HYPOCRISY RULES IN GREENVILLE MAINE

My wife and I went up to Greenville on Moosehead lake for a couple of days and had a very pleasant stay at the Greenville Inn. 

Just past Bingham we rode through an area of wind farms: majestic windmills scattered along high ridges – quite a sight.

I was surprised, when we shopped in Greenville, that many of the stores posted signs opposing wind farms.  

One of the shop owners told me she opposed the farms because they ruin the scenic beauty of the pristine wilderness, the noise created by the windmills drive the moose from their habitat and the rotating blades kill birds

 

I personally think the windmills are beautiful; and as far as ascetics, nothing is as sore to the eyes and foreign to the wilderness as a cell phone tower jutting from a distant mountain - and there are no complaints about cell phone towers.

Windmills do not disturb the moose population.  Moose do not inhabit the top of tall ridges – they seek low valleys and marshy lake shores.  I suppose the windmills may occasionally kill a bird, but most migrating birds will modify their flight paths to avoid these moving structures.

One of the last complaints is that the power from these wind farms is shipped out of state ‘to Massachusetts.’  

Actually, the power from the wind farms goes into the national power grid and Maine buys its power from that grid, which is mostly produced by oil and coal fired plants down south.

 

I found the woman’s explanation unbelievably hypocritical.

  

Every hour float planes roar off the Greenville docks taking tourist on sightseeing tours. 

 These planes fly at low altitude over the lake shore spotting moose and bear for tourist entertainment.   

 Power boats charge over the lake disturbing wildlife along the shores, occasionally killing waterfowl chicks and driving loons off their nest.

Hundreds of miles of snowmobile trails converge around Greenville, and hundreds of out of state snowmobilers convoy on these trails, roaring through remote wilderness areas, driving deer from their bedding grounds and pushing moose into deep snow. 

The economy of Greenville is based on tourism; and the disturbance to wildlife habitat caused by wind farms is only a minute percentage when compared to the damage caused by the huge influx of tourist, during all seasons of the year, into the Moosehead area.

If it were economically advantageous to Greenville businesses to conduct tours through these wind farms there would be no complaints.

This reminds me of Alaska, where they kill the wolves to save the moose, so hunters can kill the moose.

the Ol’Buzzard