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Big Wind

Does a four-percent share of Maine's power grid warrant turbines atop Kibby Mountain?

(page 1 of 3)

    I’m writing this column and you’re reading it on a computer powered by coal smoldering somewhere. There may be some diesel fuel thrown in, and some waterpower, and no doubt a little biomass, a spot of nuclear, a few turns of wind. But it’s only been ten years or so that my writing required any power at all beyond breakfast — I went from a green Hermes portable typewriter straight to a chunky MS-DOS PC by Zenith, enormous learning curve, hours of study, all those arcane pathways, nothing I need to know these six generations of computers later.

    Anyway, if I turn the room lights out while I work tonight, maybe I can conserve enough to make up for the additional usage—I mean the computer screen and keyboard are both lit, after all, and all my attention is upon them, so why do I need any other light? And I could go ahead and turn off the lights in the bathroom, turn off the printer and scanner and copier and fax until I’m ready to use them. I could unplug the TV and VCR and DVD and phone machine and various chargers (toothbrush, cell phone, Makita driver-drill) and even the newfangled beeping toaster when they’re not in use — like right now — snuff those little red and orange and green lights that say the machinery is always warmed up, little lights uncommon back when carbon paper was the only backup I knew, not so long ago. And then there are these dark, late winter mornings — sometimes I’ve got ten lightbulbs burning by the time the sun comes over the treetops, lights that sometimes stay on till noon, long after their battle against seasonal affect disorder is over for the day.

    Here’s the question: How vigilant would I have to be to save four percent of my electricity usage? Not very, right? Only four percent? Like nothing I’d even notice. Finish a shower four percent sooner, for example. Turn the water heater down four percent, from 110 degrees to 105.6. Move the wheel in the fridge from 4 to 3.9, and so forth, all around the house.

    Four percent is how much the Kibby Mountain and Kibby Ridge wind project, approved January 14 by the Maine Land Use Regulation Commission, might eventually be able to add to the power picture in Maine (pretending for the moment that power made in Maine could be said to stay in Maine).

    So here’s the next question: should we here in Maine be trading 13 miles of admittedly cut-over (but otherwise undeveloped) mountainside and ridgeline for a four percent we could conserve with no such loss?

    Well, the answer’s been given, the project approved, and TransCanada, a big gas pipeline company, will build 44 towers, each 300 feet tall, millions of dollars investment each, all springing up along with new roads and the heavy transmission lines required, a lot of activity and infrastructure in a place that could have fairly quickly been returned to the wild.

    Four percent.

    Bob Kimber, whom many of my readers will know — writer, adventurer, activist, teacher — invited Drew Barton and me for a walk up Kibby Mountain last June. Many of you will know Drew, too—he’s a forest ecologist and a professor at the University of Maine at Farmington. Two fine hikers, endless forest knowledge between them. The point of the walk was to see the proposed site of the Maine Wind Development project. Bob said to bring snow shoes, and we did, loading them into the back of my car obediently, not that any of us had seen any snow in over a month.

    Bob has close ties to the Kibby area, having grown up summers and hunting seasons at his father’s camps in Eustis, 40 or so miles north of Farmington. Franklin is a big county, and touches Canada at the top, a jagged border. Kibby, in fact, is part of the Boundary Range, beyond which the land flattens into the St. Lawrence Valley: suddenly, people speak French and eat good food.