The Sales Pitch: Wind projects use existing logging roads.
The Truth:
Wind industry would love for us to believe that. Unfortunately it is not true. Logging roads are not adequate for wind turbines. The truth is that logging roads and skidder trails are nothing like the roads that are being built to haul each turbine (nearly 390 tons of metal) to the mountaintop — or what is left of the mountaintop.
These roads are not like narrow skidder trails, where protective organics are left in place and no fill is required. A road to support loaded turbine transport trucks needs to be designed and built to support at least 90 tons of weight and is typically wider than 50 feet .
The network of roads associated with a typical industrial wind development will be miles long and require hundreds of thousands of yards of aggregate material to be installed on the mountainside in order eliminate steep slopes.
Where the slopes are too steep, the mountain is blasted away.
For the Maine Mars Hill Project, Sargent Corporation drilled, blasted, excavated and filled nearly 500,000 cubic yards of rock and earth.
Save The Huron Mountains 