Wind turbine blades en route to Mars Hill Convoys use local roads to avoid I-95

BANGOR – Towering, power-generating wind turbines may rise hundreds of feet, but it was because of a few inches that state officials are sending dozens of the turbine propeller blades on trucks through municipal downtowns rather than across Interstate 95 on their way to Aroostook County.

The 125-foot-long propeller blades, 84 in all, are making the long trek from Searsport to a wind farm in the works at Mars Hill, crossing three counties and many more municipal and law enforcement jurisdictions.

Once in Mars Hill, the Brazilian-made blades will be joined to the main tower sections, built in Canada, to form 28 windmills, each rising 380 feet into the air.

Four trucks, with state police escort, have made the daily trip since April 14 and will continue for 12 more weekdays.

Along the way, the trucks hauling the blades have been forced to snake along busy roads, including through Hampden and Bangor, because the trucks and loads they are hauling are too high to ride the interstate.

The blades’ length required a special overlimit permit from the Maine Bureau of Motor Vehicles, but it was the combined height of blades and trucks hauling them that prompted the state to rethink the more direct route along the interstate.

In some cases, it was a matter of a few inches.

“We try to get them on the interstate when we can,” a state official with the permitting section of the BMV said Thursday.

But with the trucks and blades reaching a height of 14 feet 11 inches, they are too high to make it under the Essex Street overpass in Bangor, which has a clearance of 14 feet 5 inches, according to state officials. Other overpasses are higher but still not enough for the trucks.

Leaving Searsport, the trucks travel along Route 1A into Hampden where police, alerted ahead of time, shut down traffic at the intersection with Western Avenue – to allow the trucks room to move.

School is out this week, so traffic in the area is much less of a problem but still busy, Hampden Public Safety Director Joe Rogers said Thursday. Still, one or two officers are called in each time to stop traffic for 10 or 15 minutes as the trucks make the difficult turn.

Barring any mishaps – one truck on Tuesday hit and damaged a crosswalk sign on Route 1A by the Irving Maineway store – the trucks are on their way to Bangor.

With a state police cruiser in the lead, the trucks continue the parade down Cold Brook Road onto Odlin Road and down Route 2 to Hammond Street in Bangor. Because of the height restriction, the trucks bypass I-95 and pass through downtown Bangor and up State Street.

Busy intersections such as Hammond and Union streets are blocked off and monitored by Bangor police officers.

“It’s really brief, a minute or two,” Lt. Steve Hunt of the Bangor Police Department said Thursday. So far, no mishaps have been reported, and motorists have taken it in stride.

Once through the downtown, the trucks head up State Street hill and then onto Hogan Road where it meets up with I-95. The trucks will continue on the interstate, turning onto Route 1 to Mars Hill.

Even with the wider road and straighter path the interstate provides, the escorts – troopers representing three regions, southern, central and northern divisions – continue on with the trucks.

“Due to their size, they require an escort,” Lt. Gerry Madden of the Maine State Police said Wednesday.

The state requires escorts for anything longer than 125 feet or 16 feet wide, and at 125 feet, the trucks and blades meet that threshold.

With boats built Down East but whose owners are elsewhere in the state, and buildings and equipment being transported across Maine, such escorts are an occasional duty for troopers in much of the state, Madden said.

It’s a slightly different story in southern sections, such as in York County, where mobile homes are living up to their names more frequently.

“Almost every day there are mobile homes” being transported, he said.