## Facts

- Saddleback Ridge Wind, LLC applied for permits to construct a 12-turbine, 33 MW wind project and related transmission/substation in Carthage, Canton, and Dixfield, Maine.
- The application included a noise impact study and a visual impact assessment reviewed by consultants for the Department of Environmental Protection.
- While the permit application was pending, the Board of Environmental Protection, acting through rulemaking, studied wind-project noise and provisionally adopted a stricter nighttime sound limit for wind projects (reducing the limit from 45 dBA to 42 dBA) based on findings about negative health impacts.
- Shortly after the provisional 42 dBA action, the Department approved Saddleback’s permits using the existing 45 dBA nighttime limit; the record did not establish compliance with 42 dBA.
- Friends of Maine’s Mountains, Friends of Saddleback Mountain, and nearby property owners appealed the Department’s approval to the Board, which affirmed in an adjudicatory decision and approved use of the 45 dBA limit.
- The Board noted the most affected residence would experience nighttime sound levels of 44 dBA under the project’s study.
- Friends sought judicial review, arguing the noise-limit decision violated the agencies’ statutory duty to protect health and welfare and raising additional constitutional challenges to the wind-energy statutory scheme and agency conduct.

## Issues

1. Whether the Board abused its discretion by approving the permits using a 45 dBA nighttime limit despite its rulemaking findings that a 42 dBA limit was necessary to protect nearby residents’ health and welfare.
2. Whether the wind-energy statute violated equal protection by limiting certain scenic-lake protections to lakes identified in a specified scenic study.
3. Whether the statute’s visual-impact criteria were so vague as to violate the separation of powers under the Maine Constitution.
4. Whether alleged agency bias denied Friends due process.

## Decision

- The court vacated the Board’s order as to nighttime sound requirements and remanded for further proceedings.
- The court held the Board abused its discretion by failing to reconcile its adjudicatory approval of the 45 dBA standard with its recent rulemaking findings that a stricter 42 dBA limit was needed to address health impacts.
- The court rejected Friends’ constitutional claims (equal protection, separation of powers/vagueness, and due process/bias) and otherwise left the statutory framework intact.

## Legal Principles

- An environmental permitting decision must satisfy the agency’s statutory obligation to protect public health and welfare; a decision is invalid if the agency fails to rationally explain material inconsistencies with its own relevant findings.
- Agency action may constitute an abuse of discretion when the agency approves a project under a less protective standard without addressing its own record-supported conclusion that a more protective standard is necessary for health-related reasons.
- Equal protection challenges to legislative classifications in environmental/resource regulation are reviewed under rational-basis scrutiny unless a suspect class or fundamental right is implicated; focusing protections on identified resources may be rational.
- Legislative delegation to an agency does not violate separation of powers when statutory criteria provide sufficient guidance to constrain discretion in applying evaluative standards.
- Due process requires an impartial decisionmaker, but an agency’s involvement in both rulemaking and adjudication does not, standing alone, establish unconstitutional bias.

## Conclusion

The court required the permitting agency to confront and justify its departure from its own health-based noise findings when approving a wind project, vacating and remanding the permit decision on nighttime sound, while upholding the wind-energy statute and rejecting claims of equal protection, vagueness/separation of powers, and adjudicatory bias.


Friends of Me.’s Mountains v. Bd. of Env’t Prot., 61 A.3d 689 (Me. 2013)