Lempster, windmills, property taxes, and "views"

[KBCraig]

Sounds like Kevin Onnela has it right: "As years went by, whenever a piece of property abutting ours went up for sale we would buy it (the ultimate zoning)."

Any Sullivan County folks able to attend this meeting?

http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx?headline=Kevin+Onnela%3a+Don%27t+let+seasonal+residents+stop+our+Lempster+wind+farm&articleId=f49b50a0-7b78-469d-a23d-52e633780ddd

Kevin Onnela: Don't let seasonal residents stop our Lempster wind farm

By KEVIN ONNELA

TODAY THE STATE committee overseeing the permitting of the wind energy project in Lempster will hold an informational public meeting in our town on the wind farm that has been proposed to be built by Community Energy here. This wind farm will have 12 windmills and will produce enough electricity to power 10,000 homes.

My wife and I are the owners of the ridgeline property on which it would be located, and we would like to give you a short history of us ridge people.

In May of 1978 we bought 400 acres, including the summit of Bean Mountain. As years went by, whenever a piece of property abutting ours went up for sale we would buy it (the ultimate zoning).

Today we have close to 1,500 acres in the parcel. We have kept this property open for others to use for hunting, hiking, four-wheeling and snowmobiling. You might say we have tried to preserve a large part of Lempster, but at the same time, we have created a monster tax bill for ourselves.

For many years we operated a sawmill in Lempster -- until our largest customer started buying a finished product from Russia for less than the cost of the lumber we were selling to them. My wife and I have been trying to figure out a way to keep this land as wilderness land and be able to afford to pay the taxes. We thought we had the solution when Sullivan County Economic Development Committee brought Community Energy to us in 2003.

We discussed this for several weeks before we would allow Community Energy to erect a test tower on our property. We felt that we were doing something good for our town. The town would have a new large taxpayer that wouldn't put more children in the schools.

What has happened in the three years since then has us shaking our heads. A small handful of wealthy summer residents and out-of-towners have deluged local select boards with letters trying to stop a project that would benefit us all.

Among these are a summer resident, who spends most of the year in Florida, who has decided that he doesn't want to see a wind farm on "his ridge line" that my wife and I pay taxes on. Another is a person who lives 100 miles away whose sole purpose in life seems to be to stop wind farms in their tracks.

We expect them, and people like them, to be very vocal tonight when the state's Site Evaluation Committee comes to Lempster for its meeting.

Those who won't be vocal are the regular residents who live in our town, the ones who want this project to happen. If you've been to meetings like this you know that's how it works. They'll mostly be listening and not talking.

These people who have come out against the wind farm say that the state has to be involved because we don't have any zoning in Lempster and therefore don't know what we are doing or can't "protect" ourselves.

The fact is, our town has voted against zoning laws time and time again, even when last year the proposed windmills were the reason for taking the vote on zoning.

When you drive into our town you are welcomed by a sign that says, "Welcome to Lempster, New Hampshire, Live Free or Die." We hope the Site Evaluation Committee understands that we are not stupid or defenseless, but that we still believe in our freedom more than they do in some other places.

My wife and I have taken the time to visit four wind farms in the last two years. We found no dead birds at the base of the towers. You can stand at the base of these wind turbines and talk in normal tones. They make little noise. If this project is built, we will have a windmill within 400 feet of our house and we don't have a problem with this. For three years now we have been dealing with the company that will build and operate them and they have done everything they said they would.

The amount of permitting a project like this has to go through is mind boggling. Community Energy has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars on studies and engineering and shared the information with the town.

We have had a soils scientist working at our house for close to a year putting out little red flags around wetlands. He has even put them around the footprints our cows left because they filled with water.

We have had bird scientists on the mountain for weeks on end lying on their backs seeing birds so far up that we can't see them.

We have had bat experts hanging around checking the bat population, which we didn't think we had.

We feel that the I's have been dotted and the T's crossed on this project. Community Energy has applied for its permits and done everything by the book. They've treated us, our land and our town with respect.

We'd like to think that the state Site Evaluation Committee will understand this when it comes to Lempster tonight, but the way things appear to be going, the "Not in My Seasonal Backyard" people will probably talk the loudest and the longest.

We feel that this project will benefit not only Lempster, but the entire state of New Hampshire. We all use electricity, don't we?

[Lloyd Danforth]

The first one is up and a second tower is being erected. I saw it for the second time yesterday morning.  It was cool with a thin cloud blowing by it.

[doobie]

Does that mean that the farm is going to be put in or are they still "testing?"

[Pat McCotter]

State's lone wind farm taking shape
By KRISTEN SENZ
Union Leader Correspondent

LEMPSTER – The construction of New Hampshire's first wind farm is under way on top of Lempster Mountain, where a string of 12 wind turbines will soon generate enough energy to power 10,000 homes per year.

Components have been arriving by rail and truck for the last few weeks and hauled up Lempster Mountain where the turbines are being assembled on two pieces of private land.

Developed by IBERDROLA Renewables Inc., the Lempster Wind Farm is the company's first renewable energy project in New England, spokesman Paul Copleman said.

"We believe this is one of the best wind resources in the state of New Hampshire," he said, adding that it's not only important for a wind farm site to have strong and consistent winds; it also must be within reasonable distance to transmission lines that can carry the power to the electric grid.

Each turbine in the Lempster Wind Farm is 256 feet tall, from the ground to the center of the rotor, and each has three blades that are 139 feet long.

Once the wind farm is switched on, which IBERDROLA expects will happen by the end of this year, the turbines will each generate 2 megawatts of electricity, for a total output of 24 megawatts on an annual basis, Copleman said.

"The way that it works is that the machines, the turbines themselves, are virtually always ready to catch the wind and then turn that wind into electricity," he said.

The three-bladed rotors will begin spinning in 6- to 8-mph winds, Copleman said. The ideal wind speed for power generation is between 14 and 16 mph. If the wind speed on top of the mountain exceeds 55 mph, the turbines will automatically shut off, "to save wear and tear on the machines," Copleman said.

When construction is complete, the company will connect the turbines to a transformer and send the electricity generated into the public electric grid through regular power transmission lines.

"It's a somewhat complex process of matching the electricity to the electricity flow on the grid itself," Copleman said. "But once it's producing electricity and going into a transformer, it goes into the lines as electricity just like any other power plant."

Based in Radner, Penn., IBERDROLA Renewables started studying the feasibility of a wind farm on Lempster Mountain several years ago. A meteorological tower measured wind speeds and consistency for about 18 months before the company proposed the project to state and local planners and utility regulators. The project was approved last year and the company has secured long-term lease agreements with two property owners.

[John Edward Mercier]

First wind farm in N.H. about to open
By Anne Saunders, Associated Press Writer  |  January 8, 2006

BERLIN, N.H. --Christian Loranger has gone from farming cranberries to farming wind.

If all goes according to plan, three windmills he is erecting on Mount Jericho will be producing electricity by the end of the month, a first for the state.

Loranger, a 35-year-old from Acushnet, Mass., whose first entrepreneurial effort involved a cranberry bog, moved on to real estate development and now wind power with Loranger Power Generation.

Loranger bought used windmills from a California wind farm. Each is 160 feet tall with two white blades gently curved like a modern sculpture.

During a recent visit, the poles lay along a ridge like downed trees. Once rotors and blades were attached, a winch would raise them. Wind that flows off the northern mountains, gathering speed in a natural wind tunnel over Jericho Lake, will power them.

Loranger spent many months researching wind power and studying wind maps produced by the federal government before settling on Berlin as a location.

Though neighbors and environmentalists oppose some bigger wind projects elsewhere in northern New England and beyond, Loranger said Berlin's city government welcomed him and there was ridgetop land for sale close to the three-phase power lines he needed. It didn't hurt that he was familiar with the North Country from many years of skiing.

"I really love the area," he said.

So trusting the force of the wind on his skin, he skipped the usual onsite wind studies and set to work finding the right windmills, getting city approvals and clearing a path for utility poles placed up the mountain.

Mayor Bob Danderson is enthusiastic about the project, saying it will help diversify the city's mill-based economy. He's also impressed that Loranger is doing this with his own money and sweat equity.

Loranger's interest in alternative energy also extends to hydrogen fuel cells, which will be the focus of a project he plans to tackle after the wind farm begins producing electricity.

Before raising the windmills, Loranger had to install cables to take the power off the mountain, a task he took on with help from his 63-year-old father, Bernard. The pair used a bucket truck pulled up the mountainside by an excavator to run the cable over the poles and onto the requisite insulators.

"I've lost 40 pounds running around the mountain," Loranger said. "It's a massive undertaking."

The windmills will produce a maximum of about 1,400 kilowatts per hour, enough for about 700 homes, he said.

Public Service Company of New Hampshire will put the electricity onto the grid.

He hopes to get a fourth windmill operating at the site in March. If all goes well, he envisions someday expanding to produce up to 20 megawatts of power, 14 times the initial output.

Still, Loranger's project is relatively small compared to other wind farms in New England and smaller than many that are proposed.

In southwestern New Hampshire, Lempster has approved a plan by a Pennsylvania company to erect 12 wind turbines, much larger than Loranger's, on Lempster Mountain.

Vermont has the Searsburg wind farm, which dates from 1997, with 11 turbines on a ridge line next to the Green Mountain National Forest. The company involved, the Deerfield Wind Project, wants to add 20 to 30 turbines extending into neighboring Readsboro.

In western Maine, a Canadian company wants to erect 200 wind turbines on mountains north of the Sugarloaf USA ski area. TransCanada is seeking state approval for the wind farm, which would generate enough power for 70,000 households.

Another project, a joint venture of Endless Energy Corp. of Yarmouth and California-based Edison Mission Group, calls for 30 wind turbines just west of Sugarloaf. The Land Use Regulation Commission is reviewing Maine Mountain Power LLC's 1,600-page proposal.

In northern Maine, Evergreen Wind Power LLC hopes to erect 30 wind turbines on Mars Hill Mountain in Aroostook County.

Some environmentalists are fighting the larger wind projects. They say 300- to 400-foot towers are too big, noisy and destructive to birds and bats, which can be killed by the spinning blades.

Lisa Linowes of National Wind Watch says a project on the scale of Loranger's isn't nearly as bad as some. But if it succeeds, she predicts big companies will try to move in to capitalize on the resource.

"What he will do is invite big wind into Berlin," she predicted.

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Windmills vandalized in Berlin
July 7, 2006

BERLIN, N.H. --Three windmills on a Mount Jericho wind farm have been vandalized, likely destroying one and badly damaging the others.

The vandalism is a setback for Christian Loranger, who has worked for a year on the Loranger Power Generation wind farm. He hopes to generate power to be distributed by Public Service Company of New Hampshire.

"I worked there all year, worked through the winter," he said. "It's a shame and it's going to be a lot of work."

He said vandals cut cables used to raise and lower the 160-foot towers. One toppled, breaking the tower and blades. Loranger doesn't think it can be fixed. He says fixing the cables on the other two "is going to be an absolute nightmare."

Loranger said he's determined to go forward with the wind farm, which he hopes eventually to expand to 30 windmills.

Mayor Robert Danderson, who called the damage senseless and intentional, urged anyone with information about it to come forward. He also said vandalism such as this hurt efforts to attract investors and entrepreneurs to the city.

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Lempster definately wasn't the first... and should be on the lookout for vandals.