DeepCwind Consortium: a Pyrrhic victory?

DeepCwind ruling by Maine Superior Court a  “Pyrrhic Victory” for University of Maine-led industrial consortium - critic.
 
ROCKLAND  In a historic precedent for defense of Maine’s natural  marine resources, the Knox Superior Court has ruled that Maine citizens have the lawful right to sue on behalf of wildlife in the Gulf of Maine.  Read the decision here

“Until now, the courts have rejected efforts by individuals to obtain legal standing to represent non human entities. “ Huber said.  “ Justice Hjelm’s decision, while it allows development of the DeepCwind offshore wind energy test center, also levels the playing field for citizens trying to protect Natural Maine in the face of powerful industrial consortium like DeepCwind. Both in Superior Court and other venues."

Huber was philosophic about the outcome. “We’ve lost one fight here, but the cost to DeepCwind  and other would-be Gulf of Maine ocean energy developers is an end to the ban on citizen representation of wild nature in Maine and the Gulf of Maine,"   Huber said he is exploring his options.

Huber said it reminded him of the tale of King Pyrrhus of Epirus
"One more such victory" fretted the King, following a costly battle with the Romans "would utterly undo him.” ….
“Likewise for the Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands,”  Huber said. “They and the DeepCwind Consortium collectively defied their own natural scientists and oceanographers in order to rush through the permitting of an offshore windpower test center two miles off Monhegan Island.  And while Judge Hjelm had little choice but to defer to the agency for making an ”informed decision,” Huber said, “the justice also signaled his suspicion of the agency’s methods by ensuring that citizens can lawfully challenge efforts by both the DeepCwind Consortium and other big industrial concerns to go around the laws and regulations protecting our irreplaceable natural Gulf of Maine.”

For  a copy of the court’s  decision, Click Here   For more information about the case Click Here


END

Maine Bureau of Parks & Lands April 2010 FOIA docs reveal state & industry hunger for GOM wind & tide energy

On April 26th the Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands's Submerged lands program replied to Penobscot Bay Watch's April 9, 2010  Freedom of Access request for emails and other documents from ocean wind agencies, industry and their supporters, generated after March 24, 2010 - the day the Legislature's Energy Committee finalized LD 1810 The bill  implementing the Maine Ocean Energy task force.


Released documents include:
* Maine Maritime Academy tidal energy plans for Bagaduce River 12 pages Click Here
* Maine Coastal Program plan to use NOAA windpower grant Click here 8 pages
* Offshore Wind MOU between Maine and the US Dept of the Interior Click Here 11 pages

* Miscellaneous ocean wind related emails from or to  the Bureau of Parks and Lands. Most interesting of all.  Click Here 6 pages

UPDATED Grouchy eco-bureaucrats FOA responses suggest politics or paper wrenchers

When one looks back at the bureaucrats one has encountered over the years,  there seems to be a  certain surliness from time to time. Usually, this signals that a developer or polluter under review is a political Bigfoot, and a certain predetermined result is being sought by the ruling party's officials.

Such are the responses I've recently received when chipping some information free from the Maine Department of Environmental Protection's Office of Innovation and Assistance, and prying some loose  from the Maine Department of Conservation's  Bureau of Parks and Lands. Makes one wonder what'g going on behind the scenes.

Conservation's Bureau of Parks and Lands  replied with this forbidding form letter, while MDEP's Office of Innovation and Assistance's slightly personalized response letter  was, if anything, more unfriendly than Parks and Lands' missive.

Both agencies replied to the innocuous FOA queries (for  memos and emails sent and recv'd the first two weeks after the legislature approved the ocean energy act) as if locating this information, which altogether must occupy  no more than two or three manila folders in  file drawers only inches from the replying staffers in their respective cubicles, would require a gargantuan effort that would require extra billing and time.


It seems as though they feel themselves victims of FOA Abuse, and must reply in kind. By FOA abuse I mean those requests that demand tens of thousands of pages of documents across myriad subdepartments for years back in time, for relatively spurious reasons. Wielding the Freedom of Access Act simply to tie up government workers' time.


By contrast, Penobscot Bay Watch FOA requests are typically tightly focused; the receiving officials needing to do little searching to locate them.  But...guilt by association, one guesses.  


UPDATE: Spoke with MDEP's Pete Carney who said that he'd given the Innovations  staff until tomorrow to round up their info for me.  FOA abuse? Carney wouldn't put it that way, but he noted that  the Freedom of access law is being increasingly by litigants instead of waiting for 'production of the record' by the opposing side. This  has increased the amount of file searching and copying by magnitudes. Thus the grumpiness of the MDEP  form letter.

Camden Hills State Park: is secret roadbuilding there a precursor to windmills?

Just as the Bureau of Parks and Lands tried and failed  to enter the wind energy land leasing business offshore in Maine's submerged public lands, so it is presently almost certainly also seeking to open up the Camden Hills and other public lands under its jurisdiction to intensive windfarms. 

Can't do that in state parks or public reserved lands? Not a problem.  Just takes a  2/3 vote of the legislature to open any of Maine's  public lands... 

Chiefly, what mountain windtheft requires are ROADS to get the operation up there and maintained. 

According to this April 8, 2010 story in the Free Press the Bureau of Parks and Lands is transforming key hiking trails of Camden Hills State Park into graveled roads.  

Using the preposterous claim that this land clearing, blasting, bulldozing,  grading and graveling  is simple "trail maintenance" and as such doesn'ted approval from Maine DEP or any other agency, the Bureau has just gone off on its own initiative using private money  to hire the contractors and prison labor for the grunt work.  Whether Maine DEP has truly been in the dark about this patently unlawful activity,or is feigning so, (see closing paragraphs of above article) the whole thing is highly susupect and needs to be publicly scrutinized. Probably litigated about.

BPL likes wind mills. They were  quite upfront to the legislature about wanting to earn money leasing the public domain to the commercial wind industry. Judging from the immense fees they wanted to charge, the bureau hopes to earn big bucks leasing public land for wind. 

Let's take a deeper look at BPLs "trail maintenance" projects around the state. I doubt Camden Hills state park is the only one doing this - let alone the many non-park public lands that the Bureau of Parks and Lands administers.

News: Windpower opponent seeks to keep corporate consortium out of legal review.

UPDATE: The DeepC Wind Consortium is Off the Bus.
According to their lawyer he will drop their request to intervene.

 "Wind power opponent?"  Have I joined that not terribly exalted roster?

I would rather say  "Supporter of birds and beauty", and "Supporter of siting the windfarm R&D site where it is wanted and needed, not where it's most convenient for lazy wind entrepeneurs that would rather not have to trek to the "Other Maine".

But  reporter/editor Steve Betts of the Herald Gazette, who WILL write  about me without ever telephoning or emailing,  makes me out as "opponent", because I informed the court on February 5th  that I would rather keep the corporations out of the case, so I must be one.


The "DeepCwind Consortium" an unincorporated vague mass of corporations, ex-politicians and others, is run by the University of Maine. It hopes to profit by forcing windmills into Maine's public lands and state waters.

But the Consortium would only join the case to cloud the air and  muddy the waters.

For the information the judge needs to make his decision  is entirely within the existing public record.  The consortium would add nothing but hype to the process. They should be kept out and I hope the judge  agrees.

I have no problem with the University ITSELF intervening  in the case, however. Just not that pack of hungry corporate wolf fish calling itself the DeepCwind Consortium.

MONHEGAN STANDS ALONE

As that trembling reed of nature protection called Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands bows without resistance to the conquering Wind, and meekly signs death warrants against Puffins, Ospreys, Terns, Geese, Ducks, Loons, Shearwaters,  Storm-Petrels, Gannets, Herons, Hawks,  Kestrel,  Merlins,  Falcons and Eagles (and their songbird kin);

As former Governor King rushes slavering up and down the High Places, mustaches crusty with crimson'd feathers, a swarm of venture capitalists in his train;

As present Governor Baldacci musters the Legislature, impatient to join his predecessor, but for now wielding  the state's legal blades against the Low Places -a bit of indigestion, to be sure, from bolting down Vinalhaven's scenic assets too fast. Now seeking next  windy midcoast islands a'dreaming offshore to seize wind and seize the view;      

As eco-yuppies batten in greedy flocks and swarms, tearing cash from the carcasses of old promises to Gaia's natural citizens -, now but roadkill on the road to the ENGO e-Damascus, where spun platitudes  create at least a vision of energy plentitude;

As academics peer, some fearfully, some hungrily, from their ivory windtowers, awaiting their turn to experiment on enchained Aeolus, Anemoi, Ehecatl, Fujin, Njord, Pazuzu, Vayu, Venti, all the Wind Gods and Goddessess throttled, grotesquely crucified upon turbines, deafened by the ceaseless sobbing eldritch dirges, from  banshee shriekage to thudding bruising infrasound, that blunt the air.;

As  thrashed and choking zephyrs spin helplessly, their death spirals fouling the beauty-questing eye, and the Techno-Juggernaut rising to makes Its move;                                                                                              
As a universal shrug permeates Maine, New England, Turtle Island, pervades the entire Cosmos;

MONHEGAN STANDS ALONE

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