They could have walked it back without danger
By Will Collette
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| Why didn't Council President Gentz know a total wind energy ban was unnecessary? |
The Charlestown Citizen Alliance (CCA) Town Council and Planning Commission members have made it an article of faith that they had no choice but to impose the total ban on all sizes and varieties of wind-to-electricity devices. They say it’s because the Town Solicitor told them so.
Even our newspaper of record, the Westerly Sun, bought that rationale, that the total wind energy ban was necessary to “buy time” because the moratorium on wind energy was going to expire soon (on September 14).
But is that really true? Did the impending expiration of the moratorium on wind energy projects mean that Charlestown Charlestown
First, let’s deal with what the town lawyer said. What Solicitor Peter
Ruggiero actually told the Council was that renewing the moratorium on wind-to-energy devices was ill-advised in his opinion. He said the courts do not like a permanent moratorium.
Town Council President Tom Gentz asked
Ruggiero flat out at Monday’s Town Council meeting what would happen if the Council allowed the moratorium to expire on September 14. What would happen if the Council didn't extend the moratorium? What would happen if they did not enact the total ban?
Ruggiero told him the town's 8-month old standing ordinance would remain in place, minus the moratorium.
Exactly.
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| The ordinance the Council enacted last February already "protected" Charlestown from the wind energy "threat" |
That ordinance, enacted last February, effectively banned wind energy anyway. Section D.(4)(c) prohibited all industrial or utility sized turbines. It also imposed conditions and restrictions so rigorous that medium-sized turbine operators would be hard-pressed to comply and that no homeowner had the practical means to meet.
I provided Progressive Charlestown readers with a section-by-section analysis of that ordinance here. In that article, I challenged any person to explain how any Charlestown
And Council President Tom Gentz unwittingly supported my conclusion when he told the audience at the Monday Council meeting that he checked with all the relevant town departments and not one single person had applied to put up a home-sized generator.
Well, Tom, of course no one applied. There has been a blanket moratorium in place since last February. Even without the moratorium, nobody can meet the terms and conditions, even for a small turbine.
But don’t take my word for it: read the old ordinance – the one the total ban replaced – for yourselves and see if I’m wrong.
It’s hard to understand why the Town Council and Planning Commission members don’t know their own handiwork.
With the incredibly strict terms and conditions in the ordinance that was just replaced by a total ban, Charlestown NIMBYs didn’t need a moratorium to protect them from the wind energy boogeymen.
When Council President Gentz asked Solicitor
Ruggiero what would happen if the moratorium expired, he got an answer that could have saved this town a lot of anguish, embarrassment and conflict.
He could have walked it back. Simply put: we did not need a new ordinance imposing a total ban on wind energy to “buy time” for the town to adopt rational, science-based measures to allow reasonable and practical wind energy development.
There was no danger that a flood of new wind turbine proposals would flood town hall on September 15th.
If it wasn’t economics that inhibited large scale wind energy projects (as Scott Keeley testified on Monday), it would be the draconian requirements of the old wind energy ordinance that “protected” the town from the “threat” of wind projects.
In my opinion, Gentz, Slattery and Platner had to know what was in the old ordinance. If they didn’t, they should immediately submit their resignations for incompetence.
And if they knew how virtually air-tight the old ordinance was, then why did they lead Charlestown
They have some explaining to do.