When the final tally was taken Thursday on a bill designed to improve the siting of renewable energy projects in the Senate, it passed 22-3.
Sounds like a slam-dunk piece of legislation with wide support, right?
This bill was anything but that. Senators spent four and a half hours wading through some 30 amendments before ending up with a patchwork bill that almost no one likes.
“There are significant flaws,” said Ben Walsh, energy policy advocate for the Vermont Public Interest Research Group, a pro-renewable energy organization. “There were things added today that were slap-dashed in.”
“I’m disappointed,” said former lieutenant governor Brian Dubie, a Franklin County resident fighting a proposed wind project. “Vermonters asked for help. The Senate said no.”
The overall bill is intended to give local communities more say in where wind and solar projects are sited. More than 100 Vermont towns have signed a petition arguing that the state Public Service Board approves projects without regard to local sentiment. But some of those critics argued the bill still leaned too heavily in favor of energy developers.
Sen. Chris Bray (D-Addison), chair of the Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee, started Wednesday thinking he had reached what he called “a grand bargain” of compromise amendments that he and Senate President Pro Tempore John Campbell (D-Windsor) hoped would win over those critics.
By Thursday afternoon, his bargain looked more like a grand mess, and Bray was backing away from part of it. “It was an attempt to get some reconciliation,” he said, adding, “It was not much of a bargain.”
One piece of Bray’s compromise called on the state to monitor sound levels at wind projects, including those already built, at the developers’ expense. Neighbors of three large wind projects — in Lowell, Sheffield and Georgia — have argued that complaints about wind turbine noise have gone unheeded for several years.
Melodie McLane, who lives next to the four-turbine Georgia Mountain wind project, attended Thursday’s vote, trying to persuade senators that having unbiased, continuous sound monitoring is the only way she’ll be able to prove the turbines exceed sound limits.
Her hopes quickly dimmed as Bray withdrew his support for the monitoring.
“I plan to vote no on that amendment,” Bray told fellow senators. “That’s because of what I’ve subsequently learned about the cost.”
Green Mountain Power is spending $264,000 a year to monitor sound at the 21-turbine Lowell project it owns following a noise violation there, Todd Bailey, a lobbyist for the company, told lawmakers. To retroactively require all wind developers to pay for that kind of monitoring is unnecessary and unfair, renewable energy advocates argued.
They got their message to Bray and other senators in a hurry. The Senate voted 18-8 to strike sound monitoring from the bill.
What started out as an agreement to appease wind energy critics appears to have left them more peeved. Sen. John Rodgers (D-Essex/Orleans), who has sought a moratorium on wind projects, was so miffed at the turn of events that he stormed out of a morning meeting where Bray’s committee was discussing amendments.
“We had an agreement,” Rodgers said while awaiting Senate floor action in the afternoon. “There’s no one with any spine in the committee to deal with these complaints we’ve been hearing about for years.”
The Senate did go along with other amendments that were part of Bray’s late compromise, including directing the Public Service Board to settle a pending case involving wind noise complaints in Sheffield. It’s unusual for lawmakers to insert themselves into a specific ongoing case.
Several senators suggested that irritation with the Public Service Board had reached a boiling point. “What we’re really angry about is the board and its performance,” said Sen. Ann Cummings (D-Washington).
Even as senators approved the bill, they grumbled about the confusing amendment process and the lack of vetting for some of its contents.
“I don’t have a clue what anyone’s talking about,” Sen. Peg Flory (R-Rutland) said less than halfway through the late-afternoon debate, expressing a sentiment others clearly shared.
“Today, we’ve had a number of aspects of the bill entirely written on the floor,” said Sen. David Zuckerman (P/D-Chittenden), who voted against the bill. “I don’t even know if they are all properly worded.”
By 7 p.m., when the final vote came, the majority of the senators appeared to be voting for the bill just to put an end to the day’s events.
Lobbyists milling outside the Senate chamber quietly indicated that they would look for the House, where the bill goes next, to make alterations.
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You’ll hear legislators say there are plenty of wind project neighbors who either do not hear wind turbines or are not bothered by what they do hear. We agree, but they all fail to elaborate on the reasons why that is. Is it because you refuse to accept them, or don’t even know them! Is it distance? Is it topography? Is it positioning where they don’t suffer from the prevailing winds? Chris Bray loves to educate himself, really? Has he ever been to a Victim of Industrial Winds home? Has he spent time educating himself about noise standards and where Vermont ranks? We’re 9th behind Maine and New Hampshire and 7 other countries! The fact that the Senate yesterday voted down any provision to protect Vermonters health and welfare against Industrial Wind is beyond comprehension.
Remember the words Regulatory Capture when you read stories about the PSB abuse, Chris Bray never taking testimony on noise and looking to a GMP lobbyist to quickly pull an arbitrary number out of his hat over a respected noise expert. It’s just one of many examples where expert testimony has been provided in legislative committee, the Department of Public Service, Public Service Board and more, only to be ignored. This has been going on for years! Hang out at the State House for a month, might just take a week if you’re astute, you’ll quickly see that Regulatory Capture has taken over our Vermont Government. It’s a form of government failure taking place right out in the open under the Golden Dome. They don’t even try to hide it!
“The PBS always sides with business interests and NEVER considers impacts on citizens.”
Guess you’re uninformed, and don’t care.
http://digital.vpr.net/post/public-service…
The out of state-owned energy companies spend far more money to influence our government against the interests of its people than they would ever spend on sound monitoring. The fact is, the public only wants the raw sound monitoring data from a continuous monitoring set up and these companies will do anything in their power to keep us from seeing it. They would say that allowing a lay public to view raw data, prior to their “experts” adjusting out anomalies would be “misleading”. Who do you think is really doing the misleading?
Vermonters living around wind turbines have been complaining to the PSB, PSD and Health Department since the fall of 2011 for one project and fall of 2012 for two others. Paul Burns, our Senators, and Governor Shumlin and his appointees are all fine knowing people are suffering sleep deprivation. This is not good government, nor is it how our democracy should be responding to genuine harm to public health.
One thing is for certain. The PBS always sides with business interests and NEVER considers impacts on citizens. The name “Public Service” Board is an oxymoron. Wind turbines, fracked gas pipelines, railroads disrupting downtowns to transport oil.. It’s time for the PSB to be comprised of members whose livelihoods aren’t connected to the energy industry.
This bill is the product of Chairman Chris Bray’s good faith effort to get citizens and municipalities more actively involved in the process of charting Vermont’s clean energy future. It’s a tough job, and in the end, most people have something to dislike about the legislation.
But Bray and his colleagues deserve credit for 1) recognizing once again the state’s strong commitment to moving forward with clean energy solutions like wind and solar, and 2) listening to all voices in this somewhat complex process.
For citizens who have been pressing for a greater voice in siting renewable energy, it’s in there. The bill requires some planning work on the part of municipalities, but that just makes sense in order to keep moving forward on the clean energy goals that most Vermonters support.
Senators soundly rejected amendments that would have put up new roadblocks to wind and solar at a time when we need more clean energy right here in Vermont. In doing so, they listened to their constituents, who were contacting the State House in great numbers. Those phone calls to legislators were democracy in action. The broad and ongoing support for sustainable energy shows democracy still works.
Maybe the PSB/PSD should be scouting the state for a cenote that those suffering from its badly-sited renewable projects could be thrown into; then Mr. Burns could savor his role as Vermont’s Savior-in-Chief without having to hear the grumblings of those Vermonters who are afflicted by his bad ideas.
“Let them eat mud” – his gravestone could read.
“Green Mountain Power lobbyist Todd Bailey, told lawmakers. To retroactively require all wind developers to pay for that kind of monitoring is unnecessary and unfair, renewable energy advocates argued. They got their message to Bray and other senators in a hurry. The Senate voted 18-8 to strike sound monitoring from the bill.”
According Green Mountain Power Corp most recent financial report filed with FERC page 119 has in excess of $60 million in total retained earnings. In addition to representing GMPC Mr Bailey also represents Spanish owned conglomerate Iberdola which is proposing a Mega Industrial Wind project in Grafton, Vermont. Iberdola has received $2.2 billion dollars in US tax payer funded subsidies between 2009-2014. Iberdola is one of the world’s richest holding companies. Tax payer subsidies are driving the Gold Rush for Industrial Wind in Vermont. Billionaire investor Warren Buffet, whose Berkshire Hathaway had collected $1.3 BILLION DOLLARS in corporate welfare since 2009 told his shareholders, “I will do anything that is basically covered by the law to reduce Berkshire’s tax rate. For example, on wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.” Follow the money.
The continuous sound monitoring GMP’s ratepayers are paying for is a bad joke. The Department of Public Service hired a pro-wind firm called Acentech. The whole purpose of the year-long monitoring was to police the operation better and provide relief to neighbors. Everyone expected regular reports. Every two months a neighbor writes to the Public Advocate at DPS asking for the status of the report. The equipment was put in place April 2015 and not one word has been released. Meanwhile, the Senate Health and Welfare committee asked me for a quote on continuous sound monitoring which I provided, and it is less than $50,000 for each site. But NOBODY ever took any testimony on it. In particular, the Senate Natural Resources committee under Senatory Chris Bray took no testimony whatsoever about wind turbine noise or monitoring. Whatever figure Todd Bailey is throwing out is news to me, and not supported by any testimony or evidence. If GMP is paying the DPS Acentech folks that much, it’s a total rip-off since it has served no purpose and after nearly a year with no results released, with photos of the monitors in ridiculous places, including the interior one which is exposed to a banging blind at an open window which will contaminate all the data. DPS and Acentech took 16 months to release a report on a test done at a home near the Sheffield wind project, a test where the results were known the same day. The reason Vermonters have asked the legislators to do something is because DPS and the PSB have spent more than four years obstructing all efforts to help neighbors sleep. We have lost our democracy to the absurd and ridiculous, run by Team VPIRG and the Shumlin crony renewable industrialists.
This is pathetic. I could say more, but I’ll leave it at that.