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When Kevin and Debra Onnela moved to their 1,500-acre mountaintop spread in Lempster, N.H., 27 years ago, a homemade windmill provided all the electricity they needed – and more.
“The batteries would just be hissing,” Debra Onnela said recently outside her house. “We’d go in, turn on a vacuum cleaner, dishwasher, just to get rid of the power.”
After three years of playing catch-up with surplus power, the Onnelas dismantled their windmill and got a generator. Now the Onnelas want to bring wind power back to their land, but not for themselves.
In 2003, the couple signed a lease option giving Pennsylvania-based Community Energy Inc. permission to plant a dozen 400-foot turbines with 285-foot blades along three miles of Lempster Mountain’s ridgeline. Earlier this month, Community Energy was purchased for $30 million by Spain-based Iberdrola, the world’s largest wind-power producer.
The Lempster project would be the state’s first corporate wind farm. Operating at about 37 percent capacity, Community Energy calculates the 24-megawatt project would support 10,000 homes a year. And Debra Onnela can’t wait for construction to start.
“I think they’re beautiful,” she said of the turbines.
Others aren’t quite so enchanted. Some Lempster residents worry the turbines will create noise or environmental problems. Even wind power supporters worry the town of just 1,050 people lacks the resources to properly manage a $40 million utility project.
That has caused hard feelings between the Onnelas and some neighbors.
“I’ve probably lost a quarter of my friends,” said Kevin Onnela.
But Jeff Keeler, project manager with Community Energy, calls it a win-win for the community – it sends tax dollars to the town without putting children in the schools or pollutants in the environment.
For the Onnelas, the project gives them retirement income while preserving the land from development. Keeler won’t say how much Community Energy is paying the couple – the town’s largest landowners – but notes the amount falls within industry standards. Landowners typically earn between $2,000 and $5,000 per megawatt on a lease, said Tom Gray, a spokesman for the American Wind Energy Association, an industry group.
The Onnelas say their annual property tax bill is about $23,000.
“We bought a lot of land to preserve Lempster,” said Kevin Onnela.
Right now it’s uncertain what will happen.
About 100 residents, along with the selectmen in Lempster and neighboring Washington, want the state to scrutinize the project. The residents’ petition says the community “has no mechanism to ensure that this significant energy facility will not have unreasonable adverse effects on the health, safety and welfare of the community.”
If the state agrees to look at the project, it could cause a delay of a year or more. And that worries the Onnelas, who think a delay could jeopardize the project. “We thought we were doing something good,” Kevin Onnela said.
The New Hampshire Site Evaluation Committee, which includes heads of agencies for the environment, transportation, health and economic development, meets next month to discuss whether to review the project – it has the power to endorse or kill the wind farm.
“A little town like this can’t afford to hire an attorney if something comes up,” said 80-year-old Selectman Harold Whiting Sr. “I don’t care if the wind farm goes in, I don’t care if the wind farm don’t – as long as it’s done right. And if it’s done right, I don’t have a problem.”
By national standards, the Lempster project is small. Sites in California and Texas, the most heavily developed states, can have up to 1,000 turbines. But in New England, where open space is scarce and the best wind often is found above wooded mountain peaks, much of the debate over wind energy has centered on wildlife and land conservation.
“People’s major objections are largely aesthetic, the way they look and the way they sound,” Keeler said.
Wind farms have received a mixed response elsewhere in northern New England. Vermont’s Public Service Board is expected to decide this summer whether to approve a plan for four turbines on East Mountain in East Haven. A hearing officer has recommended against the project because it sits at the edge of a conservation area.
But in Maine, one wind power project is under construction in Mars Hill and at least five more are being explored elsewhere, including a proposal by a Canadian company to erect turbines on mountains north of the Sugarloaf USA ski area.
And earlier this year, Berlin officials welcomed three 160-foot turbines erected near Jericho Lake.
But in Lempster, the Onnelas’ leasing of the ridgeline has sparked a war of words, fractured friendships and deepened the rift between full-time and part-time residents.
“We were tricked,” reads a letter from residents asking to remove their names from the site evaluation petition, saying they didn’t understand that seeking a review could delay the project.
Kevin Onnela blames part-time residents for fanning opposition to the project.
Jeff Dwyer is one of those residents. He says the wind farm will create noise, ruin the landscape and harm wildlife, and all without producing much power. “Should we jeopardize the rapidly diminishing wilderness experience for future generations by allowing tax-motivated, minimally productive power plants to visually pollute our New Hampshire landscape?” he asks in a letter to the state. Dwyer also worries the wind farm eventually will grow beyond Lempster.
Keeler says Community Energy has no plans to expand beyond 12 turbines.
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