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| Call in the National Guard! |
Readers have asked whether we here at Progressive Charlestown genuinely believe that if a Charlestown homeowner puts up a small wind turbine, the town
will actually take any enforcement action.
The short answer is no. In fact, I don't think the town can take any enforcement action seeing as how
the ordinance the town council passed the other night conspicuously lacks an enforcement section.
But then what is the purpose of passing such an obsessively detailed, nitpicky, and downright contradictory ordinance?
By Linda Felaco
And yes, it's contradictory. To cite just one example, the ordinance prohibits siting a turbine near bird feeders or other areas where birds or bats are known to congregate, presumably to limit the risk of bird strikes, yet it also stipulates that the turbine must be a neutral, nonreflective color, when in fact coloration on the blades can prevent bird strikes.
So if the ordinance is not meant to be enforced, or can't be, why go to all the time and trouble of writing it, not to mention the expense—all those
ads in the Westerly Sun giving public notice of the proposed ordinance in its various incarnations I'm sure were not cheap. One wonders why
Jim Mageau, who guards the town's finances like a hawk, down to the last $23, hasn't been all over that one.
I've been pondering this question for some time now. At first I thought the town was acting in loco parentis. But then George
Tremblay stated during the public hearing on the wind ordinance the other night that it was fine with him if a homeowner electrocuted himself while
attempting to install a wind turbine from a do-it-yourself kit. So it would seem that public safety is not what's at issue here.
So whose interest is the ordinance meant to serve, exactly? The authors, Ruth Platner and George Tremblay, wrote a lengthy preamble in which they
talked about "competing interests" and their efforts to "balance the right of the applicant to harness wind energy with the right of neighbors to the
safety and enjoyment of their property." But to my mind, all the ordinance accomplishes is to create an adversarial atmosphere rather than
promote a "live and let live" attitude. What the ordinance in essence does is give anyone who woke up on the wrong side of the bed that morning the
right to have veto power over what other private citizens do on their own property.
What I've come to believe is that this in fact is the purpose and intent behind the vast majority of the town's ordinances: to give anyone with an ax
to grind against any of their neighbors an ordinance they can beat that neighbor over the head with.
In fact, I'm told that this use of town ordinances to make neighbors' lives a living hell is the reason we don't have a Tree Warden: because a member
of the previous town council used the zoning ordinances to so harass the town's one and only certified arborist that he refused to take the position of
Tree Warden.
Which is just FUBAR, in my opinion.
Mind you, I take no pleasure in saying these things. I would dearly love to be wrong. In fact, I beg anyone who's in a position to do so to
prove me wrong. Because so far, all the evidence I've seen points toward the conclusion I've drawn.
And that's just whacked.