To the Editor:
Version française: Centrale industrielle d’éoliennes? Nous sommes loin de « passer au vert »!
Industrial wind plant? There's nothing "Green" about it!
______________________________________________________
To the Editor:
April 8, 2007
Let's be perfectly clear: There is nothing "Green" about the proposed Stanbridge Station parc eolien or "wind farm."
This is a massive industrial enterprise, a true "mega" project that would forever change the economy, the culture, the landscape and the skyline of the Eastern Townships.
This is a site where the Montreal plain meets the first folds of the Appalachian foothills, where two centuries of hardworking farmers have picked stones, installed drainage tiles, and plowed and fertilized the land to create a prime agricultural zone. This is where the wind-plant developers would stick their massive wind skyscrapers that rival the height of many downtown Montreal towers.
On these fertile fields they would dump thousands of truck loads of crushed stone to build up a network of several kilometers of access roads wide enough to handle the long delivery trailers and construction cranes. They would scrape off the topsoil, disrupt the drainage and excavate giant round pits to be filled with reinforced concrete to serve as permanent foundations.
Then, if these developers had their way, the towers would arrive on oversized trucks, be lifted into the
air by giant cranes, and be bolted to the foundation pads. And then they would spin, creating that distinctive
grinding, thumping sound that would be audible to all the local residents, some living only 500 meters away.
Then the profits would flow, given adequate wind at the altitude of these sky needles. There would be a paltry trickle of funds to a small handful of landowners who signed deals with the promoter, and a token annual contribution to the municipality. The rest of the money would vanish from this region and the sporadic electrical power would flow into the grid to boost the surplus electricity that Quebec exports.
The unpredictability of the wind means that we cannot count on it being there when we need it most, when we use it to heat our homes in the dead of winter, so it cannot easily replace other power sources and there is much less "green" benefit than suggested by the wind-farm promoters. Besides, Quebec is the richest place in the world in terms of clean, reliable hydro-electricity, so why the rush to cover our fertile fields with wind turbines? Could it have something to do with the Stanbridge Station site straddling an existing Hydro Quebec power line and servitude that leads directly to the United States, permitting easy export of this surplus power? Should the Eastern Townships become an industrial zone just to keep the air conditioners running in New York and Boston?
If this proposed wind plant were built, the rest of our community would ultimately be
left with nothing but a handful of maintenance jobs and a forest of 51
spinning turbines visible from all over the county. If the government agencies allow this project to go
through, a dangerous precedent would be set for converting Quebec's protected Green Zone land to use as an
industrial power plant.
These review processes will be occurring over the next few weeks and months--we must all pay attention and make our opposition clear, otherwise we may wake up to find that we have allowed the historic and beautiful Eastern Townships countryside to be turned into an industrial zone.
Eden Muir
Frelighsburg, Quebec
Version française: Centrale industrielle d’éoliennes? Nous sommes loin de « passer au vert »!
Recommended reading on the "green" issue: Is the Answer Blowing in the Wind? by Robert Pelletier, Lake Champlain Weekly, March 29, 2007