Comments on wind from Hardscrabble Mountain

Our north-facing farm sits under Hardscrabble Mountain and for the past 18 years we, our neighbors, and families and friends who visit have enjoyed the remote beauty of our area. A few years ago during the fall I stopped to see a neighbor who has a small milking operation. Out loud I marveled at the view of the Presidential Range seen from his farm. His response floored me. He said he didn't pay any attention to it.

So possibly herein lies a problem: As we go about our daily work, many of us follow in those same footsteps blind to the environment around us. We are surrounded by such awesome beauty that it has become commonplace, even ignored. Yet thousands of people travel to Vermont to bask in her beauty and experience a few days of life with her wild nature, her green rolling hills and mountains. These people spend millions of dollars here - dollars that in turn become the sustenance for many Vermonters. When they leave they take with them memories of a beautiful and rugged little state, a state like no other in this country.

Recently someone told my husband that that he's not entitled to a view. Entitled or not, every day people are buying properties with viewscapes. All around the state people in the real estate industry are making their living selling viewscape properties.

And now we are contemplating giving it all away to gold rush developers who want to take a large piece of the economic backbone of Vermont and break it like a wishbone by placing industrial wind complexes on her ridgelines.

Our tourist industry and its many spin-offs will suffer immeasurably if we allow these developers to have their way with our mountains.

Vermont will become "mediocre" and "usual." If we aren't careful, if we aren't vigilant, we will be granting these developers their wish as they snap Vermont's backbone while stuffing their pockets with millions of dollars at the expense of Vermont and her people.

Can we not stop this insanity, step back, take a deep breath and reconsider the other options available to our energy needs, options that are in existence now and coming in the near future, options that are more reasonable for such a special little state as Vermont?

Rewarding conservation efforts and offering tax credits for the installation of off-grid small wind turbines, solar power and co-generation plants are far less intrusive alternatives to installing 400-foot tall wind turbines outfitted with 24-hour a-day flashing lights across miles of Vermont's ridgelines and would create many more jobs than those suggested by the wind developers.

If we allow these wind turbines to come it is very possible that the economic health of Vermont as we know it today will be irreversibly damaged. Vermont will no longer be known as the last bastion of rugged beauty in the United States.