Better Plan, Wisconsin

LOCAL WIND FARM FIGHTS PROPERTY TAX

Decision could negatively affect funding for area schools

By Andrew Gaug

SOURCE: St. Joseph News-Press

November 15, 2011

“It’s kind of ironic that what was seen to be a kind of good taxpaying asset is almost becoming a liability,” State Rep. Glen Klippenstein, R-Maysville, said. Looking back, some see the wind farms as the blessing that became a curse.

Additional funding for schools and emergency services lie in the balance of a legal dispute between a St. Louis-based wind company and DeKalb County.Touted as an innovation when it began, Lost Creek wind farm and its owners, Wind Capital Group, have entered into a legal battle with DeKalb County, wanting to pay about half of its assessed property taxes.

The dispute began in August, when Lost Creek turned down an assessment made by county assessor Ruth Ross, giving each of the wind farm’s 99 towers a market value of $930,100 and an assessed value, or 32 percent of the total, of $297,630.“They’re disputing that, saying it’s grossly overvalued,” Ms. Ross said.

Losing an appeal with the DeKalb County Board of Equalization, Lost Creek appealed to the Missouri Tax Commission on Sept. 30, stating the towers have a true market value of $445,727 and an assessed value of $142,633.

Despite being legally required to pay the approximate $1 million by Dec. 31, the property tax money paid by Lost Creek will end up in an escrow account until the commission makes a decision.The legal wrangling is troubling for county officials for several reasons, the main one being they assessed the towers using the same formula as other wind farms in Northwest Missouri, including Gentry, Nodaway and Atchison counties.

“The formula that has been used by other counties and which I used, is a formula that was developed by an assessor and the then-CEO of Wind Capital Group,” Ms. Ross said.

Expected to lose the most in the struggle are schools such as the Union Star R-II School District and King City R-I School District, as well as local fire and ambulance districts, which may not see the money they expected to be generated from the property taxes.“Our current school is doing fine, but ... here’s a big business that’s not going to pay their taxes. Schools rely on tax dollars,” Chris Turpin, principal at Union Star Elementary School, said.

To clarify, DeKalb County Clerk Melissa Meek said it’s not necessarily the case of a company not wanting to pay any taxes, but significantly less money.“In the scheme of things, they want to pay. But it’s such a minute amount to what they’re paying in the other counties,” she said.

Mr. Turpin criticized the move, saying the company was aided with $107 million in stimulus money and now refuses to pay the gesture forward by supporting the community.

“It’s kind of ironic that what was seen to be a kind of good taxpaying asset is almost becoming a liability,” State Rep. Glen Klippenstein, R-Maysville, said. Looking back, some see the wind farms as the blessing that became a curse.

In its inception, the project landed on the White House’s list of “100 Recovery Act Projects Changing America.” In a visit to Missouri by Vice President Joe Biden in 2009, he touted the Lost Creek wind farm as an innovation and commended Wind Capital founder Tom Carnahan for creating it.

Ms. Ross said she can’t answer why the company would refuse to pay the same amount of taxes in DeKalb that they are in other areas.“There have been discussions since they started, of sorts, regarding the value of them and what formula is going to be utilized for market value,” she said.

Wind Capital won’t comment either, sending the News-Press a copy of the court file and a short statement saying the company reserves comment as the matter is being appealed.

Mr. Turpin said the commission’s decision will mark a state precedent for a relatively new form of property.“(If they get) a judgment for a lower amount in DeKalb County, what would keep them from going to the other three counties and saying ‘Now a precedent has been set by the state tax commission. You guys, what we’re currently paying you ... We want it reduced,’” he said

.Ms. Ross said she’s only looking out for the county.“I’m just trying to see that residents are treated in a fair and equitable manner,” she said.Andrew Gaug can be reached at andrew.gaug@newspressnow.com.

DEAD BATS AT WIND FARMS PERPLEX RESEARCHERS, DEVELOPERS

by Brian Bienkowski,

SOURCE Great Lakes Echo, Michigan State University Knight Center for Environmental Journalism, greatlakesecho.org

November 14, 2011 

Wind turbines popping up around the Great Lakes are getting a reputation among webbed-winged night prowlers as large, spinning murderers.

Bats are dying at wind farms across the U.S. Research has shown far more bat deaths than bird deaths, which perplexes wind farm owners and researchers alike.

Researchers in southeastern Wisconsin are seeing 10 bats deaths for every one bird death at local wind farms, said Melissa Behr, a veterinary pathologist at the University of Madison-Wisconsin.

It makes sense that heavy, spinning blades could kill flying wildlife. But bats have internal sonar. They use it to call out and listen to the returning echoes.

It usually keeps them from running into things.

But wind turbines spin up to 175 miles per hour. Bats’ internal sonar range reaches approximately 60 feet.

The math is not in their favor.

“A bat would have roughly a quarter of a second to react to a turbine blade – not very long at all,” David Drake said in a prepared statement. Drake is a wildlife ecology professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Drastic pressure changes around fast-moving blades threaten bats as well, causing disorientation and exploding internal organs.

Researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison studied these two causes of bat deaths – trauma from running into blades, and trauma from pressure changes, which is called barotrauma. Their findings were published in the Journal of Mammalogy.

They collected 41 dead bats in 2009 at the Forward Energy Center in southeastern Wisconsin to examine how they died.

“Seventy-five percent had fractures, which would suggest blunt trauma (running into the blades),” Behr said. “We found 10 percent with no fractures, which would suggest barotrauma.”

Behr cautions that just because fractures suggest they hit the blade, barotrauma may still play a role.

“If bats are barotraumatized, their ears fill with fluid and they would not be able to locate the blade,” Behr said. “It’s possible that bats that hit blades were barotraumatized beforehand.”

Southeastern Wisconsin is along the migration route for a few species of bats. Migrating bats die more frequently by turbine than resident bats, according to the United States Geological Survey.

“When they come back north in June, they seem much less susceptible to being killed then,” Behr said. “Then in August or September they go back south and they get nailed.”

There were approximately 40 bats killed per turbine at 60 turbines in southeastern Wisconsin during the past migrating season, Behr said.

The videos below show the migrating patterns of the three types of bats that die most frequently at wind turbine sites – hoary bats, silver-haired bats and red bats. There are dense numbers of all three species in August and September in southeastern Wisconsin.

(Videos: US Geological Survey – Fort Collins Science Center)

[videos available at source]

Officials in the Great Lakes region are working with wind developers to mitigate bat deaths, said Jill Utrup, wildlife biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Green Bay, Wisc., field office.

“We try to get developers in to consult with us as early as possible,” Utrup said. “We can help find out where the bats are and help place turbines away from those areas.”

Detectors are used to listen for bats so turbines can be placed away from them, Utrup said.

Another option is turning off turbines on nights with low wind speed.

“There seems to be more deaths when it’s a low wind speed night,” Utrup said. “We’ve seen some success regionally with shutting down the turbines at night.”

It is unclear why low wind speed nights cause more bat deaths. It’s possible that they’re flying around more those nights because insects are more active, Utrup said.

Some wind developers are putting up money to figure out the bat death problem. The University of Wisconsin-Madison study was partially funded by the Forward Wind Energy Center in southeastern Wisconsin.

The Forward Wind Energy Center did not return calls requesting comment.

While mitigation strategies are expanding, questions remain.

“We can’t conclusively say what’s happening,” Behr said. “We can’t prove all the broken bones were caused by the blades … it could be barotrauma. We really need more research on this.”

VILLAGE OF CASCADE FACING LAWSUIT OVER ALLEGED OPEN MEETINGS VIOLATIONS

by Eric Litke,

www.sheboyganpress.com

November 12, 2011 

Cascade officials were more than happy to talk publicly about their two wind turbines last summer, when the 120-foot generators made the village the first in the state to power its wastewater treatment plant solely by wind.

But one resident says village government was too quiet in the months leading up to construction, alleging in a lawsuit that the seven-member board violated state open meetings law by repeatedly discussing the $500,000 expenditure using vague agenda items that gave residents no warning or chance for input.

Susan Lodl, 60, of Cascade, filed the lawsuit in November 2010, and her effort garnered some judicial backing last month when Sheboygan County Circuit Court Judge Terence Bourke ruled there was enough evidence to proceed toward trial on the core allegations.

Lodl said she didn’t set out to sue the village that has been her home since 1974, but she was left with no recourse when the board responded to her initial objections with indifference and even hostility.

“A number of us started going to meetings, and we were treated quite rudely. A friend of mine was even called names,” she said. “I even told them at one of the board meetings, ‘Your agenda and your minutes do not coincide.’ And they just kept doing their thing. … They just blew me off as a disgruntled village resident.”

So Lodl decided to take a stand.

This Special Report appears in its entirety in the print edition of The Sheboygan Press. To read the complete story, pick up a paper from one of our many newsstands.

SECOND PART

Written by Eric Litke, www.sheboyganpress.com 12 November 2011 

Facing a lawsuit alleging an array of open meetings violations, the Village of Cascade has responded in part by restricting public access to village government, removing meeting agendas and minutes from their website.

“They’re not required to, but if they really are trying to demonstrate a commitment to open government in the face of an open meetings lawsuit, to start providing less access and information to the citizens seems to be an odd step to take,” said attorney Matthew Fleming.

Fleming represents Susan Lodl, a Cascade resident who filed suit against the village in November 2010 alleging it repeatedly discussed the purchase of two wind turbines without adequately advising residents on agendas. The lawsuit details numerous meetings where minutes show the wind turbines were discussed but the agenda contained no mention or only a vague mention of the topic.

Those agendas and minutes are no longer accessible online, however.

This Special Report appears in its entirety in the print edition of The Sheboygan Press. To read the complete story, pick up a paper from one of our many newsstands.

RICH SUBSIDIES POWERING SOLAR AND WIND PROJECTS

By ERIC LIPTON and CLIFFORD KRAUSS

SOURCE: The New York Times, www.nytimes.com 

November 11, 2011

The government support — which includes loan guarantees, cash grants and contracts that require electric customers to pay higher rates — largely eliminated the risk to the private investors and almost guaranteed them large profits for years to come. The beneficiaries include financial firms like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, conglomerates like General Electric, utilities like Exelon and NRG — even Google.

WASHINGTON — Halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, on a former cattle ranch and gypsum mine, NRG Energy is building an engineering marvel: a compound of nearly a million solar panels that will produce enough electricity to power about 100,000 homes.

The project is also a marvel in another, less obvious way: Taxpayers and ratepayers are providing subsidies worth almost as much as the entire $1.6 billion cost of the project. Similar subsidy packages have been given to 15 other solar- and wind-power electric plants since 2009.

The government support — which includes loan guarantees, cash grants and contracts that require electric customers to pay higher rates — largely eliminated the risk to the private investors and almost guaranteed them large profits for years to come. The beneficiaries include financial firms like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, conglomerates like General Electric, utilities like Exelon and NRG — even Google.

A great deal of attention has been focused on Solyndra, a start-up that received $528 million in federal loans to develop cutting-edge solar technology before it went bankrupt, but nearly 90 percent of the $16 billion in clean-energy loans guaranteed by the federal government since 2009 went to subsidize these lower-risk power plants, which in many cases were backed by big companies with vast resources.

When the Obama administration and Congress expanded the clean-energy incentives in 2009, a gold-rush mentality took over.

As NRG’s chief executive, David W. Crane, put it to Wall Street analysts early this year, the government’s largess was a once-in-a-generation opportunity, and “we intend to do as much of this business as we can get our hands on.” NRG, along with partners, ultimately secured $5.2 billion in federal loan guarantees plus hundreds of millions in other subsidies for four large solar projects.

“I have never seen anything that I have had to do in my 20 years in the power industry that involved less risk than these projects,” he said in a recent interview. “It is just filling the desert with panels.”

From 2007 to 2010, federal subsidies jumped to $14.7 billion from $5.1 billion, according to a recent study.

Most of the surge came from the economic stimulus bill, which was passed in 2009 and financed an Energy Department loan guarantee program and a separate Treasury Department grant program that were promoted as important in creating green jobs.

States like California sweetened the pot by offering their own tax breaks and by approving long-term power-purchase contracts that, while promoting clean energy, will also require ratepayers to pay billions of dollars more for electricity for as long as two decades. The federal loan guarantee program expired on Sept. 30. The Treasury grant program is scheduled to expire at the end of December, although the energy industry is lobbying Congress to extend it. But other subsidies will remain.

The windfall for the industry over the last three years raises questions of whether the Obama administration and state governments went too far in their support of solar and wind power projects, some of which would have been built anyway, according to the companies involved.

Obama administration officials argue that the incentives, which began on a large scale late in the Bush administration but were expanded by the stimulus legislation, make economic and environmental sense. Beyond the short-term increase in construction hiring, they say, the cleaner air and lower carbon emissions will benefit the country for decades.

“Subsidies and government support have been part of many key industries in U.S. history — railroads, oil, gas and coal, aviation,” said Damien LaVera, an Energy Department spokesman.

A Case Study

NRG’s California Valley Solar Ranch project is a case study in the banquet of government subsidies available to the owners of a renewable-energy plant.

The first subsidy is for construction. The plant is expected to cost $1.6 billion to build, with key components made by SunPower at factories in California and Asia. In late September, the Energy Department agreed to guarantee a $1.2 billion construction loan, with the Treasury Department lending the money at an exceptionally low interest rate of about 3.5 percent, compared with the 7 percent that executives said they would otherwise have had to pay.

That support alone is worth about $205 million to NRG over the life of the loan, according to an analysis performed for The New York Times by Booz & Company, a strategic consulting firm that regularly performs such studies for private investors.

When construction is complete, NRG is eligible to receive a $430 million check from the Treasury Department — part of a change made in 2009 that allows clean-energy projects to receive 30 percent of their cost as a cash grant upfront instead of taking other tax breaks gradually over several years.

Californians are also making a big contribution. Under a state law passed to encourage the construction of more solar projects, NRG will not have to pay property taxes to San Luis Obispo County on its solar panels, saving it an estimated $14 million a year.

Assisted by another state law, which mandates that California utilities buy 33 percent of their power from clean-energy sources by 2020, the project’s developers struck lucrative contracts with the local utility, Pacific Gas & Electric, to buy the plant’s power for 25 years.

P.G.& E., and ultimately its electric customers, will pay NRG $150 to $180 a megawatt-hour, according to a person familiar with the project, who asked not to be identified because the price information was confidential. At the time the contract was awarded, that was about 50 percent more than the expected market cost of electricity in California from a newly built gas-powered plant, state officials said.

While neither state regulators nor the companies will divulge all the details, the extra cost to ratepayers amounts to a $462 million subsidy, according to Booz, which calculated the present value of the higher rates over the life of the contracts.

Additional depreciation tax breaks for renewable energy plants could save the company an additional $110 million, according to Christopher Dann, the Booz analyst who examined the project.

The total value of all those subsidies in today’s dollars is about $1.4 billion, leading to an expected rate of return of 25 percent for the project’s equity investors, according to Booz.

Mr. Crane of NRG disputed the Booz estimate, saying that the company’s return on equity was “in the midteens.”

NRG, which initially is investing about $400 million of its own money in the project, expects to get all of its equity back in two to five years, according to a statement it made in August to Wall Street analysts.

By 2015, NRG expects to be earning at least $300 million a year in profits from all of its solar projects combined, making these investments some of the more lucrative pieces in its sprawling portfolio, which includes dozens of power plants fueled by coal, natural gas and oil.

NRG is not the only company gobbling up subsidies. At least 10 of the 16 solar or wind electricity generation projects that secured Energy Department loan guarantees intend to also take the Treasury Department grant, and all but two of the projects have long-term agreements to sell almost all of their power, according to a survey of the companies by The Times.

These projects, in almost all cases, benefit from legislation that has been passed in about 30 states that pushes local utility companies to buy a significant share of their power from renewable sources, like solar or wind power. These mandates often have resulted in contracts with above-market rates for the project developers, and a guarantee of a steady revenue stream.

“It is like building a hotel, where you know in advance you are going to have 100 percent room occupancy for 25 years,” said Kevin Smith, chief executive of SolarReserve. His Nevada solar project has secured a 25-year power-purchase agreement with the state’s largest utility and a $737 million Energy Department loan guarantee and is on track to receive a $200 million Treasury grant.

Because the purchase mandates can drive up electricity rates significantly, some states, including New Jersey and Colorado, are considering softening the requirements on utilities.

Brookfield Asset Management, a giant Canadian investment firm, will receive so many subsidies for a New Hampshire wind farm that they are worth 46 percent to 80 percent of the $229 million price of the project, when measured in today’s dollars, according to analyses for The Times performed by Booz and two other two industry financial experts. (The wide range reflects a disagreement between the experts on the future price of electricity in New Hampshire.)

Richard Legault, the chief executive of Brookfield Renewable Power, the division that oversees the Granite Reliable project in New Hampshire, declined to discuss his profit expectations in detail, but said the project might not have happened without government assistance.

“When everything has come together, it is a good investment for Brookfield, it is no doubt,” Mr. Legault said. “We are quite happy with it.” (Brookfield is also the owner of the small park in Manhattan that is home to the Occupy Wall Street protesters.)

Even companies whose business has little to do with energy or finance, like the Internet giant Google, benefit from the public subsidies. Google has invested in several renewable energy projects, including a giant solar plant in the California desert and a wind farm in Oregon, in part to get federal tax breaks that it can use to offset its profits from Web advertising.

Industry executives and other supporters of the subsidies say that the public money was vital to the projects, in part because financing for renewable energy projects dried up during the recession. They also note that more traditional energy sectors, like oil and natural gas, get heavy subsidies of their own. For example, in the 2010 fiscal year, the oil and gas producers got federal tax breaks of $2.7 billion, according to an analysis by the Energy Information Administration.

“These programs just level the playing field for what oil and gas and nuclear industries have enjoyed for the last 50 years,” said Rhone Resch, president of Solar Energy Industries Association. “Do you have to provide more policy support and funding initially? Absolutely. But the result is more energy security, clean energy and domestic jobs.”

Michael E. Webber, associate director of the Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy at the University of Texas, Austin, said renewable energy subsidies were a worthy investment. “It is a form of corporate welfare that is consistent with other social goals like job creation, clean air and boosting a domestic source of energy,” he said.

Overflowing Breaks

Obama administration officials said the subsidies were intended to help renewable-energy plants that were jumbo-sized or used innovative technology, both potential obstacles to getting private financing. But even proponents of the subsidies say the administration may have gone overboard.

Concerns that the government was being too generous reached all the way to President Obama. In an October 2010 memo prepared for the president, Lawrence H. Summers, then his top economic adviser; Carol M. Browner, then his adviser on energy matters; and Ronald A. Klain, then the vice president’s chief of staff, expressed discomfort with the “double dipping” that was starting to take place. They said investors had little “skin in the game.”

Officials involved in reviewing the loan applications said that Treasury Department officials pressed the Energy Department to respond to these concerns.

Officials at both agencies declined to discuss the anticipated financial returns of the clean-energy projects the federal government has agreed to guarantee, saying the information was confidential.

But Energy Department officials said they had carefully evaluated every project to try to calculate how much money the developers and investors stood to make. “They were rejected, if they looked too rich or too risky,” Mr. LaVera, the Energy Department spokesman said.

In at least one instance — NRG’s Agua Caliente solar project in Yuma County, Ariz. — the Energy Department demanded that the company agree not to apply for a Treasury grant it was legally entitled to receive. The government was concerned the extra subsidy would result in excessive profit, NRG executives confirmed.

In other cases, the agency required that companies use most of the Treasury grants that they would get when construction was complete to pay down part of the government-guaranteed construction loans instead of cashing out the equity investors.

“The private sector really has more skin in the game than the public realizes,” said Andy Katell, a spokesman for GE Energy Financial Services, which like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and other financial firms has large investments in several of these projects.

But there is no doubt that the deals are lucrative for the companies involved.

G.E., for example, lobbied Congress in 2009 to help expand the subsidy programs, and it now profits from every aspect of the boom in renewable-power plant construction.

It is also an investor in one solar and one wind project that have secured about $2 billion in federal loan guarantees and expects to collect nearly $1 billion in Treasury grants. The company has also won hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts to sell its turbines to wind plants built with public subsidies.

Mr. Katell said G.E. and other companies were simply “playing ball” under the rules set by Congress and the Obama administration to promote the industry. “It is good for the country, and good for our company,” he said.

Satya Kumar, an analyst at Credit Suisse who specializes in renewable energy companies, said there was no question the country would see real benefits from the surge in renewable energy projects.

“But the industry could have done a lot more solar for a lot less price, in terms of subsidy,” he said.

AN ILL WIND BLOWS FOR WIND FARM IN GOODHUE COUNTY

By JOSEPHINE MARCOTTY

SOURCE: Star Tribune, www.startribune.com

November 10, 2011 

Opponents of a controversial wind farm in Goodhue County said they will go to court after a state agency voted Thursday to allow construction to proceed despite fierce objections from local residents and widespread concerns over the potential effect on bald eagles and golden eagles.

Litigation could raise difficult questions about an industry that is slated to play a large role in Minnesota’s energy future, lawyers said. The Minnesota Court of Appeals will be asked to decide how much local control counties and townships will have on siting of the massive structures and how much their environmental impact should weigh on deliberations of the state Public Utilities Commission (PUC).

The dispute has the potential to create an “interesting clash between different branches of the government,” said Daniel Schleck, an attorney representing a citizens group that has fought the Goodhue County project since it was first proposed three years ago.

Officials from the company, AWA Goodhue Wind, did not return phone calls Thursday.

The conflict between two opposing environmental missions — clean energy and protecting wildlife — is spreading as wind farms sprout across the nation. Researchers say the massive towers are killing unknown quantities of wandering birds and bats.

In Minnesota, the drive for wind energy comes in part from a state law that requires utilities to derive 25 percent of their energy from wind by 2020. The pressure has been intensified by industry fears that the federal Production Tax Credit, which greatly reduces the costs of the projects, will expire this year.

The vast majority of wind farms in Minnesota have faced little controversy, said Josh Gackle, regional policy manager for Wind on the Wires, a wind energy advocacy group.

But this one, a $179 million project near Red Wing, has seen significant local opposition from the beginning. Goodhue County commissioners also fought the project because, after a protracted hearing earlier this year, the PUC decided the company only had to make a good-faith effort to meet the county’s rule that turbines had to be at least half a mile from neighboring property owners. The PUC set a minimum of 1,626 feet.

A state statute gives local governments the authority to establish such ordinances, but it allows the PUC to override them for just cause. The issue in the appeals court case, said Schleck, will be whether the PUC “can ignore the county ordinance.”

Goodhue County Attorney Steve Betcher said he will ask county commissioners next week whether they also want to appeal the decision. He said it could be a critical test of the state statute.

This summer local residents also began questioning what effect the 50 turbines would have on the local eagle population, a concern that was also raised by the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The site, near bluffs along the Mississippi River, is prime habitat for eagles. Now, there are dozens of eagles — including two rare and protected golden eagles — roosting in the area as they prepare to migrate for the winter, according to neighbors and wildlife officials. Local residents say it’s also a prime spring and summer nesting area for eagles, which return to the same nest year after year.

The PUC required a bat and bird protection plan that is now being developed with federal wildlife officials and the company, but at the same time it allowed the project to move forward. It is not clear how the design would prevent eagle deaths, or whether the company would apply for a special federal permit that would give it an “accidental take” exemption from the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act.

Unlike other industrial projects, wind farms are exempt from the state’s requirement for environmental reviews before permits are granted. Schleck said an appeal would test that exemption, and perhaps set a standard for environmental review for the PUC.

NOTE FROM THE BPWI RESEARCH NERD: These recent photos of the We Energies wind project in Columbia county were taken by Jim Bembinster. They show how the siting of wind turbines has resulted in field fragmentation. What is not visible in the photos is the severe soil compaction that will affect crops.

CLICK HERE to see more pictures from this project, and to download larger versions of these files

Michigan

THREE RECALLED IN JOYFIELD TOWNSHIP

TRAVERSE CITY — Voters have recalled three Joyfield Township officials they believe are too closely tied to a controversial wind project.

Supervisor Larry Lathwell, Clerk Gary Lathwell, and Treasurer Debra Lindgren have been recalled leaving just two members left on the board.

The trio signed leases with Duke Energy to have turbines placed on their property. and some residents say its a conflict of interest.

The Benzie County Election Commission, which is made up of the county’s clerk, probate judge, and treasurer will now chose an interim board member for the township. That will give them enough officials to vote for new members.

Whoever is chosen will serve until the next election in February 2012.

Continue reading...www.upnorthlive.com

Wind Turbine Opponents score victories in two township elections.

In Riga Township, residents voted 440 to 236 to uphold an ordinance that wind turbine supporters say effectively bans turbines in the township.

The vote means that the turbine ordinance enacted July 6 by the township board will stay in effect. That ordinance requires turbines to be no less than four times their own height from non-participating properties and also limits noise levels to 40 decibels between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. and 45 decibels between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m.

In Ogden Township, the candidates backed by wind turbine opponents won the races for township supervisor and township clerk.

Continue reading... Daily Telegram

Maine:  

Ban on large wind turbines approved in Brooksville:

BROOKSVILLE, Maine — Residents here voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to approve a wind power ordinance that likely means the Hancock County town will be off-limits to commercial wind energy facilities....

Additionally, the ordinance adopts noise standards for wind turbines that are stricter than those currently required by the state. Turbines will be prohibited from generating in excess of 35 decibels for any continuous, 5-minute period — except during unusual weather events — as measured from neighboring properties. That standard is also more stringent than new, 42-decibel standards proposed by the Maine Board of Environmental Protection.

Continue reading... bangordailynews.com

Cushing approves new wind turbine ordinance

Cushing — Cushing residents voted Nov. 8 to enact a new town Wind Turbine Ordinance, limiting wind turbines to a maximum of 80 feet tall.

Residents supported the proposed ordinance by a vote of 273 to 181.

Under the ordinance wind turbines that meet the height requirement will be required to meet sound limits at the property lines. These limits will not support large commercial wind turbine installations.

Continue Reading.....Herald Gazette, knox.villagesoup.com

Rumford wind ordinance OK'd

RUMFORD — Third time’s a charm proved true Tuesday when a majority of voters overwhelmingly approved the third proposed wind ordinance in two years.

The tally was 1,137 “yes” to 465 “no,” Town Manager Carlo Puiia said. Fifty ballots were blank, meaning those voters didn’t select either answer.

The vote essentially kills any wind farms coming to Rumford until technology improves or the ordinance gets amended, he said.

Continue reading.....Sun Journal, www.sunjournal.com

New York State:

Hirschey defeats White in Cape Vincent; victory for anti-wind group

Regarding Mr. Hirschey’s plan to pass a moratorium on wind development to create a wind zoning law, Mr. White said that plan would “backfire” on the new town board because wind farm developers are likely to submit another application for the state to consider under the state-controlled Article X, essentially stripping Cape Vincent of home rule.

“I’m not upset,” said Mr. White, who as co-owner of White Farm holds contracts with both the St. Lawrence Wind Farm and the Cape Vincent Wind Farm projects. “I think the people of Cape Vincent will regret this later.”

Continue reading: watertowndailytimes.com