Even as the recent ORC Macro poll shows increasing public support for commercial wind farm development in Vermont (81 percent would find wind farms “beautiful or acceptable,” up from 74 percent in the 2004 poll), a small group of opponents are again calling for a moratorium. They cite an overwhelming rush by developers to exploit Vermont’s ridgelines.
This is hardly the case. No new wind farm has been permitted in the state since Searsburg, about 10 years ago. Almost four years have elapsed since the Department of Public Service’ Wind Siting Consensus Report was issued. It has been over two years since the East Haven permit application was filed and we are still anxiously awaiting a decision.
Nevertheless opponents raise the shrill cry for moratorium anew, though the Legislature recently declined to consider moratorium proposals. There has been a defacto moratorium in effect for some time, roughly dating back to Sen. Vince Illuzi’s institutions committee moratorium hearing in late 2003.
The Agency of Natural Resources and the House Natural Resources and Energy Committee each had series of hearings. The Governor’s Commission on Wind Energy Regulatory Policy delivered its report over a year ago with no major recommendations to change the Sec. 248 process, yet we are asked to beat the dead horse one more time.
Wind power development has been hotly debated at every level. All of these official proceedings at the state level, along with various town and regional commission hearings, collaboratives, public forums and an on-going war of words in the press and on radio have given anyone paying attention ample opportunity to get informed on the issue.
A few Northeast Kingdom legislators would have us believe that area is uniquely subjected to an onslaught of wind proposals. Yet the majority of the projects close to filing applications in the near future are in southern Vermont. The Equinox and Glebe Mountain projects have each been debated for almost three years. The Searsburg expansion is in Forest Service deliberation at this time. Yes, the Hardscrabble Mountain project in Sheffield was recently added.
That makes one out of four pending applications, not counting East Haven which is near the end of the Public Service Board process.
Filings are imminent for only three sites then, one of which has already hosted wind turbines, and another of which has two ski areas on it, hardly qualifying as pristine wilderness. Filings for any other projects are a long way off. They will all be subjected to intense scrutiny during the Section 248 process. Opposition groups will undoubtedly have party/intervener status for these cases, which means that decisions will not be made in any kind of rush.
(That said, while the pressure put on developers to conform to the strictest standards of environmental planning and protection is laudable, the process should not be “gamed” by developers or opponents.)
As to the competency of the PSB to review wind power applications, why should it be any more suspect than are the District Environmental Boards, composed of, as one moratorium supporter put it about the PSB “unelected individuals forced to react to proposals utilizing somewhat subjective criteria?”
We’ve known where the good wind power sites are for some time, and that there may be 10-12 of them worth pursuing. Further deliberations will not change where the wind and infrastructure is. Many public and utility planners apart from the current administration know what the state’s energy demands and imperatives are.
A comprehensive energy policy would be a good thing, make no mistake, but it could be a long time in coming. Odds are high that a coherent plan will include a wind component calling for, you guessed it, 10-12 sites. There is not much more general information we need to know that the Sec. 248 permit process will not uncover, and the Sec. 248 process will certainly address site-specific concerns.
Meanwhile scientists the world over are telling us that we are fiddling while Rome burns. We continue to pour increasing amounts of money down a fossil fuel rat-hole while every one of our forests, streams and ridgelines are pounded with acid-heavy rain in the months when we used to get snow.
We see increasingly warm average temperatures year round. Should we wait until we need air conditioning in February? We cannot afford to waste more time debating the false, “either / or” choice of wind power or conservation. We need them all, and right away. Further delay is absolutely counter-productive.
As Winston Churchill said, “Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing...after they have exhausted all other possibilities.”
Well, we’ve almost exhausted the other possibilities, when it comes to delaying effective action on climate change. Face it, no leadership entities are riding to our immediate rescue. We must act for ourselves through local solutions like 10-12 carefully constructed wind farms, among other options, as soon as possible. But if it’s a moratorium they want, here’s the offer I’ll propose. An absolute moratorium on all activities causing greenhouse gas emissions. No SUV or car usage whatsoever, no fossil fuel generated electricity, no nothing we can control that emits C02.
While this moratorium on emissions is in effect, we can hold off on any wind farm construction without worsening the problem. Then we can study the impacts of wind power and all the alternatives to exhaustion.
What’s a few years with little or no transportation and inadequate amounts of electricity to go around? Vermonters are known for toughness and Yankee ingenuity, right?
Except that a key problem that wind opponents have had throughout this long debate has been their utter and complete failure to come up with an energy plan that resolves our looming supply and price problems without developing some amount of wind power.
Opponents’ call for a moratorium is just one more semi-reasonable sounding stall tactic. Until opponents are part of framing an achievable solution, then, they are most assuredly part of the problem.

Rob Roy Macgregor lives in Londonderry.