Published on October 8, 2008

LOWELL — A West Coast wind farm developer appears to be fading out of the picture, in a controversial effort to put big wind generators on Lowell Mountain.  But a local landowner may step up to the plate.

Trip Wileman of Lowell has filed “proposed cases” with the Federal Aviation Administration to locate 17 towers, each 410 feet high, at specific locations on Lowell Mountain.  He has not applied to the state Public Service Board for the certificate of public good all commercial wind farms must obtain.

Mr. Wileman said Tuesday he is “interested in finding out what is possible” on the 1,800 acres he owns on the mountain.

“If it is possible,” Mr. Wileman said, “I want to see what kind of parcel I can put together with nothing but in-state participants — by Vermonters for Vermonters.”

Mr. Wileman said he is proceeding “not knowing how the game is played, but feeling my way through it.”

In April, he said, he declined to renew the easements a wind developer had obtained while it researched the potential of the site.

In 2003 a company called enXco (East Coast), Inc., obtained PSB permission to put two 50-meter test towers on the mountain for five years.

In late January this year, just three days before the five years were up, Atlantic Wind LLC asked the PSB for permission to extend and enlarge the test.

Atlantic said its parent company, PPM Energy of Portland, Oregon, had purchased the rights to the Lowell Mountain project.  Atlantic wanted to replace the two 50-meter towers with four 60-meter towers.  (Sixty meters is just under 200 feet.)  Atlantic told the PSB that the data collected since 2003 “is insufficient to complete a feasibility assessment and project planning.”

The PSB balked, asking Atlantic for more information.  In June the state Department of Public Service told the PSB that Atlantic Wind and enXco had signed a stipulation with the state, agreeing to withdraw the request to amend the test rules, to remove the two test towers, and to pay a $2,000 penalty.

That payment would cover two “potential violations,” the stipulation said:  transferring the Lowell project to Atlantic Wind without prior PSB approval; and running the two old test towers past the January 29 deadline to dismantle and remove them.

The 50-meter towers were removed in May, and the PSB has not received a new application for the four taller test towers.

That, Mr. Wileman suggests, is probably because he declined to extend his easement.

“As far as I know, they were looking for 3.5 miles of ridge line,” he said.  Of that total, he added, he owns 2.5 miles.

Mr. Wileman believes the wind data from the test towers was “excellent,” and the site may be “one of the best in the Northeast.”

He had good relations with the developers, he said.  “But they are a big company.  One of the things I really wanted was much more of a local commitment in terms of the participants in the development, and where the power and where the money was going.”

He is still investigating the project, he said, “going through the fatal flaws analysis.”

If he proceeds, he can expect the stiff opposition that has greeted every wind farm proposed in the Northeast Kingdom.  When the proposal was introduced in 2003, many of the 150 people who crowded into a meeting at Lowell Graded School expressed their opposition.

Mr. Wileman said he has just left the firewood business after a summer ruined by wet weather and a recent serious injury to his thumb.  He said he inherited the land on Lowell Mountain from his grandparents.