With a one-two punch, Green Mountain Power launched a campaign Tuesday to buy out the most vocal opponents of its 63-megawatt wind turbine project on Lowell Mountain, and warned legal action will follow if work on the project continues to be obstructed.
Don and Shirley Nelson, owners of a 580-acre farm abutting the wind project, have allowed protesters to camp on the site, complicating construction.
Tuesday morning, CEO Mary Powell offered the Nelsons the list price for their farm — $1.25 million. Later that day, an attorney for Green Mountain Power sent a letter to the Nelsons threatening them with a lawsuit if they don’t ask activists camping within 750 feet of a disputed property line to leave.
Damages from the lawsuit could cost the Nelsons more than $1 million, according to Dotty Schnure, manager of corporate communications for Green Mountain Power. About 100 workers are on the site, and every day they can’t advance the project, the company loses money. The legal action is a way of “holding them responsible for the cost.”
Green Mountain Power needs to blast a section of the mountaintop as part of its construction plan for its 21-turbine wind generation project. The project must be completed by the end of 2012 in order for the utility to qualify for $44 million in federal tax credits that will help to offset the cost of the $160 million project.
The presence of the activists could delay the project and cost Green Mountain Power money.
“We’re trying to build a cost-effective, renewable project. If they delay the project, customers shouldn’t bear the cost,” Schnure said. “Their actions prohibit us from using our property.”
The Nelsons issued Green Mountain Power a counter offer of $2 million for their 580-acre property on Lowell Mountain, which abuts the land where the utility plans to erect 459-foot wind turbines. Why the bump in price? Don Nelson said if the utility was going sue them, he might as well add the cost of the lawsuit to the total. “I guess it’s high stakes poker,” Nelson said.
Schnure said the lawsuit is “all about safety.” The utility needs a clearance area of about 1,000 feet, and the letter asks the Nelsons to ensure that activists move away from the tent area for 15 minutes at a time, once or twice a day while construction crews blast the mountain.
“I guess Green Mountain Power thinks they (the activists) are going to be a nuisance,” Nelson said. “I was going to find out if they (GMP officials) are being a nuisance. It’s hard to know who’s being the nuisance.”
The campers have parked their tents close to the project in the hope that contractors won’t be able to safely detonate the high explosives needed to build a wide crane path along the ridgeline and the turbine sites it would link together.
On Monday, there were 19 protesters on the site; as of Thursday, there was a single camper on the mountain. Nelson said he expects the activists to return. “We’re trying to stop the rape of a ridgeline in the state of Vermont and it just happens to be in our backyard,” Nelson said.
Nelson said he had received another bid on the property that was “not less than the offer from Green Mountain Power.” Schnure said that if the Nelsons are getting their asking price from another potential buyer, that’s proof that the wind turbines haven’t affected the value of their land.
Schnure said the Nelsons’ small group of people who are trying to stop the project aren’t representative of the 90 percent of Vermonters who have supported wind energy in surveys.
Nelson counters that the Northeast Kingdom, which has two wind projects under construction, including the nearby First Wind project in Sheffield, is the most remote and rural area of the state, and it’s easy for residents of the most populous areas to support turbines that are out of sight and out of mind.
Meanwhile, construction on the mountain continues. The Agency of Natural Resources lifted a stop-work order for the project this week, according to Schnure. Work was halted on the mountain for a few days when agency officials discovered that erosion controls hadn’t been put in place for a section of road on the mountain. Gravel and silt were carried down the mountain by a recent rainstorm.
