MassDEP Wind Turbine Loan Leaves Falmouth 5M In Hole

In June of 2009 at Falmouth Special Town Meeting voted for what they thought was free money from the federal stimulus funds to build their second wind turbine called Falmouth Wind II. The actual wording of the three articles reveals the money actually was for a loan brokered by the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection for 5 million.

Major funding for Falmouth Wind II was from a loan brokered by the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Projection taken from federal funds provided through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). The Town of Falmouth signed a Project Regulatory Agreement which did not include safety and health precautions.

Massachusetts state and local officials withheld memos, emails, noise maps, and a written warning from the wind turbine company Vestas that the turbine was too loud to place near residential homes but despite the documents the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Projection tasked with state noise regulations ignored the warnings the turbines generate 110 decibels of noise each.

To make matters worse federal officials allowed the federal ARRA, American Recovery, and Reinvestment Act funds to be illegally used to buy the foreign-made Vestas wind turbine despite General Electric refusal to place a wind turbine. ARRA funds were to buy American and put Americans to work with American steel. Federal officials gave a waiver to buy the foreign-made wind turbine saying there were no domestic turbines available but left out General Electric refused to build a turbine due to residential setbacks and ice throw.

Federal, state and local officials created a substantial and specific danger to public health or safety related to the implementation or use of covered ARRA funds. The Massachusetts court system agreed the turbines are a nuisance.

Massachusetts Superior Court has deemed the turbines at the town’s wastewater treatment facility a nuisance and ordered that they be permanently shut down on June 2017. The selectmen voted not to appeal the decision.

The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection and Massachusetts Clean Water Trust has warned after the shutdowns the Wind II loan is subject to specific provisions of ARRA and applicable federal regulations and guidelines ("Federal Law") in addition to the terms and conditions of the Project Regulatory Agreement ("PRA") and the Loan Agreement associated with the funding of Wind 11. They want their money.

Under Federal Law and the(Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection) PRA and Loan Agreement, the Town must maintain Wind II as an "energy efficiency" project, as described in EPA guidelines dated March 2, 2009, in order to benefit from the financial subsidy provided by the Trust under ARRA and the Trust's Clean Water State Revolving Fund program. Aka Falmouth owes a 5 million dollar loan agreed to at the June 2009 Falmouth Special Town Meeting.

The Wall Street Journal published a scathing editorial on the wind turbine experience of Falmouth, Massachusetts, which spent more than $10 million on wind turbines, and it’s been a financial and health disaster. At its January 14, 2018 meeting, the board of selectmen voted not to relocate the wind turbines elsewhere in town. The board tasked the town administration to create an RFP, requests for proposals to either leasing property outside Falmouth to run the wind turbines or sell the turbines.

Almost 8 months later the town has not produced an RFP, requests for proposals and continues at taxpayer expense paying the MassDEP brokered loan and maintaining both wind turbines which includes parasitic electricity consumption which equates up to 25 percent of the output of the wind turbines.

How corrupt is Massachusetts? Massachusetts is in a class of its own. The last three Speakers of the House of Representatives in Massachusetts all Democrats, Salvatore DiMasi, Thomas Finneran and Charles Flaherty, have all been convicted of felonies.

Democratic House Speaker Sal DiMasi got sent to prison for eight years on federal corruption charges. Sal DiMasi was also the father of the Massachusetts Green Communities Act that helped place commercial wind turbines in twenty-one communities.

Former Massachusetts House Speaker Sal DiMasi, got, the get out of jail free card, released from prison after serving five years of an eight-year sentence on federal corruption charges because he was sick.

The former Massachusetts House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi is now appealing a decision that bars him from registering as a Beacon Hill lobbyist after being convicted of federal corruption charges which says it all for Massachusetts corruption.

Massachusetts taxpayers are going to end up with electric bills the size of second mortgages with wind turbine corruption.