February 13, 2014
Letters, Rhode Island

Block Island won’t save money with wind turbines

South County Independent | February 13, 2014 | www.independentri.com

Who am I to tell Block Islanders what to do? I’m a Rhode Islander who is not looking forward to sharing $600 million in additional charges with other ratepayers on the state’s mainland just to provide the state with higher-cost power and Block Island with its transmission cable.

There are other options. Deepwater Wind is obligated to provide a cable to Block Island whether they build five industrial-sized wind turbines or not. There is no absolute guarantee that Block Island ratepayers will save any money on the cost of power because of the wind turbines. All evidence points to the opposite. Deepwater Wind has no record of success. In fact, it is the opposite. Its past attempts were all failures in the generation of power. This Block Island Wind Farm project is the riskiest of all.

Recently released documents show that most everyone living on Block Island year-round will be in the path of the one-second strobes, fog horns and blinking reds from the huge towers 2.5-miles off shore. On a quiet evening, there will be no quiet and on a dark evening, the sky will reflect the one second pulses of the strobes. There will be no peace.

Separate the cable from the wind turbines. Island residents deserve reasonably priced power, fiber bandwidth and peace of mind.

Myron Waldman

Narragansett

URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2014/02/13/block-island-wont-save-money-with-wind-turbines/