Diving off the deep end?

Will the Town Council adopt radical NIMBY town ordinance?
By Will Collette

Dan Slattery: "We don need no steenking wind turbine"

Tonight we get to find out how far off the deep end of the pool the CCA-dominated Town Council majority is willing to go.

On the Council agenda tonight is the nation's first total ban on wind energy. Although the Charlestown Citizens Alliance has attempted to put its spin on this radical ordinance, saying that this ordinance is needed to "buy time" for the Planning Commission to come up with a residential wind ordinance, don't believe it.

The Planning Commission can't even develop ordinances on relatively non-controversial issues - like a dark skies ordinance - in a timely fashion.




They've been working on that one for years and had a "final" draft a couple months ago. But they still haven't brought it to the Town Council.

Wind turbine or space alien?

As Councilor Gregg Avedisian said at last month's town council meeting, it's doubtful that the Planning Commission can produce a residential wind energy ordinance in six years, never mind six months.

And whatever ordinance they do create will probably contain so many onerous conditions that most homeowners will just say "forget it!" or words to that effect. Don't take my word for it - look at the existing town ordinance that this new ordinance is intended to replace.

So even if the Planning Commission acts at lightning speed (which would be maybe six months), the resulting residential ordinance will probably look a lot like the old one, and home wind energy use will still be impractical.

In 2009, the Charlestown Citizens Alliance surveyed its e-mail list on wind energy. It was none other than current Council President Tom Gentz who went before the Town Council on December 14, 2009 to present the result. The CCA poll showed a huge percentage of its own people supported wind energy - something the CCA no longer mentions, and certainly something Gentz has forgotten in his anti-wind Council votes.

The country's energy sources are becoming scarcer and way more expensive. Our country's energy delivery grid is becoming more unreliable, as most of us learned after Irene. Look at your electricity bill. Look at your oil bill. How much did you spend to replace spoiled food after Irene?

And then ask yourself: what the hell are we doing in Charlestown? What's wrong with us that we can't see the obvious?

When did we let ourselves be led by lunatics and fanatics. When did we become the Rhode Island capital of anti-environmental NIMBY?

The regular Council meeting starts at 7 PM tonight. Come see for yourself.