Editor’s note: This commentary is by Frank Seawright, the chair of the Windham Selectboard.
Many towns across Vermont are beginning to prepare the budget for next year, and we note with pain that the town of Windham may have a large new expense over the next couple of years. Why? Windham may have to continue to fight the threat of having our beautiful, somewhat idiosyncratic town altered forever by Iberdrola/Avangrid, a large multi-national wind turbine installer plying its trade right here in our little corner of the earth. Of course it would be better for us all if this were not the case.
Windham is one of the smaller towns in Vermont, and Iberdrola/Avangrid is among the largest of the corporations that are currently raking billions of dollars out of the U.S. Treasury into their over-sized trouser pockets. This is truly a David and Goliath mismatch if ever there was one.
Iberdrola’s reps came to our town about four years ago, saying that they fully respected our carefully developed and written town plan, which prohibited industrial wind. They respected it but planned to subject it to their master’s boot heel anyway. During the intervening four years they have attempted to do just that. Now, though, things are coming to a flashpoint and we suspect that we may finally have to take to the battlefield. The flashpoint is a townwide referendum on Nov. 8. Iberdrola says it will honor a “no” vote and leave, so a lot is riding on this vote. History suggests that it’s likely Iberdrola will find a way to renege even if the town votes “no,” and then we’d need to take to the battlefield anyway.
Today’s battlefield is not anything like the one where David and Goliath met. It’s an air-conditioned chamber filled with judges, lawyers, expert witnesses and busy clerks, running to fetch papers and pass notes. Dollars are slung instead of stones. So, to circle back to the beginning, we’ll need to scrape a little more hide off our Windham taxpayers to pay our legal fees. What else can we do? To do otherwise is to betray the template of bravery and willingness to fight for what is ours that was laid down by Vermont’s Green Mountain Boys.
We’ll need to scrape a little more hide off our Windham taxpayers to pay our legal fees. What else can we do? To do otherwise is to betray the template of bravery and willingness to fight for what is ours that was laid down by Vermont’s Green Mountain Boys.
So we’ll fight. But no matter the outcome, our community will have sustained serious wounds. Our town has been tense for a good while now and when Iberdrola recently stated its intention to trot out its latest proposal of “community benefits,” tension increased unbearably, exacerbated by rumors that the corporation had funded a small group of people to negotiate with them. The Iberdrola-appointed group, behaving in ways compatible with the definition of treason, provided the far-fetched basis for the developer’s contention that its new plan “responded to community concerns.” Iberdrola’s group operated entirely in secrecy, so no one knew how it was formed, whether Windham residents comprised it, when or where it met, and what its outcomes were. Other Vermont communities that might be future “beneficiaries” of developers’ gropings might want to remember this peculiar tactic, for it is an especially corrosive one.
The current Selectboard was elected by the people of Windham. The wind-project position of each of the two-member majority was known at the time each was elected. Members of the Selectboard and the Windham Planning Commission have been working for several years to collect relevant data and information on the site proposed for the installation, on Iberdrola’s background, and on energy policy as it relates to our town and the state of Vermont. We have categorized the long-comings and shortcomings of such an installation here in Windham, finding that the list of long-comings is short and the list of shortcomings long. More succinctly, this is a totally inappropriate location for a project of this type.
At a recent meeting, held prior to Iberdrola’s unveiling of its current proposal, the Selectboard briefly discussed the need to budget for legal fees to defend our town. A person attending the meeting asserted that the upcoming vote would favor the project, thereby relieving the town of the need to defend our town plan, and requiring the Selectboard to succumb to the “tyranny of the majority” and surrender to Iberdrola. Although we had no way of knowing it at the time, the person who spoke so confidently about Iberdrola’s rosy prospects was one, and currently the only identified one, of Iberdrola’s hand-picked group of secret conspirators. Thus, she knew that Iberdrola would be offering Windham voters a bribe of around $1,000/year for a favorable vote on Nov. 8.
This ploy was hardly homegrown: Iberdrola had bragged about it to Montpelier insiders. The burning question for Vermonters is this: Will Iberdrola’s scheme – to select and fund a group of unknown citizens, in order to bypass a legally elected local government in pursuit of limited self-interest – succeed? This is a question that should concern everyone.
And another question of equal concern: What will be the basis for town government, if a company backed with unlimited U.S. taxpayer money can simply establish a fund to pay voters for a favorable vote?
