MONTPELIER — It was the question that has been on everyone’s mind, and the one no one thought would be raised before members of the quasi-judicial, electric regulating agency known as the Public Service Board (PSB).
It came following a series of questions on how to sort out the differences between a host town that vigorously wants a wind farm and neighboring towns that don’t.
It came on the last day of a ten-day hearing on whether a 16-tower wind farm on the ridge lines of Sheffield should receive a certificate of public good (CPG) and be permitted.
And it came during an exchange between one of the board members, John Burke, and the Director of Energy Efficiency for the Department of Public Service, Rob Ide.
Mr. Burke was curious to know if the regional plan for the Northeast Kingdom (NEK) would support a nuclear power plant in preference to wind — a perplexing issue recently taken up by Windham County.
Often guarded in replying to questions calling for an opinion, Mr. Ide took the offensive. For the next several minutes he proceeded to bring one of the hearing’s most dormant issues to the foreground: Why should the Northeast Kingdom be called upon first and foremost to slake the market’s burgeoning thirst for renewable energy?
“I very quietly think we’re doing our share and a little bit more,” said Mr. Ide, who before taking his job with the department was one of two state senators representing Caledonia County.
Mr. Ide went on to tick off the projects the region has hosted to generate and distribute power and fuel. From hydro dams on the Connecticut River to the big DC powerline through the former Champions lands in Essex County to the methane facility at the Coventry landfill, Mr. Ide said the region has accepted its responsibility to Vermont by hosting these projects, along with the Portland pipeline.
The region has been “very quietly doing our part,” he said.
Similar claims could be made by other counties,” noted Mr. Burke, offering Windham County and Rutland County as examples.
The discussion was quickly taken up by board member David Coen, who in addition to recalling the days when Glover’s Bread and Puppet Theater satirized the PSB’s chairman for allowing the DC line to cut through the Kingdom, queried how the region would react if it had to upgrade trasmission lines as was being proposed in Rutland County.
Reluctantly, and expressing fear that his name would be mud in his hometown for offering such an opinion, Mr. Ide said an upgrade would be accepted. Adding what may have been a face-saving caveat, he concluded it would be easier to site an upgrade in the NEK than a wind farm.
When it came to the question of whether a wind farm would be in the public good, Mr. Ide waffled.
“Yes and no,” he said.
On the one hand, Mr. Ide contended that there is a reasonable argument to say that wind farms are in the public good. UPC, he continued, is proposing to sell its power to Vermont utilities at a discount to the market price.
On the other hand, he said, the department would be acting discourteous if it did not acknowledge the prevailing anti-wind sentiment in Northeast Kingdom towns.
Later, UPC attorney John Kassel sought to shift responsibility from the region to the state by asking what Vermont should do to fight global warming.
“Vermont is doing pretty good now,” replied Mr. Ide. “We would like everybody to join us.”
Massachusetts developers, operating as the entity UPC Wind, say their proposed 40-megawatt wind farm will produce enough electricity in a year’s time to power the roughly 15,000 homes in Caledonia County. According to testimony during the hearings, which began the last week in January, it would take two construction seasons to bring the project on line.
Developers have repeatedly testified that to make a wind farm economically feasible, they must place their 420-foot towers on mountain tops or ridge lines. Just how they would get those towers on Granby Mountain and its neighboring ridge lines has turned into one of the project’s most vexing and cantankerous issues.
Town roads are at the crux of the problem. Board members heard testimony last Friday from Barton lister Gary Marcotte on how transportation issues would impact municipal services and roadways. The real fireworks began, however, when Barton attorney William May went after a panel of company vice presidents on the company’s proposed construction route that would convey truckload after truckload of materials, some weighing close to 200,000 pounds — “a behemoth moving at a snail’s pace,” charged Mr. May — through downtown Barton before turning west off U.S. 5 onto the Duck Pond Road.
For the company, Scott Rowland, an engineer, testified that impacts on traffic would be mitigated by keeping flexible delivery hours to the site and by equipping trucks with steerable rear ends to increase maneuverability. A worst case scenario, he testified, would only tie up traffic for a maximum of 15 minutes.
To Mr. May, however, such estimates amounted to little more than “innocent puffery,” and through his probing the attorney quickly discovered that none of the witnesses on the stand knew what promises had been made to the town when UPC met earlier with selectmen over traffic concerns.
“Then why are you the witnesses?” asked Mr. Coen at one point.
Mr. May repeatedly asserted that UPC had not been forthcoming with information on its preferred route, causing the town to miss a December filing deadline before the board. He further contended that changes were made without the town’s knowledge or consent.
UPC filed an amended petition in September to reduce its proposed number of towers from 26 to 16. In January it went a step further by enclosing the entire array of towers within the Town of Sheffield.
Mr. Rowland testified that the company made the changes in response to criticism from Sutton, the King George School and the Department of Public Service. And as it changed its array of towers, it also changed the construction route.
Mr. May, however, challenged those explanations, and suggested that UPC had simply opted for the cheapest route. Why, he persisted, had the company failed to pursue a route that would keep its trucks within the limits of the only town that stands to financially benefit from the project?
Through the discussion, Mr. May argued that the proposed route would have an adverse impact on Barton’s summer tourist season, and disrupt traffic patterns.
Mr. Rowland, in turn, argued that the Sheffield route had wetland issues to overcome, and that the impact of the preferred route on Barton would be only one of inconvenience, and not economics.
The discussion, however, left the board with some doubts.
“I got the impression this afternoon that Barton is not too happy,” said Mr. Coen, as Friday’s testimony drew to a close.
He said he wanted the company to take another look at the available routes. A possible outcome recommended by Chairman James Volz was to use alternating routes, depending on the loads and vehicles.
Mr. Burke said bluntly he favored putting the load on the town that will benefit most from the project.
The proposal to fit a wind farm into a small town in the Northeast Kingdom has repeatedly raised the question of what is in the public good. UPC needs a certificate of public good before the project can go forward, and if the hearings reveal nothing else, they amply demonstrate how difficult it is to judge what constitutes the public good.
Among the neighboring towns, Sutton and Barton have been the loudest in opposing the project. And to that end, each has pointed to a public vote in which their citizens opposed the project. Sutton’s attorney last week led Mr. Ide through a series of questions about the five-year regional plan recently adopted by the Northeastern Vermont Development Association (NVDA).
And one of the points he kept returning to was that the NVDA board had to amend the plan in the face of public opposition to commercial wind farms.
Through employing a smaller scale, Mr. May adopted a similar tactic with Mr. Ide.
Barton’s public vote on the Sheffield project was held at a special town meeting in December. According to Mr. May, 175 residents attended and took 15 minutes to vote on four articles. As a body, the voters unanimously opposed the project.
Would it be “an unusual circumstance” to have a unanimous opinion at such a meeting on anything other than “giving thanks to the Ladies Aid Society for putting on the lunch?” asked Mr. May.
“That would be my experience,” replied Mr. Ide.
Would it be exceptional for a town meeting where so many people agreed unanimously on something so quickly, the attorney continued.
“Something unusual for Vermont town history,” agreed Mr. Ide.
Finally, the question came around to the state’s natural resources and the belief of wind developers that ridge lines can serve the public good.
“What’s been troubling me from the beginning is: Why Vermont?” asked board member Burke.
Wind tests, he was told, have demonstrated that the wind blows strongest on ridge lines; more so than it does at lower elevations like those found on Lake Champlain.
Would small turbines be feasible? asked Chairman Volz.
Less power, less revenue, came the reply.
If wind farms were too large for the Northeast Kingdom, would the same be true throughout the state? Mr. Volz continued.
Size is a measure of economics, noted one of the company vice presidents, Steve Vavrik. The company could not afford to reduce the size of the Sheffield project.
Hearings on the project will resume late in March. Still pending is testimony on whether the project could cause the King George School to close down.
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