After battling wind farm for years, founders of Friends of ME's Mountains agreed to end legal battle in return for settlement--and removed board members who objected.
"It was January 2014, and [Rand Stowell and Chris O'Neil] – the driving forces behind the nonprofit wind opposition group Friends of Maine’s Mountains – had been fighting a Massachusetts firm for four years over the development of a wind farm in the western Maine mountains.... Stowell and O’Neil ... agreed to abandon the legal battle with Patriot Renewables in exchange for a financial settlement. The amount was not disclosed, but former board members who were involved said the payout was at least $200,000. In other words, the state’s most well-known wind opposition group took money from the very industry it had been fighting. And in order to reach the settlement, Stowell and O’Neil used their power – and the limitations of Maine laws regarding nonprofits – to remove three board members who didn’t support a settlement." -- Eric Russell, the Portland [ME] Press Herald
