Maine's Sea Wind Liberation bill: final action Monday

It has been positively Prufrockian in Maine's capital city if you care about the Wild Wind.

LD 1810 is a  bill offering the Dawn State the opportunity to lead America either into a confused beach head of fractured local economics and social unrest, or else divert the ocean wind farm wannabes further offshore.  That depends on whether on Monday April 5th the Maine Legislature finally  denies Maine's territorial tidal waters to intrusive, over-subsidized wind turbo farms like those set up on peaks and ridges of the Maine Woods.


Many more are planned  by  an alliance of utility investment groups, & high end compromise-prone state & New England eco-yuppy outfits, milking trickle-down gold from the Wind Giants. 


Then on March 24, 2010 this  ENGO/corporate hydra had its many heads handed to itselves,  for trying to wade out onto Maine's territorial sea mounts and ledges with similar "dumb growth" designs as they'd foisted on up lands.


The plan to infest Maine state  waters with  bladed towers has been left:

 "spread out against the sky / like a patient etherized upon a table.'   

 Yet similarly, final action on historic Wind Liberation legislation  too, continues to crawl glacially  toward the finish line. This time the final vote has been delayed to Monday - the very last day of the 2010 legislative session. And what amazing changes  the bill has gone through in the month since it first appeared! 

 An Act To Implement the Recommendations of the Governor's Ocean Energy Task Force" came out of that task force ready to force open every square mile of Maine state waters to industrial scale ocean windfarming.  But from the would-be invasion's beginning on March 11th,  Maine's two give-no-ground lobstermens associations held firm, letting wave after wave of windvaders, blades glittering above their briefcased ranks like sarissas, break futilely against their Ancient  Rights.   

But even granite becomes sand under repeated waves. At a major engagement  on March 18th,  Maine's lobstermen's 1st Legion, the MLA, was, to their everlasting ignominy, on the verge of giving up ground,  when a wild charge roaring in on shrimper, scalloper and groundfish boats savaged the invaders'  initiative, driving the windbaggers back mile after mile with their furious onset!  

Completely out of Maine state waters! Then, on March 23rd, as the Windies tried to reform, across the Line in federal waters, they were shocked to find Maine's oceanic cavalry  pouring from Bar Harbor  and other coastal towns in  coordinated small group forays through the three mile gate after them. This would be no Gettysburg, with the southern invaders again allowed to escape after their crushing defeat....

But escape they did, after being chased ten miles from shore, and vanishing, tails tucked,  into venture capital warrens - where no sensible fishermen goes.

Magnanimous in victory, Maine's fishing industry's terms were merciful: a ten mile no-windfarms buffer stretching out from Maine's shore, beyond which the Windies could practise their extraction industry - as long as (1)  the University of Maine held a controlling interest in those operations and not Wall Street, and (2) Maine electricity users had optional first dibs on the juice coming ashore in Maine from those offshore operations. 

Permission, too, was granted to test prototype offshore floating windsnatcher technology at  three tiny border sites off Midcoast Maine, to the relief of Bath Iron Works and Prock Marine, which would build the experimental wind-gathering machines, and even the mighty offshore behemoths that would be taken  by the University of Maine deep into the Gulf over the horizon.

Treaty terms made, it is up to the maine legislature and the Governor to ratify them. Bureaucratic dawdling has delayed the final signing of the agreement  by Govenor Baldacci, but  Monday is the final day of the legislative session, and already, witnesses have "heard the mermaids singing, each to each" and the governor grumbles "I do not think that they will sing to me."

* Quotes from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." by T.S. Eliot

No windfarms to be allowed in Maine state waters, state legislative committee decides

Augusta.  There will be no windfarms in Maine state waters, a state legislative committee has decided. By unanimous vote, the Legislature's Utilities and Energy Committee sent a final version of LD 1810."An Act To Implement the Recommendations of the Governor's Ocean Energy Task Force", to the full legislature, where passage is deemed likely.

Maine will be the first state in the Union to ban windmills from its coastal waters. Listen to the March 24th final Work session on the bill The decision to keep state waters free of windfarming came as a result of pressure by members of Maine's commercial fishing industry,including  lobstermen, groundfishermen, shrimpers and scallopers, who intensive ply their trade in every square mile of Maine's marine waters. See a petition about LD 1810 submitted by Bar Harbor fishermen

The 40 and 50 year windfarm leases that would have been offered  under the earlier form of LD 1810  would have, due to wind farm insurance policies, barred groundfishing and scalloping and other fishing. This would be "closing the commons" of Maine's Territorial Sea that the fishermen share with windjammers recreational fishers and other water users. The Committee also heard from the coastal resort industry, which similarly feared loss of business if windmills began flapping near the shore in Maine state waters

While the  radically altered bill bars windfarms from state waters, it promotes their development a minimum of ten miles from shore, including from the shore of any inhabited Maine island.  The bill no longer strips coastal towns of the power to regulate structures in municipal waters, and drops a proposal to bar the Maine Board of Environmental Protection from hearing appeals of windfarm permits. Instead,  the bill allows for prototype wave and tidal power generators in state waters, with test locations to be identified using a process similar to the one used to identify three test sites for prototype deepwater floating turbines.  The bureau of Parks and Lands, which will license wave or tidal projects in maine setate waters, will be required to notify commercial fishermen via the state's Marine Resources Advisory Council and the state's lobster zone councils.

But central to the bill is setting up a competitive solicitation process for building, transporting and operating a 25 megawatt deepwater floating wind system  that by 2015 would supply 87,000 megawatt hours of electricity per year  to Maine consumers, with hopes for greater expansion in decades to come.Under the bill, the state will "brand" power from its over-the-horizon wind generation as  "Ocean Wind Green Standard Offer"  Though power from the offshore wind facility will cost more than land-generated electricity, the state hopes consumers and industry will be attracted by the idea of purchasing "Ocean Wind Green" power, that does not interfere with fishermen or other already existing businesses and communities like land -based turbines, and does not degrade Maine's scenic assets.

Kudos to the Maine Legislature's Utilities and Energy Committee for learning from the mistakes made several years ago when they legislated a fast track approach to wind farming in Maine's mountainous areas. In the case of the ocean, the committee put coastal Maine's existing ocean-dependent, scenery dependent economy first.

Maine legislature holds fate of Gulf of Maine ecosystem in its hands

Friends of natural Maine fisheries, 

We will be running the Utility and Energy Committee work session on the ocean windfarm bill LD 1810   live on WRFR FM community radio, Thursday afternoon, from 1 to 3pm 

Tune in to the hearing in Rockland at  93.3fm. In Camden  99.3 fm and live on the web at http://www.wrfr.org 

If you can make it to the work session. Let the committee members know that you are a fisherman or  a sailor, etc and that you are there to offer information if they need it. The legislators will probably call on you. 

If you can't go and haven't had a chance to contact the two committees that need to hear from you  Here are details and email addresses below. Note that the legislators are checking their email DURING the hearing on laptops. If you send them something DURING the worksession, they will read it, and it will affect their vote.

-Ron Huber

How to Stop Energy Industry Takeover of Maine state waters fishing and sailing grounds, by doing a quick email or two by Thursday mid-afternoon.

Fire off a trio of emails to the three legislative addresses below, between now and 2pm Thursday, and you may be the one who tips the balance and puts a hold on the terrifying energy industry-written legislation LD 1810 the Governor's Ocean Energy Task Force that is poised to Close Maine's Marine Commons.

This bill "land rushes" open all Maine state waters to absentee ownership of industrial scale multi-million dollar renewable energy extraction leases, for industrial scale wind, tide and/or wave energy extraction operations.  Maine's low budget Bureau of Parks and Lands would grow into a economic and political powerhouse, and happily lease out Maine fishing grounds to industrial scale wave, wind, and tidal energy extraction fields.  

In short It would close much of Maine's Marine Commons and reopen them to investment leasing for wind, wave and tidal energy extraction. Read LD 1810 with the nearshore waters' parts highlighted (pdf)  

That's right. What is being considered in this terrifying bill, introduced near the end of the legislative session is nothing less than the Closing of Maine's Marine Commons. As an "emergency" bill, no less, so the energy industry could rush in right away this summer and start snapping up Maine state waters in  massive million dollar transferable leases.

By email. tell the following sets of legislators that LD 1810 needs to be turned into a resolve, shopped out to  the  schooner fleets, scallopers, shrimpers, groundfishermen, lobstermen, charter boat operators, other sport fishermen, coastal camps and resorts and other water dependent businesses. THEN come back, a year from now, with a new and improved version that respects the existing users, human and natural. 

Otherwise, tell them, just give LD 1810 an Ought Not To Pass. Back to the drawing board. 

Email the Utility & Energy Committee Clerk Kristen Gottlieb Kristen.Gottlieb@legislature.maine.gov. Ask her to forward it to the committee's members. She will. 

Ditto for Marine Resources Committee Clerk Marianne MacMaster Marianne.MacMaster@legislature.maine.gov  Be sure to mention LD 1810 in the subject lines.

Email Maine's Speaker of the House Hannah Pingree at hannah@pingree.com Representative Pingree represents the fishing towns of Brooklin, Deer Isle, Stonington, Swans Island, Frenchboro, Tremont, Isle au Haut, North Haven and part of Mount Desert Island.  As Speaker of the House of Representatives, she is Everyone's Legislator. Let Representative Pingree know what you think.

In closing: 

Every State of Mainer who's ever worked groundfish, lobsters or scallops agrees on one thing: 

Never Give Up Ground.

That was true at Gettysburg; it should be true right now, as the South once again tries to invade the North. Corporate powers, this time, but just as dangerous.

Stand up..

LD 1810: bill opens all Maine state waters to wind farming; all private land to wind power transmission towers

The nightmare is real.  Fresh introduced comes LD 1810 An Act To Implement the Recommendations of the Governor's Ocean Energy Task Force

This long complicated, nearly unreadable bill will: 

 

1. Open all private Maine land to wind power transmission lines and towers for ocean-extracted electricity.

 

2. Open all Maine's state marine waters (within 3 miles of shore) to  wind turbines by the thousands, in 30 year leases that will  quickly centralize to  ownership by global Big Energy.

Results?  Legislators are being told to ignore the fine print of the bill and simply give big industry lasting control over Maine's coastal waters, and the right to force right of ways for their wind powerlines through all private property on the Maine mainland. 

 

Some highlights (or lowlights) of the bill:

* Landowners  will be required by law to allow erection of power transmission towers on their land and the clearing of powerline right of ways through their property, if this will facilitate the movement of electricity from nearshore windmills onto the Grid.

 

* Herring fishermen, scallopers and groundfishermen will effectively be forced out of 100s of square miles of state waters because of the extensive cables and bridle arrays used to move electricity and  support and stabilize these mammoth turbine structures

 

* Lobstermen and other fixed gear fishermen will be forbidden to fish among the cables and bridles surrounding the towers, unless they sign releases exempting the  wind industry from responsiblity for gear loss  or vessel damage from entanglement.

 

* Windjammers will be told to try the Scylla and Charybdis CHallenge : schooners must race in the lanes between the rows of turbines  waving their blades. One false tack and... off with your tops'ls!.  Or they can abandon those waters for other places to bring tourists seeking natural Maine waters.

 Tough luck, humpies, right whales and puffins: time for the Big Thrum to fill Maine waters and sea airs with the sound of wind-nappers de-energizing the local marine environment, kilowatt after kilowatt, till the local plankton lose their rhythm. If they can't dance, they won't be part of our evolution. 

 

Did someone say birds?   Bah! One of the first ocean areas believed to be targeted by  the industry is the waters near Metinic Island in Penobscot bay. Half of Metinic is part of the National Wildlife Refuge System and is considred nationally as an "Important Bird Area".  Wind plantations near Metinic will thin out these migrants most efficiently.

 

Bottom Line: 

If wind extraction technology and operation is subjected to the same standards of the state's conservation and environmental laws and regs  as fishing gear, oil and coal plants and other industrial technology is, this discussion would be taking place before the Board of Environmental Protection, and  every person in Maine who wanted to would be able to put his or her two cents in.

Instead   LD 1810 EXEMPTS  GOVERNMENT AND INDUSTRY FROM  THESE BASIC ELEMENTS OF DEMOCRACY AND CONSERVATION. TELL YOUR LEGISLATOR TO REJECT IT.

Wind industry's promoters believe they have spread enough bribes donations around the ENGOs and political class to get the legislators the desire and political cover to suspend Maine's environmental laws.

DON'T LET 'EM  If they aren't stopped now, this industry will  leap onto Maine's bays and coves  with nary a review of their impacts beyond the most comically cursory checklist.

Instead of  land-rushing Maine's coastal waters with this terrifying  LD 1810, let's learn from the mistakes Maine wind developers made on land, and figure out how not to make a mess off Maine's shores. Let the global corporations wait while coastal towns and ocean interests create ordinances and laws to protect themselves from the rapacious investors who are backing this invasion plan to the hilt