October 9, 2016
Letters, Massachusetts

Outsourcing windmill energy is a ‘not in my backyard’ mentality

Sippican Week | Oct 07, 2016 | sippican.villagesoup.com

I address this primarily to Mr. Saltonstall and Dr. Francis: Think about this for a moment, please: Hideaway Village in Bourne and the industrial wind turbine neighbors in Plymouth will NEVER be able to “go back to how they were before.” The Stone Estate, in Marion’s estimation, was untouchable, but it was OK to put the 268 homes of Hideaway Village in harm’s way as long as your town did not have to suffer the consequences, the noise annoyance, the loss of private property rights, the loss in property value and the Stone Estate remained “whole.”

The people of Bourne had a right to be freaking out, whether over their roads or over what they knew would occur once those turbines reached the MannProject site in Plymouth. The people on the Bourne side of the project were not part of the process.

Would the residents of Marion have been happy to have that tonnage and vibration brought over their roadways and past the Stone Estate? (Based on the sense of well-being displayed at being able to just go back to your old ways if the MannProject did not work for Marion as expressed in the “success for Marion” article, I think not.)

On both the Bourne side and the Plymouth side of the MannProject, people have begun to feel the impacts of the industrial wind machines that were allowed to be built in Plymouth.

The mentality displayed by the people of Marion in this article is the worst sort of Nimbyism and truly is reflective of, “It is OK to ruin other people’s lives, and I go along with the industrial wind turbine mandates and agenda as long as it is not in my backyard, in my hometown, in the place I call home.”

In 2011, at the time Marion was considering a turbine and rejected it, my neighbors and I were in the process of considering the Moon Island (Quincy) Project. At the time, we knew very little about industrial wind turbines other than what the developer and the pro wind people told us. When the time came closer to making a decision, we began to do our homework in order to ask the right questions and make a good decision.

Not unlike Marion, we learned very quickly about the Falmouth issue. We learned very quickly about negative health impacts from places around the world; we learned about strobing and noise, and at the time we did not even consider the damage the heavy equipment would do to our only access road. Not unlike Marion, we did not feel industrial wind turbines made very good neighbors. As a neighborhood, we were instrumental in rejection of the Moon Island Project for some of the very same reasons that Marion rejected the Great Hill Project.

It is truly unfortunate that people, all people, have not been made aware of the truths of the industrial wind turbine mandates and agenda. It is a costly experiment. It will never change global warming or climate change. I would like to think that the people of Marion, or any other community where they are considering purchasing “energy” produced by another city or town, would turn down the offer by a developer because they knew that someone else was going to be put in harm’s way based on their own knowledge and research. And, if they know nothing about industrial wind turbine “hazards” that minimally they would take the time to learn about the subject before they rejected or signed onto the Power Purchase Agreement. Had there been no takers, the MannProject would not exist.

My connection with the MannProject comes as a result of the Moon Island Project. Since that time, I and others became advocates for industrial wind turbine victims and support groups who are fighting industrial wind turbines in their backyards.

Marie Stamos
Quincy


URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2016/10/09/outsourcing-windmill-energy-is-a-not-in-my-backyard-mentality/