June 24, 2017
Letters, Massachusetts

It is now up to selectmen

It Is Now Up To Selectmen - Letter | The Falmouth Enterprise | June 23, 2017 | www.capenews.net

Tuesday’s Barnstable Superior Court ruling by Judge Moriarty ordered the shutdown of both wind turbines.

It is now time for selectmen to end the ongoing wasteful expenditure of taxpayer money (hundreds of thousands of dollars to date) on legal action to try to revive the wind turbine project.

Selectmen have the opportunity to act on the recommendation of their own Wind Turbine Option Process (WTOP), which cost $399,000.

Selectmen Doug Jones was a liaison and attended most, if not all, WTOP meetings.

The WTOP’s 18 individual members, appointed by selectmen “to represent a cross-section of Falmouth,” worked in 24 meetings over as many weeks in 2012 and 2013 “to engage in an open, transparent and collaborative exploration of the range of options for the long-term future of the Town of Falmouth’s two wind turbines, Wind 1 and Wind 2.”

One of the WTOP options “addressing all the core concerns of all the stakeholder groups” presented on page 31 of the WTOP Final Report to Selectmen (on the town website at www.falmouthmass.us/documentcenter/view/124), was “Removal of Turbines and Replacement with a Photovoltaic Array.”

That “Photovoltaic Array” was recently commissioned by Joe Kennedy at Falmouth’s Solid Waste Facility (aka The Dump).

The 4MW photovoltaic or solar array produces $700,000 of electricity annually, almost twice what the wind turbines could ever produce if allowed to run 24/7. (Wind turbine operation is restricted by a previous Superior Court order to only 12 hours per day with no Sunday or holiday operation).

It is now up to selectmen to remove the wind turbines in order to implement this WTOP option to achieve a resolution to the wind turbine debacle, determined by their own Wind Turbine Option Process as “acceptable to all.”

Selectmen meet Monday night to consider this past Tuesday’s court order shutting down the wind turbines.

We will see whether selectmen exercise their own WTOP option and resolve the costly eight-year wind turbine fiasco. I hope they do.

J. Malcolm Donald, Ambleside Drive, West Falmouth


URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2017/06/24/it-is-now-up-to-selectmen/