regardless of its impact on other things of value? Or how small a contribution it may make in the total energy picture? Or how much it may violate the 35-year-old law designed to keep the wildlands of Maine wild? Or the terrible precedent it would establish for other industrial projects in the mountains of Maine? In short, do we have to destroy the last wild places to save the earth?

I think not.
Weary

Fly By Mike
01-25-2007, 12:33
As I see it, it is not an either/or issue. It is important to preserve the pristine characther of Maine and its also important to support alternative energy sources. In some cases these goals may be in conflict as in this case. But IMHO sanity prevailed here. There are plenty of places to build windmills but there are not a whole lot of places on this earth as untouched as the Maine wilderness.

TJ aka Teej
01-25-2007, 13:01
Not sure if I should cheer or cry. We preserved a wilderness but an "unsightly" wind farm might get replaced by an environmentally worse energy source.:eek:


Maine already exports a great deal electrical energy, and the opponents of the California company's project saw that the sacrifice of a protected wild mountaintop so that Bostonians can plug in more giant TVs wasn't a wise choice.

jmaclennan
01-25-2007, 17:25
Boston says, "IMO finding and developing more clean, renewable energy souces is more inportant than "preservation"..."
as someone stated in a previous thread on this topic, this project would NOT have resulted in the closing of any coal-burning power plants. there would not be any net-reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions and other pollutants due to this project; only more energy to go around. how about increasing our energy efficiency, or is that too unamerican?