A primitive field kitchen sits at the center of the campsite on Lowell Mountain. Photos by Chris BraithwaiteLOWELL — The campsite, with its six small tents and a sheltered kitchen area, is a long, difficult hike from the nearest road.
But it’s close to a heavy orange tape that threads through the woods, from tree to tree, marking the edge of the work area of Green Mountain Power’s industrial wind power site.
Close enough to hear the heavy equipment as it works its way up Lowell Mountain from the west. Plenty close to hear the echoing booms of the blasting.
The campsite is there to stop the blasting. Established by students at Sterling College in nearby Craftsbury Common, and supported by a growing list of volunteers, it sits near the western boundary of Don and Shirley Nelson’s farm.
The hope is that the campsite is so close to the project that contractors won’t be able to safely detonate the high explosives needed to build a wide crane path Don Nelson points to a stake that marks a disputed corner of his farm. The tape behind him marks the edge of the Lowell Mountain industrial wind project construction site.along the ridgeline and the turbine sites it would link together.
Early this week the contractors were still working their way up the mountain towards the ridgeline.
But as they approach, the Nelsons say, they need to be mindful of the safety of their “guests” on the mountain.
“Our guests will be camping, recreating and hunting in that area for the foreseeable future,” they wrote in a letter to Green Mountain Power President Mary Powell. “We trust you will be respectful of their presence and particularly their safety.
“We would appreciate receiving written confirmation that no fly-rock from you blasting will trespass or intrude on our property and that nobody will be endangered,” the letter concludes.
The Nelsons have fought the wind project for years, ever since turbines were first proposed on Lowell Mountain by a less determined developer who withdrew in the face of local opposition.
So far, their efforts to preserve the mountain have failed. But this time they hope they have found a way to use their close proximity to the project to bring it to a grinding halt.
Mr. Nelson says that high explosives require a 750-foot safety zone, free of people, before they can be set off. The campsite is well within that limit, he says.
Asked about that limit Tuesday, Green Mountain Power spokesman Dorothy Schnure said it “could be” right.
If it is, the question becomes how the contractor would force people to leave private property so blasting could proceed.
Asked about that last week by the Associated Press, Attorney General William Sorrell said the state’s trespassing law wouldn’t apply to the situation. If people are camping or hunting with the landowner’s permission, he said, “there’s no criminal violation that readily comes to mind.”
A Sterling College student who chose to identify himself as Bumblebee takes a break after climbing to the campsite.“We’re not up there yet,” Ms. Schnure said when asked what the utility plans to do. “I think there’s time to address that.”
“I was quite excited to hear about this, because it might actually work,” a Sterling student who identified himself only as Bumblebee said Monday, shortly after he arrived at the campsite.
“It’s hard to get out here when you go to school full time,” he said. But in the face of the wind project, he said, “there’s not much else you can do.”
It had taken him just 40 minutes to make the climb from the Nelsons’ home, which sits high above the village of Albany with no direct access to the occupied parts of the town of Lowell.
People who lack Bumblebee’s youth and physical condition would take considerably longer. The path is wet and treacherously slippery in places, and consistently pretty steep. Everything the campers need, except their firewood, will have to be carried up the path.
Interviewed on her way down the mountain from the campsite, Craftsbury resident Anne Morse made a point of saying she’s an advocate of renewable energy. She and her companion, Kevin Gregoire, live off the grid, generating their own electricity with solar panels.
But the scale of the Lowell Mountain project is wrong, Ms. Morse said.
“I don’t support mountaintop removal, whether it’s for coal or for wind,” she said.
“I’ve hiked this ridgeline every winter for seven years,” Ms. Morse said. She went with Sterling students who, for years, have camped on the mountain as part of the school’s Expedition program. Mr. Gregoire has joined the campers on three winter trips.
Ms. Morse said nine Sterling students had braved Sunday’s cold, rainy weather to climb to the site and build the sheltered kitchen, which includes a stone fireplace and a table made of rough sticks, deftly bound together with heavy twine.
If a boundary dispute is settled in the Nelsons’ favor, Mr. Nelson said, his line would move virtually up to the construction side itself. After hiking through some particularly rough terrain, above and to the north of the campsite and near the “met tower” Green Mountain Power erected to test the winds, he found a pin set into the base of a small tree by surveyor Paul Hannan.
Hired in hopes that he could document the case Mr. Nelson plans to bring to court, Mr. Hannan set the pin at what could be the northwestern corner of the Nelson farm. It sits 156 feet west of the current line. And the tape marking the project’s work zone is wound around the tree where Mr. Hannan set his stake.
From where the six tents have been set up, Mr. Nelson said, his property line should move 181 feet to the west.
Mr. Nelson believes that the heavy orange tape, and another that runs parallel to it some distance to the west, mark the limits of the road needed to carry the massive crane that would erect the towers. If he’s right, the boundary marked by Mr. Hannan would force Green Mountain Power to re-engineer its project, moving it down the mountain to the west.
The property dispute is with Trip Wileman, who promoted the wind project before Green Mountain Power came into the picture, and has leased the utility land for most of its 21 turbine sites.
In an interview in September 2010, Mr. Wileman said he considers the boundary a settled matter, the subject of a signed agreement with the Nelsons.
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