Betrayed.

That’s how Sen. John Rodgers felt after a compromise on the renewable energy siting bill fell apart in the eleventh hour, a deal that would have included requiring around-the-clock noise monitoring at industrial wind projects.

Rodgers was peeved at Sen. Christopher Bray, a fellow Democrat who is chair of the Senate Natural Resources Committee, and to a lesser degree at Sen. Brian Campion, who also sits on Natural Resources alongside Rodgers.

The Northeast Kingdom senator was also irritated because he felt supporters of industrial wind had brought political pressure to bear. Their lobbyists, Rodgers said, looked like smiling Cheshire Cats after the monitoring proposal was dropped Thursday.

“The most frustrating part is what I thought was an agreement about sound monitoring was backed out of in the last day, and I think it’s just another example of how much money is spent in this building,” said Rodgers, who represents Essex and Orleans counties.

A child whose family lives near the wind project in Lowell, he said, can only be outside for 15 minutes or so before he has to run back inside covering his ears.

“For all those people who are working in this building for the big checks from the wealthy developers, I wonder how they would feel if it was their children,” Rodgers said Friday morning in an interview.

Read more: http://vtdigger.org/2016/04/01/inside-the-golden-bubble-monitoring-the-sound-of-frustration/