UPDATE: Open letter to the Town Council on wind energy

Wind energy at work on Watchaug Pond.
(image courtesy of YMCA)

When my husband and I moved to Charlestown, our hope was that by relocating from a major urban area to a rural one, we could eventually get off the grid. Within a week of closing on our property, we purchased and installed a wood stove, which has been our sole source of heat in the winters. We also planned to install a combination of wind and solar generators so we wouldn’t have to draw power from National Grid.

Then I learned about Charlestown’s anti-wind-energy ordinance. Up until that point, it hadn’t even crossed my mind that I would need a permit to install a wind turbine on my property, much less the onerous requirements involved. It seemed impossible that we would ever be able to satisfy all the conditions in the ordinance without spending inordinate sums of money that we didn’t have, thereby defeating the entire purpose of installing a turbine, namely to save money on electricity. So we figured we’d have to wait until the moratorium was lifted.

Then one day, I was driving home from Matunuck via Matunuck Schoolhouse Road and spotted a house with a small wind turbine on the roof. I’d probably driven by it a hundred times before without noticing it, it was that unobtrusive. I had to turn around and take another look at it to make sure it was what I thought it was. Aha! I thought. Maybe it can be done after all. Except then I realized I was still in Matunuck and hadn’t crossed the line into Charlestown yet.

Now the town is poised to ban wind energy outright and kill our dream of getting off the grid.

As a coastal community with much to lose from climate change and sea-level rise, Charlestown should be on the vanguard of renewable energy, not banning it. We should be promoting wind turbines on every building in town that uses electricity in order to begin weaning ourselves off of fossil fuels. According to climate scientists, even if we stopped all burning of fossil fuels tomorrow, there’s already enough carbon dioxide built up in the atmosphere that climate change would continue for some period of time. So there’s no more time for delay. Banning a proven form of renewable energy that humans have utilized for thousands of years is a major step backward at a time when we need to be moving forward if we want to maintain our way of life.

Author: Linda Felaco

Update, Tuesday, August 9: I received the following response from Council member Dan Slattery:

Linda:

Thank you for your e-mail. Let me try and clarify the current situation for you.

The proposed ban before the Council is related to large scale industrial size turbines.  The Planning Commission plans to write an ordinance that covers small wind turbines that could be used by homeowners in near future.

Sincerely,

Dan Slattery

 To which I replied as follows:

Councilman Slattery, thank you for the clarification. But I'm still puzzled. Why is it necessary to ban home turbines while the ordinance is being written? If someone were to put up a home turbine that is either too noisy or a structural hazard, couldn't it be addressed under the existing nuisance and noise ordinances or as a housing code violation?