By Gary M. Kaye – Publisher – Zero Energy News
(Dateline: Aboard the Metro North Harlem Line – June 2, 2008) Despite four- dollar-plus-a-gallon gasoline and four-dollar-a-gallon-plus home heating oil, across the country zoning boards, homeowner’s associations, and neighborhood groups continue to behave as if it was business as usual. They vote down renewable energy projects for no other palpable reason than “Not In My Backyard” or NIMBY. Let me give you just a couple of examples.
In Watertown, Connecticut, a proposed 35-foot-tall backyard wind generator was rejected because of the repeated protestations of a single neighbor who objected for no other reason than she “didn’t like it.” In Needham Massachusetts, the local town council dropped plans for a wind turbine to power the lighting at a municipal baseball field. The move would have saved the town thousands. The reason it was thwarted: a neighbor thought the flicker caused by the shadow of the turbine’s blades would be annoying. Never mind the shadow would fall in a location far out of human sight. And of course, the biggest case of all, the years of delay for the Cape Wind project despite overwhelming evidence that it would be barely visible from the shore and would disturb almost nothing in the local environment.
And it's not just wind.
There are myriad stories about neighbors objecting to the installation of solar panels for fear they would either disturb the look of a neighborhood, or even bring down property values. It’s time our local officials wake up and smell their wallets going up in smoke. Every gallon of oil that doesn’t go into an oil-fired power plant is a gallon available to go into your car. The same holds true for every gallon that doesn’t get made into home heating oil. Wind power can pay for itself now and solar is getting there. Stop fiddling while we burn Rome.
Kill NIMBY!!!!
Next time – Two Ways to Defeat NIMBY
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