Landscapes Matter in Many Ways

Posted: 12:00 AM

'Treasured landscape' or site for wind turbines?
Morning Sentinel Staff


I am a sporting camp owner in the town of Highland Plantation. Our town is the site of a proposed industrial wind power facility.


I am concerned about the future of the wildlands of Maine, as well as our town, since the number and scale of wind power proposals likely will affect all the mountains of Maine, leaving not a single place free of a view of 400-foot turbines.

Alec Giffen heads the group Gov. John Baldacci appointed to accomplish the goal, to produce energy without greenhouse gases associated with fossil fuel generation.

Since fossil fuel generators need to be kept running as backup when the wind stops, I fail to see where the reduction in greenhouse gases comes from.

Add permanent deforestation for roads and infrastructure blasted into the most remote and sensitive forest landscape, and I believe we have increased our "carbon footprint."

Taxpayers are supplying much of the financing for this, and we don't even get a break on the cost of electricity. It gets better. Giffen also is proposing that we buy development rights from large landowners in the same wild land, using $250 million in federal money to prevent development of the only undeveloped forest left in the eastern United States. He said there is no other forest like it anywhere.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar describes such land as a "treasured landscape." What is going on?

Greg Drummond

Highland Plantation