RutlandHerald.com - We Are Vermont

Wind developer expects long process

TINMOUTH — The developer behind a proposed wind farm did not have answers to all the questions put to him Monday, but said the permitting process would provide them.

More than 160 people crowded into the Tinmouth Community Hall to hear Per White-Hansen of Charlotte describe his plan.

White-Hansen has identified 60 potential tower sites in Ira, West Rutland, Poultney, Tinmouth, Clarendon and Middletown Springs. Marshall Squier of Tinmouth organized the meeting Monday in an effort to learn more about the company's plans.

White-Hansen said his company, Vermont Community Wind Farm, was chosen from a field of half a dozen companies who responded to a request for proposals from Wagner Forest Management, a logging company based in New Hampshire.

He said VCWF signed a lease with Wagner and started looking at other sites in the area. He said he believes he can put up towers with a total capacity of 80 megawatts.

"It's all potential," he said. "The earliest we could hope to build is 2011."

Once the towers are up and running, White-Hansen said his company would be paying into the state education fund as well as $10,000 or more per megawatt of capacity to the towns where the towers are sited.

White-Hansen said he was also open to a cooperative arrangement making the towers community owned.

Many people at the meeting posed questions about the environmental impacts, from building service roads to the ridge lines to the potential for the towers to kill birds and bats.

As part of his application to the Public Service Board, White-Hansen said he will conduct studies under the supervision of the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources that would measure all those impacts. He said permitting would be a long and public process.

"If the town is dead set against it, it would probably be pretty unlikely that the Public Service Board would not listen to the town," he said.

gordon.dritschilo@rutlandherald.com