Turbine tidbits

Back in court on Whalerock; what's REALLY going on in Falmouth; Larry LeBlanc’s properties and other news puffs from the world of wind

By Will Collette

As most of Charlestown knows, the next episode of Charlestown’s summer thriller, the Whalerock Hearings, will take place on June 19 at the Charlestown Elementary School. 

This will be the third installment and, according to Whalerock lawyer Nick Gorham, Whalerock plans to finish presenting its case before the Zoning Board of Review (ZBR) for approval of its application for a Special Use Permit to build two wind turbines just off Route One that will top out at 410 feet from ground to blade tip at its highest extension.

Lawyers went before Judge Kristin Rodgers on Friday, May 7, to debate the town’s new argument that Judge Rodgers should reverse her ruling that the town of Charlestown lacked standing to sue Whalerock.

Judge Rodgers was the second judge to rule that Charlestown lacked standing. But after three years into the case, our Town Solicitor thinks he has found a property that the owners had abandoned prior to a tax sale and, based on that property, Solicitor Peter Ruggiero argues that now Charlestown has standing as an abutter.

According to the Westerly Sun, Judge Rodgers refused to rule on that motion and instead will consider both sides’ new arguments. At some unspecified time, she will issue a written ruling. Meanwhile, the ZBR hearings will continue. Judge Rodgers also refused to issue an advisory opinion on Whalerock’s objections to the town participating in the hearings. Those objections were based on Rodgers’ earlier ruling. The Sun reported that Judge Rodgers was adamant that her earlier ruling stands.

What’s really happening in Falmouth

By more than 2 to 1, Falmouth voters turned down the funding to tear
down the town's crappy wind turbines

During Part Deux of the Whalerock hearings, several audience members and Stephen Ambrose, the guy the town presented as a rebuttal witness, made claims about the troubled Falmouth, MA wind project, saying it had been shut down and is about to be torn down.

However, these statements turn out to be exaggerations. There is no dispute that the Falmouth turbines are bad turbines since the town bought two obsolete technology, scratch-and-dent turbines. Not surprisingly, the turbines worked poorly and created excessive noise, leading the Massachusetts DEP to rule that Turbine #1 exceeded noise standards, prompting the town Zoning Board to shut Turbine #1 down. That decision did not affect Turbine #2.

Anti-wind activists in town not only wanted the turbines stopped, but wanted the town to tear them down. At the annual town meeting, the anti-winders came up just short of the super-majority needed to authorize the money to dismantle the turbines.

The town Board of Selectmen (equivalent to our Town Council) then decided to put the issue before the voters in the special budget election. That May 21 vote generated a huge turn-out – 41%. By comparison, Charlestown’s special budget election only attracted 3.9% of our registered voters.

In this secret ballot, Falmouth voters rejected the proposal to tear down the turbines by a vote of 2,940 to 6,001 or more than two to one.

The other fact lost in the static and false claims about Falmouth is that the Falmouth turbines are not the same as the turbines LeBlanc is proposing for Whalerock. In my opinion, LeBlanc's turbines are also prone to failure since they use gearbox technology to generate electricity rather than the less trouble-prone direct drive models. Nonetheless, comparing the Falmouth turbines to the ones that LeBlanc wants to use is like comparing apples to apricots.

Larry LeBlanc’s businesses

NK Green near Wickford Junction. Running since December
without complaint

While everyone is focused on developer LeBlanc’s wind turbine project, lost in the shuffle is his still-pending housing complex proposal. That project is also in the courts and awaiting approval. The sales-leaseback agreement LeBlanc has with his formerly silent partner James Barrows of Connecticut contemplates having both the wind turbines and the housing project co-existing. 

For an example of what this might look like, there’s NK Green next to Wickford Junction which was developed by Mark DePasquale. NK Green’s turbine, the tallest in Rhode Island, sited literally in a residential neighborhood, has been on-line for six months without complaint.

If Charlestown ultimately prevails and defeats the Whalerock wind project – and doesn’t take what I consider to be the logical step to make a deal with LeBlanc to buy the land as open space – there are many other types of projects that LeBlanc might propose.

I went into the Secretary of State’s corporate database and discovered that LeBlanc has a large array of active corporations that he could use as the platform for any of a number of new enterprises on those 81 acres. Here’s the list of LeBlanc’s current corporate bodies:

Click to enlarge

One of those companies interested me – Envine Estates Development Corp. – because I noticed it was the only one that LeBlanc featured in his LinkedIn page.

And if that doesn’t raise the blood pressure of many Charlietowners, there are the various uses the town Zoning Ordinance permits for property zoned as R2A, like LeBlanc’s 81 acres. For example, forestry on R2A zoned land doesn’t require a Special Use Permit.  

He could clear-cut the land and sell the timber. Once cleared, he could level it and use the land for farming without a special use permit. He can set up a farm supply dealership without a special use permit. He could put a playing field there without a special use permit. Or he could build a church.

Or Charlestown can get real and buy the land as open space.

Science or fake science

If you want fake science, go to the best source:
FakeScience.org

A lot of what has been said about the Whalerock project has focused on alleged health and safety problems which are, in my opinion, the weakest argument to make (economics, impact on the community, property values, etc. are – also in my opinion – much stronger and more persuasive).

But as I saw in groups fighting toxic waste problems, fear of health effects seem to get a grip on the psyches of some of the activists to the point of obsession. It even led to a couple of suicides.

Since we’ve already gone down the health effects road in the Whalerock case, maybe it’s not too late to get some perspective on the difference between science and fake science. True science draws on research that is done without bias. Scientists study phenomenon and try to understand what it means. They formulate a theory and then put the theory to the test.

Fake science starts with the conclusion and then goes looking for evidence to back it up. Example: a person begins with the conclusion that UFOs exist and starts then seeing the evidence of them everywhere.

That is pretty much how pediatrician Nina Pierpont, the most frequently cited “authority” on so-called “Wind Turbine Syndrome,” does it. Here is how Dr. Pierpont describes her approach which is pretty much the opposite of the scientific method:

"I never set out to prove that wind turbines cause Wind Turbine Syndrome. This was already obvious. Instead, I chose to study and document the observations made by people who had already figured it out and proved it on their own."

Other turbine tidbits

The RI Public Utility Commission is allowing another land-based turbine project by NK Green developer Mark DePasquale to go forward. DePasquale wants to build two industrial sized turbines on the site of the Picillo Farm Superfund toxic waste site in Coventry. The PUC authorized a new type of energy sales deal – DePasquale will sell the energy from one turbine to the town of Coventry and the electricity from the other to National Grid. 

National Grid opposed the arrangement arguing that all of the energy from the project should either come to them or to the town. But the PUC sided with the Conservation Law Foundation which argued that nothing in the law prohibited splitting the energy among buyers. Click here to read more.

UMPI's turbine, subject of Gov. LePage attack

The state of Maine has one of the country’s oddest Governors, Tea Partier Paul LePage, who has become a major source of work for fact-checkers such as Politifact, Snopes, etc. over his propensity to simply make stuff up. 

LePage really hates green energy of all types, but especially wind power (Governor LePage, meet Stephen Ambrose). 

LePage was in Skowhegan recently and singled out the University of Maine – Presque Isle’s turbines for particular scorn.

He told the local Chamber of Commerce:

“Now, to add insult to injury, The University of Maine, Presque Isle – anybody here been up there to see that damn windmill in the back yard? Guess what, if it’s not blowing wind outside and they have somebody visiting the campus, they have a little electric motor that turns the blades. I’m serious. They have an electric motor so that they can show people wind power works. Unbelievable. And that’s the government that you have here in the state of Maine.”

The problem is, as the Bangor Daily News reported, LePage made it all up. The turbine has been on-line since 2009 not only without problems but winning awards, generating energy for the campus. They don't have a little motor that makes the blades go round when there is no wind. What would be the point of that?

Donald Trump is another anti-winder who was caught telling lies. The Associated Press reported that Donald Trump was barred from running ads in the British media against the off-shore wind farm the British government is building off the coast of Scotland. Trump claims it will impair the views from his ritzy new golf resort. The British Advertising Standards Agency ruled that Trump’s claims in his attack ads could not be substantiated.