While we wait on
negotiations to buy LeBlanc’s 81 acres…
By
Will Collette
No more Zoning
hearings until August 28
As
most Progressive Charlestown readers know, the Charlestown Town Council finally
decided to follow the course of action we’ve been advocating for months as the
only sensible solution to ending the three-year old Whalerock wind turbine
crisis: negotiate a fair
price for the 81 acre site for the proposed wind farm with developer Larry
LeBlanc
so the land can be preserved as open space. The Zoning Board of Review,
accordingly, has suspended hearings on Whalerock’s
application for a Special Use Permit until August 28 at the earliest.
Related Whalerock
development plan warmly received by Planning Commission
Under the
leadership of CCA Party’s Ruth Platner, the Charlestown Planning Commission
has earned the reputation of the place where good ideas go to die. But one part
of the on-going Whalerock negotiations got its first airing and a very warm
reception on July 24. The PC heard from representatives of NIN LLC, the
company formed by Larry LeBlanc’s Connecticut partner James Barrows on a plan to carve
out two, 2-acre lots from the 81 acres to be used to build new housing. Listen to the
discussion by clicking here.
 |
| Ruth likes this one |
Platner
clearly understood – and tried to make sure that all her Planning
Commissionettes did too, even the denser ones – that this proposal was
integrally tied in with the Whalerock purchase negotiations.
At one point,
Platner and Barrows’ reps noted that if the overall Whalerock deal can’t be
completed, this proposal for the two-lot carve-out “goes away.” Since Platner
was an early supporter of buying the 81 acres for open space, which is the one thing where Platner and I
have ever found common cause – she was about as charming and open to the
deal as she is capable of being. She even made helpful suggestions about ways
the developer could present the project to expedite the process.
The
Planning Commission will do a little walk-about on the property on Tuesday,
July 30.
First lawsuit
against NK Green Project
If
you’ve travelled north of the Tower and ventured into North Kingstown or
Wickford, you may have noticed Rhode Island’s
tallest wind turbine next to Wickford Junction. It sits in the
middle of the NK Green development and has been operation since the beginning
of the year, apparently without complaint. Though there was NIMBY resistance to
the project, developer Mark DePasquale was able to use the carrot and the stick
to beat back the resistance.
That
included filing a $25 million suit against several of the resisters, offering a
monthly compensation deal to homeowners in his development and literally
putting the turbine in his own backyard. He had offered to buy back the
property of the lead resisters, Scott and Nicole Newcombe.
However, now the
Newcombes, who moved to North Carolina, are suing DePasquale for breach of
contract,
claiming DePasquale broke the settlement deal. For its part, DePasquale’s
lawyers are arguing that it was the Newcombes who violated the terms of the
confidential settlement agreement. Not part of the suit – whether or not the
turbine itself has caused any problems to the residents living all around it.
Deepwater NIMBYs
form a Political Action Committee
A
new PAC has been chartered called Deepwater
Resistance
to raise money to try to block the Deepwater off-shore wind turbine project off
Block Island. Deepwater hopes to ultimately build up to 200 turbines in ocean
waters off the coast. The officers of the PAC are all Narragansett residents.
The
PAC’s Chair Robert Shields told the Independent, “We’re not trying to formulate one definitive position…The people
that have been active have different ideas about what is acceptable. Some would
find it acceptable merely for Deepwater to provide an alternative alignment
[for the in-coming power cables that Deepwater wants to run from the site to
Narragansett] in town. Others see no need to have the project at all.”
In
local hearings, that broad spread of opinion was pretty obvious, with some
objectors living near the beach area where Deepwater wanted to site its power
lines simply wanting the lines run somewhere else to those who completely
oppose the idea of wind energy.
In
that latter group was our own local anti-wind NIMBY leader Maureen Areglado who
testified against Deepwater, apparently believing that even when sited way far off-shore, wind turbines will turn your brain into Wheatena®.
Even when the
turbines are three miles off Block Island, as the first experimental set-up
will be, or much further off if Deepwater wins one of the federal leases
currently up for auction where the closest distance to land is around 12 miles.
"Do not sell your
soul to the devil to get 15% off your electric bills,” she was quoted as
saying by the Block Island Times. “There is not enough science out
there yet. What’s the big rush? If it harms one person it is not worth it.” Is there an exorcist in the house?
Wind Turbines
and birds
 |
| One of the eagles nesting on Watchaug Pond (photo by G. Matteo) |
In
my critiques of
Whalerock,
I’ve noted that one generally accepted problem with the technology is the
danger it poses to birds, especially raptors such as the eagles that nest near
Watchaug Pond and migratory birds, such as those that use Ninigret National
Wildlife Refuge as a stopping point along the great Atlantic flyway.
But we
keep getting comments from professional wind NIMBY Jim Wiegand of California
who objected to the lack of references in my bibliography of readings on wind
power and human health to birds. We published his first comment and replied
that the article was about human health and that we've duly noted the issue in
other articles.
 |
| White-throated needtail after hitting turbine (BBC photo) |
We
haven’t heard from Wiegand in a while, which is surprising in light of an article that
made the rounds in Europe and many parts of the US on the experience of a
group of birdwatchers on the Isles of Harris in Scotland who were thrilled to
see the very rare world’s fastest bird, the White-throated Needletail.
Their viewing of this bird was
brief, because almost as soon as they spotted it, it smacked into a wind
turbine. I’m not making this up and I am definitely not making a joke of this horrible event. The danger to migratory birds is one of the best documented and
still unresolved problems with industrial size wind turbines.
Bad Turbines
Like any device made
by humans, wind turbines can and will wear out and can and will break. This
eventuality bothers me a lot less than the same thing happening at a nuclear
power plant, oil refinery or coal mine. Nonetheless, turbine failures are at best a
major annoyance and are usually an expensive proposition.
We have three nearby
examples of bad turbines: Portsmouth’s giant, broken municipal turbine and the
noisy turbines in Falmouth and Fairhaven, Massachusetts. Falmouth gets the most
attention because of the claims of a cluster of Wheatena® Brain Syndrome. Fairhaven’s
turbines are also noisy, sometimes exceeding state standards.
The Portsmouth turbine
problem is described to EcoRI by Portsmouth Town Planner Gary Crosby as “a unique situation.
We bought a bum machine from a bum company and the hardware failed.”
Portsmouth
wants to get the turbine back into operation and has taken bids to either
replace the internal mechanism within the nacelle with a direct-drive
generator, instead of the gearbox generator that failed. Or they might decide
to replace the entire nacelle and internal works, again favoring direct-drive
over gearbox for its better maintenance record.
 |
| By a wide margin, Falmouth voters decided to keep the turbines |
The Falmouth Board of Selectmen (equivalent to
a town council) are stuck with the problem of what to do with their wind
turbines after town voters resoundingly defeated a referendum to authorize
tearing down the turbines.
The New
Bedford Standard-Times reports that the
selectmen want to do (or be seen to do) something
about the turbines, but without going through another round of raucous town
debate, after experiencing the phenomenon where the anti-wind NIMBYs made the
most noise, but didn’t have the votes to back up their demand to tear down the
turbines.
They are considering a town buy-out of the
homes of those claiming Wheatena® Brain Syndrome, replacing the turbines with a
field of solar panels, running the turbines at different times or some other
option yet to be identified.
If the Falmouth Selectmen hope to avoid more
public uproar by substituting solar panels for turbines, they might want to
check out what happened when Westerly tried that, scrapping a proposal for
turbines and proposing instead a solar panel field on town land off White Rock
Road.
It was actually the RI
Health Department that killed the project because of concern the panels or
simply installing panels might release chemical contaminants into water
supplies. However, the recent heavy construction on White Rock to re-grade,
re-do drainage and lay down massive amounts of asphalt apparently poses no similar threat
to water supplies. Go figure.
Fairhaven
struggles with a problem similar to
Falmouth’s
where local elected officials are also trying to find a solution that will get
angry objectors off their backs without breaking the back of the town’s budget.
But Fairhaven’s problem has one complication that’s not in Falmouth and that’s
ownership.
Falmouth and Portsmouth own their turbines, which means they own the
problem, but also control the remedies.
In
Fairhaven, the town has a “lend-leaseback” agreement where the town gets the
power, but the actually ownership of the turbine is Fairhaven Wind LLC. If
Fairhaven took enforcement action against the turbines, this could trigger
complicated and expensive litigation with the town’s lease-back partner.