Wind energy is a clean, renewable energy source, but it doesn’t belong everywhere.
A couple of weeks ago, bulldozers started clearing the way for 21, 450 foot-high wind turbines to be built at the top of the Green Mountains in Vermont.
The 63 megawatt wind farm will be in the Northeast Kingdom on one of the largest tracts of private wild land in Vermont, along three miles of ridgeline.
How do you get the massive wind turbines up there? The roads being built to drag them up there will be almost half as wide as one of Vermont’s interstate highways, replacing foot paths used by bear, moose, bobcat and deer.
About 700,000 pounds of explosives will reduce parts of mountaintops to ruble to make way for cranes and service vehicles.
And 134 acres of steep forest slopes will be clearcut, opening the intact ecosystem to erosion, spewing sediment into high-quality headwater streams, robbing them of life and fouling the water for downstream residents, wild and human, says Steve Wright, an aquatic biologist, and former commissioner of the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department, in a NY Times blog.
Most of Vermont’s carbon emissions come from cars and trucks (50%) and burning heating oil (33%), so the wind farm won’t do much to lower the state’s greenhouse gas emissions. Only 4% comes from electricity generation, he points out.
Besides providing clean air and water, and wildlife habitat, those ridgelines drew 14 million tourists to the state in 2009, generating $1.4 billion.
"Vermont’s proud history of leadership in developing innovative, effective environmental protection is being tossed aside," he says. "This project will set an ominous precedent by ripping apart a healthy, intact ecosystem in the guise of doing something about climate change. In return, Green Mountain Power will receive $44 million in federal production tax credits over 10 years."
The Vermont Public Interest Research Group says wind could supply as much as 25% of Vermont’s electricity, which would translate into destruction of 29 miles of ridgeline. Other wind advocates go much further, advocating for them on 200 miles of ridgeline.
Here’s the blog:
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