(This is an important conversation, with local efforts aimed at halting renewable energy mega-projects on the Cape, in the Berkshires, & beyond, grim climate news, corporate techno-fix attitudes, eagerness for magic bullet solutions, and the continuous undermining of local democratic decision-making. – promoted by eli_beckerman)
(Addtional information added on July 20, 2010 – please see the comments below.)
Speaking as a Green-Rainbow candidate for the Fourth Berkshire District State Representative seat, I am opposed to the Wind Energy Siting Reform Act as it was amended and passed by the Massachusetts Senate on February 4. The bill opens the door to the Commonwealth overruling the decisions of local officials, even in communities that have a green vision for energy and have demonstrated progress and results.
While there is a need to reform the permitting process for wind and other alternative sources of energy, the first decisions on how a community will reduce its carbon footprint and promote energy alternatives must come from the local community itself. There are many towns in the 4th Berkshire District working diligently and establishing solid programs with town departments, residents, and local businesses to support alternative energy and to reduce the community’s carbon footprint.
The Commonwealth should be charged with setting overall “green energy” goals and with providing a framework for communities to develop their own ways of meeting the goals. Those communities that take the initiative to meet their goal should be given control over how this is done. I will be eager to work with all communities in the 4th Berkshire District to support each community’s efforts to develop alternative energy and conservation programs that work for the community and that contribute to overall Commonwealth goals.
If a community fails to act pro-actively on its own initiative, the door should be open for the Commonwealth to expedite local permitting of projects that will promote alternative energy, and thus play a larger more active role in how green energy goals are met in that particular community.
However, as long as a community has documented a commitment to green energy and is demonstrating real progress and results towards the goals, the community should be allowed to follow current law in the issuance of permits to wind energy developers.
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Towns should have a say in wind turbine siting, but it’s not entirely a local issue and other stakeholders should have a say and should be able to overrule a town. This should not be dependent on what other conservation or generation projects the town has undertaken. If a town has wind energy it should have to share as part of the whole commonwealth, country and world – within some limits that allow local input.
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I’ll have to look further into this. The trouble is that it leads to NIMBYism. We’ve already seen communities fighting wind because the turbines mess up their view.
I’m assuming that wind farms are going to produce power that’s ultimately going to be sold across the state. If that’s the case, my fear is that better-off communities will fight wind farms, and it’s the less powerful communities that will host them. The Cape and the Berkshires will retain their rustic beauty, while enjoying the energy from wind farms located in the Brocktons of the state.
These aren’t just community issues:
I find the prospect of allowing the state to site wind farms infinitely preferable to the state determining where to site the next nuclear reactor.
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On July 14, the Massachusetts House passed the Wind Energy Siting reform act. I remain opposed to the bill because it opens the door for large developments that are unfriendly to communities, although I am a steadfast supporter of lowering our carbon footprint through effective programs and incentives.
It is important for the towns in the commonwealth promote carbon-reducing alternative energy development and conservation. In my town of Lenox, I serve on the Lenox Environment Committee, which is in the process of testing the local viability of wind energy. The Committee urged the Select Committee to approve the test, which is now underway. We should have some data in the coming months to help us to plan the next phase and to debate the merits.
Regarding my position on this bill stated earlier, and the importance of local initiative, I liken it to the manner in which affordable housing is managed. The Commonwealth sets standards for housing affordability, from which local communities create plans to achieve goals. If a community is negligent or ineffective in managing housing affordability, it opens the door to a developer who may appeal to the state to override local zoning. A community with effective plans and demonstrated results in place, however, will be able to manage affordable housing as it sees fit. My position on carbon-reducing activities, which includes the development of wind energy, parallels this model.
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I just read all the editorials on the Green Berkshire page, the hub, I take it, of opposition. Past reading of the The Eagle also included many editorials, most of which had to do with messing with sight lines along the mountain ridges, the so-called “viewshed” complaint… similar to the Cape objections.
(Just back from Scranton last week, where, each time I visit, no matter where you travel in the Lackawanna Valley, you see windmills spread out against the skyline–or rather, monstrous, ugly, ear-shattering wind turbines, as they’re usually described by opponents. They’re part of the Waymart Wind Farm. I love ’em. Some people see dead birds. I see fewer dead soldiers. But that’s not really your argument.)
The trouble with allowing each community to develop their own energy programs is that we are all, willy nilly, in this together. Hence “the grid.” Those Waymart turbines don’t supply energy to local homes–it’s sold on the open market. And while there are obvious losses in total available energy over the course of distribution via a national grid, it’s not going anywhere anytime soon. I’m really not sure that every community is prepared to develop its own energy platform, or that the upfront capitalization is going to be universally available on an equitable basis. And if those regions that HAVE the wind–the Berkshires and the Cape–both reject large-scale development–well, that basically eliminates wind as an serious option here in MA, no?
(Incidentally, it’s easier sympathize with Lenox, not exactly a bastion of wealth, and, additionally, a town obviously eager to develop renewable sources, than it is with the Cape. But I’d argue that the perilous needs of the environment trump the concerns of municipalities if there’s an option to develop large-scale renewable supplies. If we had the wind, I’d tell any corporation that wanted to to plunk those things down from one end of the Blue Hills to another–and I don’t even like the sight of the one meteorological tower that sits atop Great Blue as it stands. But my aesthetics and my own sense of local power and, too, my personal distaste for too much corporate influence doesn’t compare to my desire to see as much and as many renewable energy operations every place we can stick ’em).
All municipalities are interdependent, and the focus on relocalization and community control has some frightening implications for the future in light of climate change and peak oil. If it’s going to be every-town-for-itself, I can name you ten towns right off the bat that are going to be screwed in every way unimaginable (you can too–because they already are). Does this policy also extend to, say agricultural policies?
One reason we don’t allow excess of control in local communities is because we try to maintain some degree of equity in terms of shared burdens. My fear, and I don’t think it’s unfounded, is that while communities like yours may well develop “alternative energy and conservation programs that work for the community,” they’ll contribute to”overall Commonwealth goals” in the negative sense only–that is, in adhering to mandates in regard to CO2 emmissions, etc (“By 2020, 22% of retail electricity sales must come from qualified renewable energy sources.”). As you note in your update, your position is in regard to “carbon-reducing activities.” A worthy goal, but when it comes to the positive sense–harnessing those unique resources each region possesses for the greatest good of the Commonwealth–I get nervous at the NIMBY.
That said, though, I’m confused as to precisely what Lenox itself is up to (separate issue). I truly admire the fact that folks there are working in a serious manner to develop local wind energy (and love the recent permission accorded homeowners who want to put windmills in their own yards!). On the one hand, the intention seems to be to construct one (?) turbine capable of supplying the needs of a local treatment plant, but another story suggests that Lenox is “…studying the feasibility of wind energy to help power our water treatment plant as well as feeding energy from a non-polluting source into the electric grid” (see also the Federspel quote in this piece–I can’t determine what’s actually being endorsed). If it’s the latter, then my fears are to some degree unfounded–though I still believe that every community with a renewable resource needs to exploit the living hell out of it, viewsheds and bats be damned, and I would dearly love to see a looong row of wind turbines running the length of the Berkshires. THAT’s how you shut down the coal plant in Somerset–by your willingness to provide an alternative. So long as we reject mega-developments in our own districts designed to supply renewable energy, we’re hard put to demand that coal-fired plants in others be shut down.
As with most issues, I don’t necessarily see this as an either/or, zero-sum proposition. Casino jobs/green jobs, charter schools/public schools, etc, are not mutually exclusive. Nor, from what I can tell, is this one. The bill doesn’t, so far as I can see, prohibit any town in the Berkshires from authorizing its own municipal energy department. Can’t you do that–and still allow a company to exploit the invaluable natural resource currently going to waste atop your hills?
I’m also unclear as to how drastic this bill is when it comes to undermining local democracy. The Bennington Banner reports that
Last question: aside from the bill itself, do you personally favor or oppse the development of a mega-farm in the Berkshires?
(Eli: I’m not sure why you refer to wind power as “corporate techno-fix” and “magic bullet.” I understand why you’ll say no to coal, no to biofuels, no to nuclear, no to oil, no to hydrogen–but now, WIND is nothing but a corporate ruse? When mega-corporations get into solar and geothermal big time, as they invariably will [and we’ll need mega-corporations to develop, manufacture, and install them], will that render those technologies equally suspect? What’s left?
Just out of curiosity, do you want the State to butt out of telling local communities whether or not they can allow a private developer to site a casino in their town? I assume you’ll argue that the casinos will have an impact, plus or minus (depending on which study we cite, of course), on the commonwealth as a whole. I’d suggest the same is true of energy development–not simply in the negative (cutting emissions) but in the positive (creating new shared supply).
I will say this: you’re fortunate to live where you do, and among people who really take this stuff seriously!