Our Environment

Wind is among the healthiest of all renewable electricity generation sources, and all experts agree on the negative health impacts of air pollution from burning fossil fuels. The Maine Center for Disease Control found “no evidence in peer-reviewed medical and public health literature of adverse health effects from the kinds of noise and vibrations heard by wind turbines other than occasional reports of annoyances, and these are mitigated or disappear with proper placement of the turbines from nearby residences.” Visit a wind turbine to see and hear for yourself if you have questions about sound and shadow flicker. Professional wildlife biologists work with state and federal agencies to carefully study the natural resources at each proposed wind site. Development plans avoid as many impacts as possible, and often provide mitigation for the minimal impacts they do cause. The Land Use Regulation Commission, Department of Environmental Protection, US Fish and Wildlife Service and US Army Corps of Engineers are all involved during the siting, planning, construction and monitoring of Maine wind projects.  Post-construction bird and bat monitoring of operational wind projects have shown that proper siting is the best way to ensure biologically insignificant impacts on populations. Other wildlife such as moose, deer, and lynx continue to live healthy lives around wind projects. As demand for electricity increases, new wind projects help reduce the need for new fossil-fuel fired generation plants to be built. And as wind turbines run, they scale back the amount of fuel burned at existing fossil energy plants. Meeting the goal of 3000 MW of installed wind power in Maine will result in 7.8 million megawatt hours of clean electricity annually, which would be equivalent to removing more than 1 million cars from our roads. Maine is a big state. Although turbines are tall and often placed on high ridgelines that make them more visible, they are invisible in the vast majority of Maine places. Regulations prohibit placement of turbines in our most special places and require detailed review of visual impacts on places of exceptional scenic beauty. Beyond that, Maine’s rugged topography and thick forests make it difficult to see even tall structures on ridgelines from many locations.  Importantly, many people believe wind turbines are beautiful, and do not object to them in the first place.