SHEFFIELD — Public Service Board (PSB) Commissioner David Coen’s closing words could have been mere courtesy. “This is one of the largest hearings we’ve been to,” he said, “and citizens treated each other with the most respect.”
In the case of Tuesday night’s hearing on the application by UPC Wind Vermont and Washington Electric Cooperative (WEC) to build at least 26 wind turbines on ridgelines in Sheffield and Sutton, his words rang true.
More than 40 people over two and a half hours told Mr. Coen and his fellow commissioner John Burke about why they supported or opposed the proposed electrical generation facility. A third commissioner, Chairman James Volz, was out of state to attend the funeral of a close friend.
The crowd who filled the Miller’s Run School Community Center numbered more than 150 people.
No one who spoke was undecided, but no one spoke ill of neighbors with differing views.
The hearing was the first of what the commissioners promised would be several large public hearings. The purpose of the gathering, they said, was to hear the views of the public so as to better formulate the questions to be considered in the more technical hearings that will be held later in the approval process.
The views of those who spoke were closely divided between those against and for the project. The number of supporters, however, was enlarged by several people who traveled, some from distant parts of the state, to share their thoughts.
Because of the large number of people who signed up to address the board, the commissioners maintained a strict two-minute time limit on speeches.
The first to speak was Dave Cowan, vice-president for environmental affairs for UPC. He, as did other wind turbine supporters, sported a small “I ª Wind Power” button.
Mr. Cowan pointed out the location of the project on a large map of the Sheffield-Sutton area. Sheffield would be home to 20 of the proposed towers while Sutton would have six more.
He said the towers would be connected by a network of underground cables leading to a central collection point. From there power will be transmitted over an existing 155-kilovolt Vermont Electric Company (VELCO) power line.
The turbines, Mr. Cowan said, are capable of producing up to 52 megawatts of power, enough to power between “fifteen to twenty thousand typical Vermont homes.”
The project could meet 2 to 3 percent of statewide demand, he said, and offset 80,000 tons of carbon dioxide annually.
Mr. Cowan’s vision of green energy with a limited impact on the environment was immediately contradicted by the first member of the public to speak.
Don Gregory of Sutton said he spent 21 years as a fish and game warden walking the area where the turbines would be built. UPC, he said, promised to respect traditional uses of the land, but those traditional uses include hunting, fishing and logging.
Mr. Gregory said people hunt deer, bear, moose and small game on Hardscrabble Mountain and he fears the project’s impact on wildlife.
Other nearby homeowners worried about noise and light pollution from towers looming over their houses.
Sheffield resident and architect Rob Brown said his trade forces him to think about appropriate design, scale and proportion.
When he learned of the project, Mr. Brown said, he purchased software that showed him the places from which test anemometers will be visible. (Mr. Brown said he chose the anemometers rather than the proposed towers because he knew their exact coordinates.)
The towers, he said, were visible from over a hundred different places around the area. Some of these viewpoints were within a quarter of a mile of the towers, he said, while some were as far as 30 miles away.
How can one think about wind turbines that will be five times higher than a church steeple? Mr. Brown asked. Does one imagine five churches stacked on top of each other?
People who favored the project were just as firm in their arguments. Longtime Sheffield Town Clerk Kathy Newland urged the PSB to approve the project. The wind turbines would provide needed tax revenue to a town whose budget is growing beyond the means of its citizens.
Leslie Newland objected to “people from out of state buying a piece of property and telling everyone else what to do.”
He said he would be proud to get into his truck every morning and see wind turbines on the hills producing clean energy.
Harold Newland spoke as a proponent of individual property rights. The people who own land on the ridgelines, he said, “should be able to have wind towers, cell towers or whatever they want.”
Many people who favored the towers spoke of the need to consider energy sources that do not contribute to the problem of global warming.
Students from Middlebury and St. Michaels College addressed the commissioners in support of the project. They said the vast majority of their schoolmates joined them in favoring wind power as a means of reversing the problems of a warming environment.
Conor Driscoll of St. Michael’s College suggested that the wind turbines might one day be viewed as covered bridges are today.
Highschoolers from the King George School held an opposite position. Gaby Mevis warned that low-frequency sound generated by nearby turbines could cause physical problems, including sleep disorders.
Lack of proper rest, Ms. Mevis said, could lead to mental health problems. This would be a big concern for King George students, she said, because they are already dealing with mental health issues.
Ms. Mevis told of the benefit she gained from the school, including good enough academic progress to allow her to graduate a year early.
She worried about what would happen to young people like her should the school be forced to close.
Her fellow student Curtis Jackson came to the lectern sporting a pro wind energy pin.
“I love wind power,” he said. “It’s a great source of clean energy. But it’s not worth what we’re getting out of it.”
He suggested that the power would travel far from the region, making the area “someone else’s workhorse.”
“Keep this the Northeast Kingdom,” Mr. Jackson concluded, “not the Northeast factory.”
The head of King George’s school, Karen FitzHugh, made her students’ fears explicit. The school would close if the towers are built she said, because, “no parent will pay tuition to have their children made worse.”
She warned that the school’s closing would mean the loss of $2-million to the local economy and 50 jobs.
Max Aldrich, chairman of the Sheffield board of selectmen, said he and his fellow selectmen were within weeks of signing a contract with UPC that will cover issues ranging from construction to deconstruction. The negotiation, he said, also included compensation to individual landowners.
Other speakers called the proposed towers illogical. Why, one asked, would the state ban billboards and allow wind turbines?
Some claimed the amount of power would not be worth the environmental damage.
Michael Auger of Barton disagreed. They say the electricity produced by the turbines will only be a drop in the bucket, he said, but “drops in the bucket gets the bucket full.”
After hearing from all those who signed up to speak, the commissioners called a short recess.
As people milled about, one man was heard complaining to another that the commissioners were too busy paying attention to how long people spoke to hear what they were saying.
After a few more people offered their opinions, Commissioner John Burke concluded the meeting with an astonishing recitation of the main points made by each speaker. He dwelt on one man’s comparison of the turbines with the death-dealing Martian machines of H.G. Wells War of the Worlds.
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