Board rejects East Haven Windfarm project

By Shay Totten | Vermont Guardian

Posted July 17, 2006

MONTPELIER – The Vermont Public Service Board has rejected a proposal to place four wind turbines at an abandoned airbase in the Northeast Kingdom, saying it would have an undue impact on wildlife.

In its ruling Monday, the board rejected an earlier ruling by a hearing officer that the turbines would have a negative effect on aesthetics in the region, which includes thousands of acres of publicly protected areas known as the Champion Lands.

Instead, the board said the project developers did not provide enough information to the board about the potential impact on wildlife, namely birds and bats, for board members to make an objective decision.

The board also kept in place several other key points in the original hearing officer’s decision, which was issued in April, including the need for a $700,000 decommissioning fund be set aside upfront, as well as the potential need for additional post-construction studies that were seen as financially prohibitive for smaller projects like East Haven Windfarm.

“Neither the hearing officer's recommendations, nor our own ultimate decision, should be read as a rejection of the possibility of siting wind turbines on any Vermont ridgeline. Indeed, in the context of this particular proposed wind generation project, both the hearing officer and this board have acknowledged the many and substantial benefits of wind generation, and have rejected many of the objections that have been raised against wind turbines,” wrote board members David Coen and John Burke.

The third member of the board, Chairman James Volz, had recused himself from the East Haven decision. Volz had previously worked as a public advocate within the Department of Public Service.

“Here, however, because [the developers] did not conduct the studies necessary to assess the proposed project's potential impacts on birds and bats, we cannot issue a [certificate of public good] for this project,” Coen and Burke wrote.

Dave Rapaport, vice president of East Haven Windfarm, declined to comment when contacted Monday afternoon.

“The order to me as I read it is not all that much a surprise if you’ve followed this case,” said Public Service Commissioner David O’Brien. “I think it makes it clear to other potential applicants that they’ve got to understand their burden to wildlife and environmental impacts, and they can’t take shortcuts, and that’s what seemed to lead to the denial of this project. It was the scientific evidence related to wildlife impacts that was flagged very early in this case by the Agency of Natural Resources.”

Wind power advocates, while disappointed, did find at least one silver lining in the ruling —the rejection of the aesthetics argument as a chief reason to deny a windfarm. Many wind energy proponents were dismayed at the hearing officer’s ruling in April, saying at the time that if it was accepted as policy, no windfarms could be built anywhere in Vermont.

“While this is not a good decision for this project, for other projects it could be seen as a good decision,” said Andrew Perchlik, director of Renewable Energy Vermont. “On first take, while it’s bad that they didn’t overcome both issues [wildlife studies and aesthetics] it’s good that they did not agree with the main finding of the hearing officer on aesthetics, as that could have had a much bigger impact on other projects.

“But the board did go out of their way to say that this in no way means that this should put a damper on other wind development in Vermont,” he noted.

In their ruling, Burke and Coen wrote: “While we have little quarrel with the bulk of the hearing officer's findings with respect to the public investment and the project's potential impacts on that investment, our review of the record leads us to conclude that the benefits of this renewable energy project are somewhat greater, and its impacts on the public investment less, than the hearing officer determined.”

Perchlik said this should send a signal to other wind power developers to keep the applications coming.

O’Brien agrees that the board’s ruling does hold out some hope that a balance can be achieved in terms of perceived impacts on aesthetics and on public lands adjacent to proposed projects.

“Does that mean that another project down the road can meet that burden? I don’t know, but I don’t think that the board foreclosed that possibility,” said O’Brien.

Despite this current caveat, one wind power developer — Catamount Energy — has scrapped a project in Londonderry because of what the company says are increasingly onerous rules put in place by the Douglas administration that make it more costly and difficult to site windfarms in Vermont.

Today’s ruling leaves just one other project before the Public Service Board. UPC Wind Vermont is proposing a 26-turbine windfarm on a series of ridgelines in Sheffield and Sutton. Twenty of the nearly 400-foot turbines are proposed for Sheffield and six for Sutton.