Maine news, sports, weather | Kennebec Journal, Augusta, Maine

Don’t sacrifice beauty for ill-conceived plan

I speak with strangers every day. People who are unknown to me stop by my office, and I have meaningful conversations with them. We might discuss the weather or the price of gasoline — something innocuous to break the ice — but it usually takes only a moment before I am learning about their families, their histories, their hopes and dreams.

Folks come to the western mountains of Maine because we offer something they can’t get elsewhere. The residents here are friendly and open and are good neighbors, yes, but our beautiful natural resources compel them to visit. Often, those same treasures induce them to stay.

Our administration and Legislature have made a terrible mistake. They’ve paved the way for Maine’s iconic mountains to be permanently altered in order for a misguided plan to be implemented.

Land-based industrial wind energy plants are not good for the environment; not for the high-terrain ecosystems which would be ravaged, nor for the Earth’s atmosphere, despite the fact that proponents often cite wind turbines’ contribution to the reduction of greenhouse gasses.

They are financially unfeasible and are made possible only by huge taxpayer subsidies. They cause health problems for residents who live within a few miles. The energy they produce is intermittent, unreliable and isn’t needed in our state. We already export power, and that which these turbines produce will not stay in Maine.

Three hundred-sixty miles of turbines on pristine ridges and 500 miles of new, high voltage transmission lines to carry the power out-of-state — it simply doesn’t make sense. We already have what others long for. Why sacrifice this bounty for a plan so ill-conceived?

I speak with people every day, and I listen.  They want what we’re lucky enough to already have. 

 

Karen Bessey Pease

Lexington Township