Sidestepping issue
Falmouth Enterprise, 13 January 2012
Don’t we elect our selectmen to make exactly the kind of difficult decision they are evidently trying to duck by referring the wind turbine controversy to a facilitator?
If, as certainly seems to be the case, the health problems claimed by the abutters to the turbines are real, the question becomes simply one of deciding to what extent the town can legitimately degrade the quality of life of the few for the economic benefit of the many. To rely on the unrealistic hope that some outside expert can find a way to sidestep confronting this issue on those terms is to ignore the fact that, short of relocating Wind 1 and Wind 2 to a better chosen site, there is no solution that won’t involve some continuing level of risk and discomfort to those living too close to these machines.
There are only two options and we don’t need an expensive facilitator to tell us what they are. The choice the selectmen cannot escape forever boils down to whether they continue inflicting injury on the abutters or, instead, saddle the town with the huge cost of removing the turbines from a location where wiser heads would never have put them in the first place. There is no middle ground.
George Cadwalader
Millfield Street
Woods Hole
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2012/01/14/sidestepping-issue/