Next week Grand Mananers will be invited to a public meeting to hear about a wind farm planned for the "back of the island-" the high western cliffs facing the Grand Manan Channel and the State of Maine. The proponent, First Wind of Newton, Massachusetts, acquired the rights to the site on property owned by the off-island Crabbe forestry company, from a fledgling New Brunswick company that has since disappeared from the scene.

The First Wind plan is for 13 wind turbines (over 200 feet or 60 metres high), with the potential for another 50 if all goes well. Turbines range from 1.5 to 3 megawatts in capacity; this could be as small as a 19.5 MW site, or as big as 150 MW (relatively large).

At roughly .5 acres per turbine, the land area covered would range from 10 to 50 acres. This company owns the Mars Hill, Maine wind farm, visible as you drive along the upper St. John River Valley. That site has 43 turbines, less than half the full site plan for Grand Manan.

The original company registered their project with the New Brunswick Environment Department in June 2004, and was issued a "certificate of determination" clearing the environmental hurdle, such as it is, in September 2004.

The certificate was reissued to the new owner earlier this year. Nobody should be reassured by this - our environmental impact assessment process is notoriously weak. In this case there is no evidence of any public consultation, or that the potential impact on Grand Manan's world renowned migratory birds received any serious independent scrutiny.

Meanwhile, a much larger company, Florida Light and Power, is proposing a 300 MW wind farm in Mascarene, on the high ground of the L'Etang peninsula between St. George and L'Etete. By all accounts, 300 MW of wind is a huge installation - as many as 200 turbines (depending on capacity) covering at least 100 acres of land. While the Grand Manan site will be quite distant from most residences, this Mascarene site will dominate the skyline for communities along both sides of the peninsula.

So far, this company has not filed a project proposal with the N.B. Environment Department, nor does it show up on the company's website.

In this time of climate change, wind power has emerged as the primary renewable energy source to replace dirty coal and oil generating stations. But what people have to understand about both these projects is that they have nothing to do with New Brunswick's - and especially those communities' - electricity needs.

These are so-called "merchant" facilities (like Lepreau 2 would be). They are being built by private companies and the power is slated for export to the United States where siting any energy facility is very difficult. What New Brunswick is providing is high ground, a lax regulatory and approval process, and a relatively passive populace.

(Not insignificantly, a "system impact analysis" has to be done for any merchant project to determine if the NB Power grid could get the new power load across the border into Maine. NB Power would collect a fat tariff to wheel it through, but there is clearly a limit to how much the existing system can absorb).

Based on a few random interviews I heard on CBC radio, some Grand Mananers think this wind farm will provide power to the island and bring their heating bills down. Nothing could be further from the truth. Benefits to the community will come in the form of property taxes (the landowner will receive a lease payment). They will hire local people to help build the site, but once up and running, few jobs will remain. According to First Wind's website, one of their goals is to "help America develop energy independence."

This, and making money for their American shareholders is what this project is about.

This is not an anti-wind column although I remain very concerned about the impacts on migrating birds past Grand Manan. But these projects will have a significant presence in this communities; and it may be that people would be less tolerant of such intrusion knowing that it will not contribute to shutting down dirty power plants in New Brunswick, or to making these communities self-sufficient in renewable power.

Something people may want to hold out for is the Department of Energy's promised community power policy which is supposed to facilitate the development of wind projects, the benefits of which are retained locally. If you're going to host the turbines, you might as well reap the greatest benefit possible.

Janice Harvey is a freelance writer and a long-time director of the Conservation Council of New Brunswick. She can be reached by e-mail at waweig@nbnet.nb.ca. Her column appears on Wednesday.