For those of you who enjoyed my recent article on wind power, this is for you.
During the last week in February we recieved our first payment from Competitive Energy Services. Now before you get too excited, it was only for $100 but covers the first term of the land lease agreement. This gets CES through the end of 2007 with us. This allows them to send their team up to do the various studies that need to be done. They still have not officially selected us.
In a letter dated February 21 CES asked if we have any contact with 5 names that also own property on Mt. Harris. The names were not at all familar to me. I sent an e-mail to let CES know. In my e-mail I also told CES about our terms with the local snowmobile club. When we first built on our property we sent a letter to the club. We let them know that we had no intentions of plowing the mile road up the mountain during the winter months (that is what my Jeep is for). We explained that we would like the club to continue to groom the trails on the mountain (that we have right of way on). This seemed like a good deal to us. We don't have our own snomobile yet, but it is a sport we are passionate about. Plus, we like to snowshoe and the groomed trails are perfect for that.
CES responded by telling me they wanted to maintain the peace we had established with the club. I had explained that we would have an 'uprising' of sorts on our hands if the mile of road was plowed down during the winter months. If CES moves forward with the project they will need year-round access to the turbines. Honestly, our fear is that CES will make the road pretty and the club members will burn our place to the ground. You may think that is extreme, but we are only up there 1 weekend per month. We've been asked dozens of times if any locals have broken in yet. According to one local they already have broken in at least once.
Anyway, wild local tales aside, we have high hopes that this project will move forward. CES needs to get to the property first to start to look into their next steps. Their last visit to the land featured below zero temps, so they decided not to go to the top. The Feb 21 letter states that they will be in touch to schedule a visit soon. Hopefully when the snow melts they will find there way up there. And if the other landowners never reply then it's their loss. We also did find out that we will not be able to tap into the power directly (that's okay). I'm content with our place being off-the-grid.
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Comments: 9
Getting your own windmill for power is very expensive...that is why we went the solar route. We did not reach out to this company about this project, they contacted us. These would be connected to the grid to create power to local residents. Their other recent project was in Freedom, ME.
Once personal wind turbines come down in price I'm sure we'll look into them.
Have you thought about solar to help with your energy costs?
Anyway, thanks for stopping by, good to hear from you!
Our mile of road is so important to them (and the ATV and dirtbike riders) because from there you can go on trails thru 4 towns. It is the access point for all trails. From the trails they can also hook up to the ME snowmobile system that goes thru the whole state. The snowmobile culture is so different there than anywhere else in New England. People hop on their snomobiles to even go out to breakfast and run errands. It's pretty neat.
I just checked this site to see if anyone was talking about Dixmont and the wind power interests and found your message. We just had an informational meeting here in town a couple of nights ago. The town is going to have a special town meeting sometime soon to vote in (or down) a 180-day moratorium on industrial wind power in Dixmont. The majority of the people at the meeting are definitely against wind power, including some of your neighbors on route 7. I myself think it will be a great asset. If you are interested, I will keep you posted on the proceedings as I intend to attend all the planning board meetings from now on to see how things progress. If you know of any "good" information on wind power, perhaps you should send it on to the Dixmont Town Office, as most of the propaganda around town is to the negative.
I can't believe how you have been talking about Maine and the people who live in it. Especially the people of Dixmont. I think it's terrible you would think the people in the snowmobile club would burn your house down. And you also talked about our culture. I think you should take a look at your own culture. If you you think Dixmont, Maine's people and culture are so bad why did you buy land in our town. Thank God you only visit here.