NUTTBY - Large dump trucks, dozers and excavators kick up clouds of dust as they move about the rolling landscape, slowly transforming mountainous bushland into a maze of roads.
The new mud and gravel highway system winds and twists down steep cuts and back up again over a total of some 13 kilometres along the northern side of Nuttby Mountain, veering off into various directions where they dead end and level out as large, flat bases.
Looking a bit to the east from this position, a visitor's eye is suddenly drawn to some distinctive shapes glimmering in the sunshine along the horizon – large towers and turbines that create a futuristic scene on neigbouring Dalhousie Mountain in Pictou County.
"I was surprised when I saw those too," says tour guide Debra McLellan, of the unexpected proximity to the large turbines, which, as the crow flies, stand only about 14 kilometres away.
Before long, that same scene will be mirrored here, for this is the site of the Nuttby Mountain wind farm, of which MacLellan is project manager.
Currently, it is a major construction job in progress but by year's end, when the workers and equipment have moved off to other endeavours, this site, hidden from view to most, will be home to 22 of the massive, wind-powered energy generators.
"It takes quite awhile before it becomes an actual project," McLellan says of time spent over the past recent years – mapping land, wind testing, undergoing environmental assessments and negotiating with landowners – to bring the project to its current stage of development.
When completed, the $120-million Nuttby wind farm will be poised to begin generating 45 megawatts of power annually – enough energy to power approximately 15,000 homes.
This, and the growing number of other wind farms sprouting up across the province, are all part of a goal to have 20 per cent of Nova Scotia's electricity supplied by alternative energy sources by 2013.
At this stage in the operation, a total of about 80 workers, from NSP employees to construction workers, equipment operators and others, are on site, literally working from the ground up in preparation for the delivery and erection of the first turbine in July.
"They're just mobilizing for the collector system work and also on the substation work," McLellan says during a recent site tour.
Every day brings change, whether its another stage in road construction, another portion completed to the on-site substation or additional transmission poles erected for the eventual connection to the existing power line a few kilometres to the east.
And pretty much each day now, tonnes more concrete is poured to form the large bases that will be used to anchor the tall wind towers to the earth.
Each round base, measuring about 100 metres by 100 metres, requires slightly more than 400 cubic metres of concrete per tower. To help facilitate that effort, and to reduce the number of trucking activity through the neighbouring communities, a cement plant has been established a short distance away, off the road leading up the mountain to the site.
By July, two teams of workers will begin erecting towers and installing the turbines.
"If things go well, it takes a week a turbine," says construction manager Jerry Currie.
By year's end, all 22 turbines are scheduled to be up and running, by which point the dust will have long settled and the noise of the construction machinery reduced to nothing more than a fading memory, replaced by the winter winds that blow across the top of the mountain, along with the "whoosh, whoosh" of the energy-generating turbines.
"Better than smokestacks," observes one local oldtimer, from just below where the turbines will soon rise above the treeline. "Better than nuclear too."
