God, this drives me craaazy.
So, Long Island. Known for beautiful, sweeping scenic vistas, right? Oh, no, sorry, that's the Rocky Mountains. Long Island is a grimy industrial smear with some dirty beaches.
The Long Island Power Authority wants to build an offshore wind farm off the island. Great, huh? Close to an urban center for efficient transmission. No smog. No CO2. Barely visible at all on a clear day, totally invisible on a hazy one. What do you want, eggs in your beer?
But nooo. The locals are bitching. From Peter Applebome's column in the NYT ($):
Jayne Johnes lives and breathes for her proximity to Gilgo Beach.
"This is heaven, this is my church," she said. "And now they want to put a power plant in the middle of it?"
Yes, Jayne. Yes. You use power. Every day, you enjoy more power than 95% of the planet's residents -- arguably more than your share. Right now that juice is probably coming from coal that got ripped violently out of a piece of scarred land and burnt in a plant that's sickening local residents and spewing CO2 into the atmosphere.
That's heaven, Jayne: the atmosphere. My heaven too.
You want to use power but you don't want to deal with it. You don't want to see it -- oh, I mean barely see it, on a clear day. You think it should be in somebody else's back yard.
Jayne, a message from all us out here getting warmer and worrying about our kids' futures, to all you Long Islanders -- salt of the earth folks, I'm sure -- aghast that your familiar stretch of beach will have new features:
STFU.
Comments
View as Flat
claxton6 Posted 9:51 pm
11 Jul 2006
NIMBYs aren't going to go away. We need a better way to work with them.
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kbpratt Posted 11:45 pm
11 Jul 2006
This issue has been a huge problem in England, where the wealthy rural fox and hound crowd have been fighting windfarms on the Irish Sea. These kind of people are very hard to deal with - they have money, time & laywers - and usually a kind of unassailable sense of entitlement.
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Icelander Posted 12:51 am
12 Jul 2006
http://www.lipower.org/cei/offshore.gilgo.html
I can't stand looking at them. They're all of a quarter inch tall. It's like the ocean forgot to shave or something.
(Sarcasm, naturally.)
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Laurence Aurbach Posted 12:52 am
12 Jul 2006
It would be wonderful to be able to see a wind farm from my house or favorite recreation spots; I would travel to get that view. Wind farms could set themselves up as tourist destinations if their managers could risk a bit of innovation. The opposition to offshore wind farms often seems to come from those who see an aesthetic blight, but who is representing the interests of those who see beauty in the moving sculpture? The usual alternative is more smog from burning fossil fuels -- how is that aesthetically preferable?
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kmp Posted 1:04 am
12 Jul 2006
I can see how a wind farm would look beautiful - like moving sculpture - but I can also understand objections from an aesthetic point of view. When I am out enjoying nature, I am happiest when my view does not contain anything manmade. Trees, rocks, mountains, waves, birds.... no houses, no electrical lines.. and I presume no wind turbines.
However, I am not a NIMBY. Unlike Jayne, I understand that I do use power and I believe that it is important to support clean power as much as possible. If it can be clean and aesthetically pleasing at the same time.. even better.
That being said, how hard would it be to make the turbines a light blue color (instead of white) intended to blend into the sky/sea? This would make them even more difficult to see on a clear day and might ease some of the aesthetic objections.
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DianaJardine Posted 1:08 am
12 Jul 2006
That said, Long Island NOT a grimy industrial smear with some grimy beaches. Sure there are some ugly parts, but there are also many beautiful parts of the island, especially further out towards the ends of the two forks (though there are nice beaches even in Queens). There are farms and forests, clean beaches with plovers, terns, sandpipers, ospreys, and many more. Frankly I would expect better of this blog (one of my favorites) than to make such baseless comments.
Furthermore, shots like that do not help the movement to build the wind farm. NIMBYists will be reluctant to work with a movement that calls their home a dirty industrial smear.
Diana
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Chippehogwa Posted 1:14 am
12 Jul 2006
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GRLCowan Posted 1:19 am
12 Jul 2006
--- G. R. L. Cowan, former hydrogen fan
Boron: internal combustion without exhaust gas
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mihan Posted 1:26 am
12 Jul 2006
Okay, I'm a sucker for anything multi-colored, but even at off-white, I think they're beautiful. I'm guessing that, like house paint, the lighter colors are more weather-proof.
I wonder how many of those folks who oppose the wind farm have snapped photos of windmills (once) used to mill grain or draw water.
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Chip Giller Posted 2:10 am
12 Jul 2006
I haven't been following this siting debate, but I do wonder how this area off of Long Island was chosen. Does anyone else know how this site was selected over others? Were there legitimate reasons, or will the Long Island Power Authority simply be able to roll over local opposition more easily in this case?
www.grist.org
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ffletcher Posted 3:05 am
12 Jul 2006
Wind has special siting issues in that the wind can vary greatly from one location to another just a mile or so away, but public use lands have a higher standard for environmental justice than does private use land. I know of one wind project that got relocated for some political reason and now that project has been used by the coal people as example of wind project don't perform.
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David Roberts Posted 3:13 am
12 Jul 2006
Poor people instead of rich people have to look at tiny dots on the horizon? So what?
There are plenty of real EJ issues without us inventing them at the expense of clean power.
Grist: Dude, we are that frog.
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ffletcher Posted 5:10 am
12 Jul 2006
I think the issue associated with environmental justice goes beyond rich and poor, it is about sharing in the burdens of infrastructure across all people while protecting certain areas. However, there seems to few power resources near the rich, yet they are large consumers of power. That in and of itself is not an environmental justice issue but on a larger scale it may be.
Water view property has incresed in value over the years. As a result there has been a tendency for such property to be owned by those with above average income and wealth. Off shore wind is a potential wind source that has an extra-ordinarly high capacity factor and may be capable of supporting as much as 5MW units. If siting such units in view of the rich is an issue it will eliminate many good renewable energy sites close to load and force instead other resources inland. Most likely these inland resources will be located near another class of people.
To me that seems to be a valid Environmental Justice issue.
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jenb1012 Posted 5:21 am
12 Jul 2006
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bryankwalton Posted 5:25 am
12 Jul 2006
Sorry David, I agree with most of what you on Grist, and I even agree with your frustrations regarding efforts to block off shore wind farms. But I fear your condesencion toward Long Island and its inhabitants only helps to alienate wind farm supporters and to polarize the issue.
I don't live on Long Island, or anywhere near it, but I've been there. And there is more to it than can be justifiably described in your summary of the place. Have you ever visited the Fire Island Wilderness Area, part of the Fire Island National Seashore? It is the only federally protected wilderness area in New York State. And it is a beautiful place.
I hope that people like Jayne will come to see the merits of an offshore wind farm, but it won't happen by slamming her community or her.
-Bryan
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sunflower Posted 5:55 am
12 Jul 2006
Fuel me twice, shame on you.What do the people of Long Island use for heat and hot water?
How much does electricity cost on Long Island?
Oil power, wow, where does the oil come from?
Will Long Island be flooded by a rising sea level?
Is the resistance to wind financed by fossil vendors?
Anger at the destruction of Earth is appropriate. I am very angry.
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GRLCowan Posted 6:39 am
12 Jul 2006
What pays for opposition to wind energy and nuclear energy is money-for-nothing: the fossil fuel tax component of the incomes of the publically funded.
--- G. R. L. Cowan, former hydrogen fan
Boron: internal combustion without exhaust gas
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Steve Erickson Posted 6:48 am
12 Jul 2006
In northern Puget Sound there have now been a spate of speculative applications to FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) for submerged tidal energy systems. As of my last count there have been at least 8 of these applications in Puget Sound and the Straits of Juan de Fuca.
None of these systems actually exist yet. No one actually knows what the general (let alone site-specific) impacts are. One of the propsoed locations is Deception Pass. All salmon runs from and to the Skagit River system (the largest remaining native salmon runs in the lower 48) move through here, as do Orcas. FIsherman are already referring to the proposal as producing pre-filleted salmon.
However, to get back to my orginal question, Deception Pass State Park is the most heavily used state park in Washington (>2 million visitors/year) and the Pass has a CC constructed historic bridge. Its pretty difficult to imagine this kind of industrial development in this location as other than aesthetically atrocious.
So do we adopt the industrial mindset and just disregard aesthetics? Is there any place where we just say no more? Not here!
For years I've responded to the industrial forestry crowd's complaints that people don't like clearcut's only because they're ugly. I trot out all the ecological and economic reasons why clearcutting sucks, because if appearances are the only issue than hiding them solves the problem. But besides their ecological damage, clearcuts are ugly, and the visceral reaction people have to them is mostly because of that. And that reaction provides the entry point where they can be educated about the other impacts besides aesthetics.
So do we say "windfarms everywhere," "tidal hydro everywhere," "dam the Grand Canyon and full speed ahead"?
Steve Erickson
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DianaJardine Posted 6:49 am
12 Jul 2006
Why no response to those of us who took offense to your characterization of Long Island?
Diana
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caniscandida Posted 7:24 am
12 Jul 2006
I agree with Diana that David's odd mocking of Long Island, while nowhere near as lunk-headed as some of the howlers I regularly write : ) , is quite ill-informed and of very little benefit.
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sunflower Posted 7:35 am
12 Jul 2006
I have old-timers on our Puget Sound island who long for the days of clear cut forests because the trees block their views.
It seems we have three classes of people; those that understand the consequences of runaway global warming, those that don't, and those that just don't care. I do not the percentages, I don't care. I am not ready to make nice while the Earth burns.
The nice people on beautiful Long Island will add to the destruction of my island nature conservancy. That is far more insulting than an off-characterization of somebody's beach.
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bjatanasio Posted 8:33 am
12 Jul 2006
Now that I'm in San Francisco, I tried to do an analysis transfer: how would I feel about a windfarm off Ocean Beach? None too happy, but if it resulted in a smaller carbon footprint for my community, I'd agree to it and work to convince others of the important tradeoff.
I am coming to agree with the thesis that wilderness is a cultural construct. Now, I'm not addressing issues concerning the welfare of other species. What appears to be the issue here is the significance of landscapes and seascapes to the human experience. A civilization places its mark all over the geographic landscape. This was true in pre-Columbian America as well as every other culture and civilization since humans began using fire and domesticating animals and plants.
I find it possible to experience wildness everyday in San Francisco: the fog rushing over Twin Peaks; sea lions taking over marina docks and the sight of the Marin Headlands framed by the Bridge. I expect to experience that even when a windfarm floats beyond the break at Tobay Beach.
"Paradise is exactly like where you are right now... only much, much better." (Laurie Anderson)
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bookerly Posted 9:53 am
12 Jul 2006
The question is really whether this particular site is a good one for an offshore wind farm.
There is a basic problem with offshore windforms, which is that shore real estate in America is generally not occupied by poor people who are not white. They can't afford it.
So, any offshore windfarms are going to run smack up against either fairly well off middle class or wealthy people. We've seen in Massachusetts that the wealthy really mean it when they say they don't want anything remotely industrial or view spoiling near them.
Now in Long Island, we hear essentially the same thing from the (probably) upper middle class.
We should not be surprised. Americans naturally want to protect their property values (don't most of the posters here? disclaimer, I am a tenant).
Anything which might lower the value of their investment (which includes view issues) will be fought tooth and nail. NIMBY is not just about aesthetics, but about money.
One option is too give up the idea of offshore wind farms altogether, since there are no poor powerless people to site them next to.
Another option would be to eliminate the system of private property, and do what makes sense of society, not individual property owners. (I am not holding my breath).
David only quotes one person, and the quote may not fully explain her views and ideas (we can all be taken out of context) (grin). It will be interesting to see how the community as a whole reacts (I am too poor to buy the NYTimes article, so can't see if there are further views).
Can we find a way to convince people that offshore wind farms are worth the 1) aesthetic damage and 2) (and I suspect more telling) potential property value damage?
If we can, we can build them. Otherwise it will be a long cold winter.
patrick
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MikeCapone Posted 1:55 am
13 Jul 2006
--
SUVs are squared-out minivans.
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Chris Schults Posted 2:04 am
13 Jul 2006
Look out! It's a media shower!
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mrLee Posted 5:28 am
14 Jul 2006
The current location as proposed makes sense as to the proximity to the onshore power plant, but it also brings the power supplied by the windfarm into the heart of the most densely populated area of the island (hence the greatest draw on the power grid). Placing the plant further east where it is less densely populated would not be as effective.
I also find the objection to the appearance somewhat amusing, since I find the huge number of power lines crisscrossing every populated area of the Island far uglier. As more and more development occurs, new transmission lines are just thrown up here and there without a thought to asthetics. Think about it, we don't have any objection to this because we have been accustomed to the sight of them for as long as we can remember. If wind farms were as common, I'm sure there wouldn't be these objections.
So please, Grist, don't knock the Island so hard, I produce more power than I use with my solar array, and I heat my house with wood in the winter (all trees downed in the neighborhood, none cut down just for fuel), so we're trying here, too.
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mihan Posted 3:35 am
16 Jul 2006
How do we make people who see wind turbines as an eyesore see them as a positive tradeoff?
We are going through a similar problem in South Central Wisconsin. People don't want the lines because they're ugly, they don't want the turbines because they're ugly (they've figured out where to put them so they don't kill bats and birds).
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anaconda Posted 12:49 pm
28 Jul 2006
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