Published on January 19, 2005

MONTPELIER — As a way to get at the character of the Northeast Kingdom, a wildlife biologist with the Department of Fish and Wildlife argues that a definition should be drawn from the time and money invested there for conservation.

In written testimony offered to the Public Service Board (PSB) last month, Tom Decker compiled a history of public spending over four decades. It goes back as far as 1962 and the abortive project by the Army Corps of Engineers to create a 2,280-acre lake in the Victory Basin.

Now another Essex County project — a four-tower wind farm close to Victory Bog — is being proposed that could have far-reaching implications for the county as well as the region.

“This project is located centrally in a region where extensive public investment has occurred, including the sighting of power line below the heights of the land, buying large tracts of public land, and securing easements that secure development rights from landowners,” says Mr. Decker, who for several years managed the 120,000 acres of the state’s wildlife management areas.

“This is a broad strategy that began with the Victory Bog effort and has carried forward through the Northeast Kingdom where goals and strategies have always been for securing the remote and rugged landscape not found anywhere else in Vermont.”

Mr. Decker’s testimony comes before the board as it prepares to hold hearings in March over a controversial plan from East Haven Windfarm to erect four commercial wind towers on East Mountain, a mountain second only in height to Jay Peak, the tallest mountain in the Northeast Kingdom.

“Currently there are over 384 square miles of land where over $44-million in public funds have been invested in the ownership of, or easements on, lands in the Northeast Kingdom,” says Mr. Decker.

Of these lands, he continues, the Agency of Natural Resources is mostly concerned with the former Champion lands where “more than 9,000 acres of these lands are above 2,500 feet in elevation.”

As presented by Mr. Decker, the Champion land deal was “the culminating event to decades of planning” by the state and others who wanted to conserve the area's rugged natural beauty. A wind farm on its ridgelines, he argues, is inconsistent with this conservation strategy.

But there are others in state government who say that when it comes to development and orderly growth, the wind towers fit nicely with the area’s regional plan.

“I believe that allowing the wind farm is consistent with the intent and spirit of the plan,” says Rob Ide of St. Johnsbury, a former state senator who is presently employed by the Department of Public Service, which serves as the public’s watchdog on projects dealing with the generation and transmission of electricity.

The area’s regional plan was originally adopted in 1995 by the Northeastern Vermont Development Association (NVDA). Although it was readopted in 2003, a new regional plan is presently being drafted, according to NVDA’s executive director, Steve Patterson.

The present plan has little to say about placing wind farms on the region’s ridgelines. In his testimony, Mr. Ide calls attention to the fact that, despite advance notice, NVDA has not taken a position on the proposed project — and that its silence may imply consent.

“I think it is fair to assume, however, that if the drafters of the regional plan believed that the proposed project was entirely out of step with the plan, they would have made that belief known at some point during the past year,” he said in his testimony.

The issue of wind farms has proven to be a vexing one for regional planners, even as they work on drafting a new plan.

“It’s a whole new area for a lot us,” acknowledged Mr. Patterson in an interview earlier this month. “It’s an issue we haven’t resolved yet.”

He went on to note, however, that the plan puts a lot of stock in the local decision making process, and that there is nothing in the regional plan that prohibits wind towers.

“That said," he added, “we’re in the process of reviving the plan.”

The argument that the towers have local support, or the support of East Haven residents, may arguably fall flat in a region as vast and as diverse as the Northeast Kingdom. Members of the Kingdom Common Group, who oppose the project, argue that banning wind towers on ridgelines is analogous to prohibiting billboards along the shoulders of the state’s highways.

“In some special way, as yet difficult to define, the ridge lines are being seen as a kind of commons that are important to visitor and resident alike. They must not be destroyed by exploitative individuals under the guise of serving the public interest or of saving our environment,” wrote Bill Eddy, a member of the group, in an essay entitled “Common Sense Revisited.”

In his testimony to the board, Mr. Ide said that the original plan “presents an overall vision of preservation of the unique character of the Northeast Kingdom through maintenance of a way of life built around village centers, surrounded by opens lands of working farms and forest land.” The purpose of the plan, he added, was “to help maintain the region’s environmental and rural character as well as the traditions of the Northeast Kingdom."

And in keeping with the plan’s emphasis on local decision making, Mr. Ide noted that the wind tower project proposed for East Mountain, has the support of both the East Haven selectmen and the townspeople.

“With respect to local ordinances and municipal authorities, the town of East Haven has not enacted zoning laws so there is no local community standard that addresses or otherwise prohibits the proposed wind farm,” he said.

“Further it appears that the project enjoys significant support by the people of East Haven based on a questionnaire distributed to town residents.”

The questionnaire was distributed early in the ongoing debate by the owners of East Haven Windfarm, a Montpelier-based company. While the questions were very site specific, public input has been a contributing factor to land use planning in the area, including the recent debates over a state management plan for the former Champion lands.

As a wildlife biologist with the department, Mr. Decker has played an active role in acquiring and managing public lands in the region. As early as 1969, he says in his testimony, public comment was influential in derailing the plan to turn Victory Bog into a lake and recreational area capable of bringing in 230,000 tourists a year.

Instead, the public opted for something far more natural and familiar. “Recreation in a remote landscape was, and is, a fundamental element of the public’s use and enjoyment of this area,” says Mr. Decker.

Similar public attitudes were expressed toward the Champion lands. Despite a long and often contentious debate, Mr. Decker says in his testimony that the public consistently called for “keeping the area’s distinctive backcountry character, not overdeveloping the area, and not promoting the area for new uses.”

To further buttress his assertion that the public wanted the Champion lands preserved in their rugged, natural state, Mr. Decker provided the board with a letter from the manager of the federal refuge, Nulhegan Basin, which consist of roughly 26,000 acres of the former Champion lands.

Refuge manager Keith Weaver said in a letter to Mr. Decker last month that one of the key themes to emerge from the public hearings on Champion was that the new landowners “retain and maintain the rural, remote, rugged, undeveloped nature of these lands.”

East Mountain is in private hands, and in the PSB hearing slated for this spring, the question is whether the towers are in the public interest and deserve a certificate of public good. Mr. Decker argues in his testimony that a wind farm on East Mountain, which is on the western edge of the former Champion lands, will go against the grain of the public investment in the area over the last 40 years or so.

“Our concern is that we have expended a great deal of time (decades), effort and millions of dollars to preserve the rugged and remote quality of this area,” he says in his testimony.

“Key to this character and maintaining this remoteness is mountain top peaks with unobtrusive skylines. This project will directly impact this keystone feature and unravel the significance of the public investment.”

In making his case, Mr. Decker was using an obscure provision from Act 250’s criteria that reviews a project’s impact on neighboring public land, according to Warren Coleman, an attorney with the Agency of Natural Resources.

Mr. Coleman said in an interview Tuesday that those kind of issues are usually raised whenever there is a concern that a project may infringe on a public investment.

Despite the strength of his language, the attorney said, Mr. Decker's testimony did not put the Agency of Natural Resources on record as opposing the East Mountain wind farm. Rather, Mr. Coleman said, it was pointing out issues the agency wants the board to review.

“The agency is not opposing or approving,” he said.

Part III in this series will look at the divisions the project has caused between environmental and conservation groups.