WELCOME

The volunteers at Friends of The Boundary Mountains are pleased that you are visiting our site. Welcome!

We hope you find it informative and enjoy the photos. Moreover, we hope that you will join us in supporting the protection of the Boundary Mountains in Maine, one of the last regions whose sky is unpolluted by man-made lighting; a “dark sky”, and home to several threatened species (not including the moose to the right, although he is very handsome and we had to include him).

Moose aside: we are confronted by the well-financed and politically-savvy efforts of the multi-national TransCanada Pipeline Corporation to devastate the ridges, valleys. and streams of the wild Boundary Mountains  in order to install massive industrial wind turbines, miles of paved roads, and wide power transmission line corridors.

TransCanada seeks to turn the Boundary Mountains of Maine into its own industrial wind colony for the huge tax benefits provided by the U.S. government and to greenwash the pollution and carbon emissions of its pipeline operations all over the world, as well as to cover-up its cultural genocide of the Lubicon Cree peoples in Alberta, Canada. Traveling around rural Franklin County and the halls of Augusta with bags of money and an army of attorneys, PR flaks, and consultants, TransCanada has the political and media establishment eating out of the palm of its hand.

In Oct. 2008 a 900 foot mud slide caused by TransCanada's construction project washes down Kibby in the Boundary Mountains, towards mountain streams in the valley below.

For 34 years mountaintops in Maine above 2700 feet have been classified as mountain protected zones (P-MA), where only minimal disturbances were allowed. In 2008 Maine’s Land Use Regulation Commission (LURC), at the behest of TransCanada, re-zoned Kibby Mt., one of the premier mountains in Maine, to be a Planned Development District to accommodate a 132 megawatt industrial windpower operation. When Governor John Baldacci formed a Windpower Task Force to recommend appropriate ”expedited” areas for siting windpower, TransCanada’s chief attorney and an energy industry lobbyist were both invited to join the Task Force, while representatives of Friends of the Boundary Mountains and other wind opposition groups were denied. Maine’s largest so-called “environmental” groups were offered, and have accepted, a “mitigation” payment from TransCanada in return for supporting TransCanada’s proposal for re-zoning and throwing Kibby Mt. under the bus.

Members of FBM view TransCanada's first turbine foundation on Kibby... 30 feet deep with concrete

This then is the political landscape upon which we are resisting turning the Boundary Mountains into an industrial wasteland for the benefit of corporate greed. Windpower in the Boundary Mountains is not about mitigating global warming and contributing to a healthier planet. No coal plant or other polluting source will be closed due to TransCanada’s operations in the Boundary Mountains nor does Maine need the electrical power. Its all about production tax credits, accelerated depreciation, and TIFs for TransCanada, a “see-how-I-care”  image for Baldacci and other Augusta politicians, and a feel-good mirage for the media and those living to the south of the mountains who will be relieved of taking personal responsibility for a planet destroying lifestyle by just “putting it in the mountains”, out-of-sight and out-of-mind.

Help us protect the Boundary Mountains. Become a member,  stay informed, be an activist, and share your interest with everyone you know who loves this place like we do. If not stopped, the harm to truly one of the last natural frontiers in the northeastern United States will be irreparable.

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