Double standards are surfacing in the debate over wind turbine siting.
Apparently, if you live in Wellesley, you need protection from neighbors who might build their houses too large – but you don’t need protection if someone wishes to put up a 425-foot-high wind turbine as close as 640 feet from your house in Savoy.
So goes the thinking of Don McCauley, president of Minuteman Wind and resident/Planning Board member in Wellesley. At the same time he is promoting a bylaw where he lives to control large houses, he is promoting a bylaw to build massive wind turbines in Savoy, where his company has an option to build them.
Last week, he was quoted in the Wellesley Townsmen as saying, “That’s what large house review is really all about – ensuring that large houses don’t needlessly detract from abutters and the neighborhood – in other words, to require that consideration be given to the needs of neighbors. That seems, to us, a worthy goal.”
In the same week, he proclaims, “The Malloy bylaw has many provisions to insure that adjoining properties and the town are protected” while attempting to get a wind turbine bylaw passed in Savoy that his company drafted.
So, how will wind turbines end up getting sited in Massachusetts? Just like we site landfills and prisons. Dangle a few dollars in front of communities where people can’t look to their future because they are too busy trying to figure out how they will pay their taxes and put groceries on the table right now.
Certainly not in communities like Wellesley where “mansionization” is a household word.
Lloyd Crawford
Hawley
Nov. 7
9 November 2007
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2007/11/09/hot-air-in-wellesley-cool-breeze-in-savoy/