Published on June 29, 2005

SHEFFIELD — The pitch for siting wind farms on small town ridge lines in the Northeast Kingdom is sounding more and more the same with one exception.

The reaction is becoming decisively more hostile.

“Where do I sign up to vote no,” asked a front row citizen at the town hall here last week as a presentation by UPC Vermont Wind got under way.

UPC wants to site 33 wind towers on Hardscrabble Mountain and surrounding ridgelines.  According to the company’s web site, that is enough towers when working at full capacity to power 50,000 homes.

And to hear the company tell it, most of that power is intended for Vermonters.

“Our goal is to sell 80 percent of it within Vermont,” explained Timothy Caffyn, the development manager of an international company that was founded by his brother, Bruce, and has, according to its web site, “installed hundreds of anemometers throughout Europe, Africa, and America.”

An anemometer is the trade name for a wind measuring device that the company has been using to test wind speeds on Hardscrabble Mountain.  And while the results were not as favorable as they were on East Mountain in East Haven, noted Mr. Caffyn, the company is “fairly certain” there is wind enough on Sheffield’s ridge lines to power its 1.5 megawatt turbines.  The towers themselves will stand 320 feet tall, which is just a little longer than a football field.

The meeting in Sheffield Thursday, June 23, was a replay of meetings held recently by independent power producers in towns like East Haven and Brighton.  The pitch in all three linked conservation in the face of global warming to good economic sense for small towns with a stagnant or shrinking tax bases.

Mr. Caffyn cited studies that show property values climbing in towns where wind farms have been sited.  Wind farms or parks provide “a chance for a town to get a bit of tax revenue,” he added.

But just how much revenue will be generated by the project, Mr. Caffyn couldn’t say, to the chagrin of some in the audience.  When pushed, he threw out an annual figure of $150,000.

A citizen noted he had heard those promises before.  “How much did Sheffield net from the granite people,” he asked, referring to an attempt several years ago to open a granite quarry.

But Town Clerk Kathy Newland reminded the crowd that a $150,000 could make a sizable difference in a town with an annual budget of $600,000, and in one where residents are feeling a financial pinch.

“People are struggling to pay their taxes,”  she said.  “There’re a lot of people on the delinquent tax rolls.”

Fears over the project were fanned by a DVD distributed earlier among townspeople by Paul and Carol Brouha of Sutton.  The video showed townspeople from Meyersdale, Pennsylvania, speaking out against a wind farm that had been sited in the vicinity.

The contents proved so shocking to Mr. Caffyn that he drove to the town over the weekend to check it out.  His findings were just the opposite of the film’s, but he told Sheffield residents that the only way to know for sure is to see for yourself.

To that end, he offered an all-expense paid bus trip to anyone interested in checking out a windfarm firsthand.

Questions from the floor sought to uncover what the project would cost, and how much of a return it would make for investors.

Resident Ken Voss charged that big money was behind the project, and characterized it as “corporate capitalism at its worse.”

But Mr. Caffyn repeatedly tried to reassure the crowd that a wind farm would make a good fit with the community.  He noted, for example, that most of the towers will not be visible from the town center, and that the company desires to be a good neighbor.

“I want to make sure the power is sold here,” he said at one point.

Presently, UPC and Washington Electric Cooperative (WEC) out of Montpelier have joined forces to bring the project to fruition.

According to a news release last month, the cooperative was able to take this step thanks to $941,400 appropriation from the U.S. Department of Energy.  The release went on to say that WEC “screened a number of potential sites and partners before reaching agreement with UPC Vermont Wind.”