NOTES FROM THE HINTERLAND
IN THEIR BACKYARD
“The choice is not
between wind power and unspoiled nature. The choice is between wind power
and the destruction of the world’s biology.” —Bill
McKibben
By Laurie Meunier
Graves
Last year, in August, I read a column/blog called “Think Again” that Stanley
Fish, a professor of law at Florida University in Miami, writes for the
New York Times. Most of his columns are thoughtful, progressive
reflections of issues of our times, and I enjoy reading them. However, a
proposed wind farm in Andes, New York, the small town where Fish lives five
months a year, had a startling Dr. Jekyll-Mr. Hyde effect on this normally
erudite man, turning him from a tolerant liberal to a snarling regressive.
His August 26th
column, with the subtitle “Blowin’ in the Wind,” outlined his
vehement opposition to the wind farm, which the town ultimately banned. Fish
was not alone and was joined by many of the residents of Andes, whom he
described as “retirees and second home owners who are educated, relatively
well off and tend to be…into organic foods, hybrid cars, clean air, clean
water, the whole bit.” However, it seems they are not “into” wind power.
Why is this? Being
a law professor, Fish systematically made his case: Wind farms don’t produce
enough power; they tear up the ridges; they are bird killers; and the wind
companies are really developers, building them with ill-gotten gains gleaned
from “tax credits, tax shelters and accelerated depreciation rates.” And,
probably the worst offense—the “outsized towers ruin scenic views and
depress real-estate values.” It cannot be denied that wind farms need, well,
wind and that the wind often blows in the most scenic places. I can’t help
but think that if the wind farms could be built in the poor sections of
towns, which seldom have views, then there would be little opposition to
them.
Interestingly
enough, Fish was vague when it came to details and statistics and never
produced actual numbers. How much power would the turbines provide? How many
birds would they harm? How much would the ridges be torn up? Could the
ridges be repaired? Apparently, we were supposed to take it on faith that
Fish had all that information but for some reason didn’t think it was
necessary to share it with his New York Times readers.
Fish and the residents of Andes certainly aren’t the first to oppose wind
farms and ironically, incite “a
civil war among professed environmentalists.”
The most celebrated opposition, led by Walter Cronkite and Robert F.
Kennedy, an environmental lawyer, involved one proposed off the shores of
Nantucket Island. (Defending the project were Greenpeace and Clean Power
Now.) Cronkite, who later recanted, readily admitted that he didn’t want the
wind turbines in his backyard, even though that backyard was, in fact, the
Atlantic Ocean, and technically not his at all. But people are notoriously
territorial about places that don’t really belong to them, and they have a
very broad definition of what constitutes their backyard. Incredibly, in the
face of such rich opposition, this project is still in the works, and,
according to the Cape Cod Times, “The Army Corps of Engineers says it
has received a revised permit application from Cape Wind
Associates LLC for the wind farm.”
Time will tell whether this wind farm fares better than the one proposed for
Andes, New York.
Here in Maine, we have had and continue to have our own
wind farm battles. In 2007, plans for wind farms on two mountains in western
Maine were turned down by the Land Use Regulation Commission (LURC). This
time, the charge against the project was led by the Maine Appalachian Trail
Club and Maine Audubon, for all the reasons stated in Fish’s list of
complaints. Unlike Fish, I am able to give some statistics, and according to
the Portland Press Herald, this particular project was slated
to provide power to 40,000 homes, which by Maine standards is not
insignificant. Simply put, it would have been enough power to light up
Lewiston, Maine’s second largest city (population 35,000 or so). Both my
husband Clif and I were sorely disappointed by LURC’s decision to turn down
a source of power that would have given Maine so much clean energy. We were
not the only ones. Most of Maine’s major newspapers blasted LURC’s decision,
and public opinion was, by and large, on the side of the wind farms. There
are still plans afoot to build a wind farm on one of the mountains, and
while one wind farm is better than none, many of us in Maine fervently wish
that the opposing groups had made their peace with wind power. Considering
the threats posed by global warning, the cost of oil, and the troubles in
the Middle East, wind power has come to seem like a very good idea. Yes,
views are interrupted, but the benefits far outweigh the disadvantages. (One
can even reasonably make the case that far more birds will be killed by
climate change than by wind turbines.)
After all this opposition to wind farms, all this
clamoring about spoiled views, all this willful refusal to face the
realities of global warming, it was a relief to meet Jim and Muffy Floyd, a
couple from Vienna, Maine. Their attitude is refreshingly different. One
might even call it mature and responsible, a welcome change from those who
want clean energy, as long as they don’t have to look at it. What Jim and
Muffy have done is what so many are unwilling to do. That is, have a source
of energy in their backyard, and by this I don’t mean several miles away but
within view. I mean it literally—the Floyds have installed a wind turbine in
their backyard. Not only can they see it, but they can also touch it, walk
around it, and, as it turns out, admire it, which they do on a regular
basis. They have even arranged their lawn chairs next to the wind turbine so
that they can look at it as they relax.
Last year, on a hot day in late summer, my husband and I
went to visit the Floyds and talk to them about their wind turbine. The
Floyds are friends of a mutual friend—Diane Friese—and she had given us an
enthusiastic account of a dedication ceremony the Floyds had hosted in honor
of the wind turbine. After all the wind farm controversy, Clif and I were
interested in meeting the Floyds, in actually seeing a device that has
caused so much acrimony, and in finding out what prompted them to install a
wind turbine in their own backyard.
I was prepared to admire the Floyds and their commitment
to the environment, but what I wasn’t prepared for was the sheer beauty and
elegance of the wind turbine itself. As to be expected, the Floyds live on
top of a hill, which overlooks a green valley surrounded by trees. As we
drove up their long driveway, and I saw the windmill, my first thought was
simply and unpoetically, “Wow!” The wind turbine stood tall, slender, and
serene, and it is no exaggeration to say that it looked like a work of art,
a piece of modern sculpture that would not be out of place at Storm King, a
sculpture park in New York. All the time I was at the Floyds’ house, I
couldn’t stop staring at the wind turbine, and even though I’m very keen on
flowers, I’m afraid the beautiful gardens, full of purple coneflowers,
sedums, and black-eyed Susans, hardly got a second look.
The wind turbine was definitely the thing.
Muffy and Jim, both slim and energetic, are retired
landscape gardeners (hence the beautiful gardens) who have “been on a hill
since 1978.” They have long been interested in environmental issues and do
all the usual things—recycle, use energy-efficient appliances, and compost.
But they wanted to do more, and on Earth Day of 2007, they sent out a
challenge to their friends and to themselves. That is, how to reduce power
consumption. There were the relatively easy small changes such as installing
compact florescent light bulbs and using cold water to do the laundry. But
Muffy and Jim wanted to do more. As Muffy put it, “We wanted to walk more
gently on the Earth.”
At Maine’s Common Ground Country Fair, a huge autumn
event celebrating rural life, a fair with no cotton candy but plenty of
organic food, Muffy and Jim had seen solar panels that needed no special
wiring to plug into the house. The panels were tempting, “but we live on a
hill with lots of wind,” Muffy said. More specifically, the hill has an
“open exposure to the west, north, and east (about 240 degrees) and distant
views of Mt. Blue, Abraham, Sugarloaf, and Bigelow…when the wind blows from
those directions, there is good exposure.”
Then, in early May, not long after their Earth Day 2007
resolution, Muffy and Jim received an advertisement in the mail from All
Season Home Improvement Co., and along with the garages, the “quality
decks,” the patio rooms, and the metal roofs was an ad for a wind generator,
the Skystream 3.7, with the enticing come-on, “Make your meter run
backwards.” And better yet, “Take control of your energy bill!” The Floyds
didn’t hesitate. They contacted a salesperson from All Season Home
Improvement, and by the end of July, Muffy and Jim had a wind turbine in
their very own backyard. It is hooked directly to their electric system, and
they unabashedly admit that they get a cheap thrill watching the meter spin
as power goes back into the grid.
The Skystream 3.7 is designed to run twenty years
maintenance free and to stop if the power goes out so that there will not be
any back feed. Noise is another complaint about wind turbines, and Muffy and
Jim compare the sound of their Skystream to the low hum of an air
conditioner. In all fairness, it must be pointed out that one wind turbine
will not make as much noise as thirty or more, and commercial wind turbines
are bigger than residential ones.
Another issue, of course, is cost, and the Skystream is
not cheap. Muffy and Jim said that they spent about $12,000 for the wind
turbine and its installation. They are quick to point out that their “goal
in installing it was to do something positive for the environment and reduce
[their] carbon foot print.” It was not to have “a goal of …a short (or even
medium term) payback period.” Nevertheless, for many Mainers, $12,000 is a
lot of money. On the other hand, even in Maine, families spend a lot of
money going out to eat, going to the movies, and going on vacation. Twelve
thousand dollars? It depends on the family, but I expect many shell out
quite a bit on such folderol, which over a few years can really add up. I
constantly make this point when people complain that they can’t afford to
buy art, go to plays, or support small literary magazines, and this also
applies to helping the environment.
When we visited them in August, Muffy and Jim really
didn’t have a sense of exactly how much power the Skystream would produce.
How could they after only one month? So at the end of January, in 2008, I
emailed Muffy to see how the Skystream was doing, and she gave me a succinct
rundown. In August and September, it was calm most of the time, and there
was not much production. In October and November, they were gone, but about
75 kWh were sent out into the grid. In December and January, they estimated
that they had enough wind to produce some power about half of the time. She
wrote, “On ‘good’ days we produce about half our requirements, and on a
really windy day…we are producing more than we are using.” Overall, the
power they have purchased is “about half what it was during the same period
a year ago.” But, she added, they are much more conscious about the energy
they use and have made a real effort to use lights only “where/when we need
them and [to turn] the PC and its peripherals off except when we are using
them.”
Clif and I decided to do a quick estimate to see how
these savings would add up for us if we had a Skystream. On average, we
spend $120 a month on electricity, and if our usage was cut by half, then
that would be about a $60 a month savings. Over twenty years, the length of
time the Skystream is designed to run maintenance free, there would be a
savings of $15,400, with a net gain of about $3,000. Now, $3,000 over twenty
years doesn’t sound like much unless you take a couple of things into
consideration. When you combine the cost of global warming, which even by
modest estimates involves destruction caused by rising sea levels, droughts,
and hurricanes, all depending on geographic locations, then the world-wide
costs easily reaches billions of dollars. There is the actual price of
electricity itself, and whether it’s produced by oil or by coal, it
certainly isn’t slated to decrease anytime in the near future. Indeed, I
think it’s safe to assume that prices are only going to go up as time goes
by, which means that the actual savings of energy produced by the Skystream
would be greater. There have been bills proposed, on both the state and
federal level, for rebates for wind turbines, and if these bills passed,
then the wind turbines would be even more cost effective.
However, in the end, it all comes down to the wind, which
means location, location, location. Clif and I live in the woods, where
there isn’t much wind. Muffy and Jim live on a hill, where there is more
wind, but, as Muffy put it, the Skystream has taught them a lesson about
wind. “We thought we lived in a windy spot but have discovered that there
are fewer days of wind than we thought and it is less strong. The wind is
also variable—both in strength and direction. So on a windy day when the
Skystream is turning, it is constantly increasing and decreasing its
speed…and the head is constantly moving to find the direction from which the
wind is blowing. It’s fascinating to watch. In order to have the Skystream
producing a significant amount of power it needs to be a really windy day.
But even then it is not a constant production stream because the wind varies
constantly.” Even so, Muffy and Jim are “very happy” they had the Skystream
installed as it has met their goal “to do something positive for the
environment.” And by most people’s calculation, reducing electricity
consumption by half is a good thing.
The variability of wind is not an insignificant issue,
and this brings me back to the proposed wind farms mentioned at the
beginning of this piece. In each case, the locations of the wind farms were
to be either on mountaintops or out in the ocean, places where the wind
blows at a good clip a great deal of the time. In short, wind farms can’t
just be relocated to any old place if plans are turned down by groups who
don’t want the view ruined. While wind farms might never be able to provide
all the power this country needs, they can and do produce power. They should
be a part of any overall plan to reduce our carbon usage, but if they are to
do this, they have to go where the wind blows most of the time. This cannot
be repeated enough.
When we visited the Floyds last year in August, we stood
by the Skystream. “Look,” Jim said as he pointed down into the valley, but
all we could see was the green of the grass and the deeper green of the
trees beyond. We shook our heads. “What?” Clif asked. “The power lines,” Jim
answered, and suddenly they popped into our view, even though previously we
had been unaware of them.
“That’s what power looks like right now,” Jim said, “and
basically we don’t see them.” We turned our attention to the sleek Skystream,
ready to catch the wind. “This is what power could look like.”
Yes, it could. At least in certain places and if certain
groups allow it. After all, what better view can there be than of wind
turbines spinning away and producing carbon-free energy that doesn’t come
from the Middle East? None that I can think of, and to my mind, at least,
Muffy and Jim got it exactly right by installing the Skystream in their
backyard.
##
PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE HINTERLAND
for
"IN
THEIR BACKYARD"
