Steve Wright last took to the sky in April to capture a series of dramatic bird’s-eye photographs of construction at Kingdom Community Wind, the 21-turbine wind project that Green Mountain Power is constructing on a ridgeline above Lowell. He went airborne again on Wednesday this week — in the interest, Wright said in an interview with Seven Days, of documenting the ongoing construction on the mountaintop. “In some years we’ll look back at this and shake our heads,” says Wright, a Craftsbury Common resident and outspoken opponent of ridgeline wind development.
“It’s continually distressing that we would do this with a mountaintop, but we’re moving on to a statewide campaign to make sure this doesn’t happen anywhere else,” adds Wright, a former commissioner of the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department. His concerns aren’t aesthetic but rather biological. “Humans have a capacity to be able to tolerate looking at just about anything,” he says. “That mountain has been forever changed in its hydrology and its entire ecological function.”
Wright’s photos first appeared on the Mountain Talk blog, where wind opponents post frequent photos, videos and updates. It’s been a busy week for activists in Lowell. On Monday, around 45 protesters scrambled to the mountaintop to stage a peaceful protest blocking the main construction thoroughfare at the site, an event that culminated in six arrests. A day after the largely festive gathering (complete with square dancing and chanting), around 30 activists returned for a somber “funeral” for Lowell Mountain.
Green Mountain Power previously said that Wright’s aerial photos only present a snapshot of a moment in time and that much of the disturbed landscaped will be re-vegetated after construction wraps up.
UPDATE: This morning, GMP spokesman Robert Dostis added that concerns like Wright’s were raised during the extensive permitting process for the wind farm, were “fully vetted,” and eventually the Public Service Board deemed the project to be in the public good. Dostis says that construction at the site — where the crew is now finishing the fourth complete turbine — is on schedule for completion by the end of the year.
Dostis also says that while the total “project impact” is 135 acres, GMP has conserved more than 2700 acres to mitigate that environmental impact, and nearly all of the conserved land is protected in perpetuity.
Photos by Steve Wright
This article appears in Seven Daysies Awards 2012.
Got something to say?
Send a letter to the editor and we'll publish your feedback in print!
“In some years” the only head shaking will be at you Steve. Ignorant rants and NIMBY-ism doesn’t get you your desired results.
If Steve Nimby Wright and Annette Busybody Smith had been around in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, Vermont wouldn’t have any ski areas, wouldn’t have any power plants, wouldn’t have Interstates 89 and 91, wouldn’t have any stores, and wouldn’t have any tourists. The few thousand residents of Vermont would be living in tents or caves with no electricity. And Smith would try to block the construction of any new tents.
I was up on the Lowell Mountains last year and again recently. Last year, before the blasting began, they were the wettest, richest, most alive woods I’ve been in. And thanks to the wind business I’ve been on a the top of a lot of mountains in the last three years. The Lowells were soaking wet, with moss-covered rocks dripping with water, spongy mosses beneath the rocks, carpeting the deep forest canopy understory, fresh piles of moose dung everywhere, lots of birds, full of life.
Now the mountains are dry. The moss is dry. There is no water dripping. The crane path and turbine pads are like a hot oven, the equivalent of more than 2 Wal-Mart parking lots extending the entire length of the ridgeline. Headwater streams filled, iron floc leaching from all the exposed rock is running in what remains of the over-heated water now coming off the mountain.
Vermont’s Water Quality Standards call for maintaining and protecting water quality. Instead, the water quality on the Lowell Mountains has been degraded thanks to permits issued by Vermont’s Agency of Natural Resources. We are in a global water crisis and Vermont has some of the highest water quality in the world. GMP, the PSB, VEC, and ANR are disrespecting and degrading important water resources, placing no value on water, which should be considered of the highest value.
Well, rip down my mountains, put up towers w/ lights, spoil my view, my hunting, my fishing, ship the power to Connecticut & the profits to Montreal. Not In My Back Yard?
You bet!
The destruction of Lowell Mountain is a crime that is being committed right before our eyes. Vermont’s ridge lines are being colonized by foreign corporations who are being subsidized by US taxpayers. This is GREENWASHING. Just like growing corn in Iowa to make ethanol.The BTUs in far exceed the BTUs out. The math doesn’t work, unless you count in politics.
These mountains and the streams that run from them are the closest thing that I have ever had to a church. This weekend ask the folks at your favorite place of worship if they will remove their bell tower & put up a windmill instead.
We are making a huge mistake. Our largest state income comes from tourism.
In the future, people aren’t going to visit Vermont to marvel at the sacrifice we made by ripping down our mountains to provide power to a profligate society.
We would do much better by insulating our buildings & lighting them w/ LED bulbs.
Bill Butler- Jericho
Is this the best you can do? When some people don’t like what they hear, they descend to name-calling, mockery & disrespect. They are as conspicuous as 21 corporate turbines on a mountain ridge.
Strange. The careful manipulation of common minerals can give you access to the Strong force such that you only need to fission a hundred grams or so to provide each person lifetime quantities of electrical energy. Wind and solar as the alternative to burning fossil fuel only serves to maintain the primacy of oil and gas.
7 of the 10 largest companies on the planet are oil and gas companies. Having been snookered by Gaz Metro, (whom now employs your state senate majority leader), I hope you see the light.
Two last points:
Fukishima’s triple meltdown didn’t hurt anyone despite the pretense that it did. The new background radiation at Fukishima Prefecture is still less than *most* places on earth.
Every commercial I see for oil and gas, ends with windmills and solar panels.
If the Oil and Gas favoring politicians manage to shut down Vermont Yankee, the Oil and Gas companies will be that much closer to ending the current glut, and the inevitable rise in gas prices will begin, as well as the meeting of sales margins and the corresponding rise in Gas companies profit margins. It’s all about the gas people!
You chose to avoid my substantive point. Do you wish Vermont didn’t have ski areas? Do you wish Vermont didn’t have the interstate highways? Do you wish the lights didn’t go on whenever you flip the switch? That is the backward state we would be living in if the anti-development zealots like Smith had had their way then, and get their way now.
And as for mockery and disrespect? Smith disrespects Vermont democracy. She participates in the established process only until she loses, and then she cries foul. If the process doesn’t yield exactly and only the results she wants, she whines that the process is unfair. Hers is the only acceptable way, every time, on every issue she gets involved in, and she sticks her nose into almost every issue.
As another commenter noted, she is anti-everything, and for nothing.
The Sutton_Hoos of the world keep pretending that wind turbines A) don’t add cumulative impact to what Man has already built and B) that natural aesthetics are largely trivial. These are the same tired arguments that nature-wreckers have used since the Industrial Revolution began. I think many of these people would be perfectly fine if half the planet looked like an industrial park. They have no real souls or conscience, just a mindless need for their narrow definition of progress, which usually means more people and less nature.
Wind turbines proliferate in such a way that NIMBY is a false claim, since views are threatened far beyond local backyards and towns. The vertical scale, quantity and kinetic aspect of these machines is unlike anything else Man builds. They are being placed far from the urban areas that use most of their power and present a terrible form of urban sprawl detached from its city roots. The very fact that so many people complain about them should be telling. All these fake environmentalists with their endless excuses will take the walk of shame when enough wind turbines proliferate. They loom over current scenery and future quality of life. You have to consider how many of them we’ll finally end up with, not just what’s here now.