Residential Resistance to Change
I was down on the North Fork of Long Island over Labor Day weekend. On Labor Day morning I stumbled across this Newsday article about a Sag Harbor, NY resident's attempts to install a private wind turbine on his house. To sum it up: the town review board denied this guy the permit to install wind energy because of NIMBYism.
These people need to get their heads out of the sand. As the article points out - and as I witnessed firsthand yesterday on the shore of the Peconic Bay where winds were steadily ripping at about 20mph - the eastern tip of Long Island has a pretty decent wind resource available to harness at the residential level. The terrain is totally flat and there are plenty of open spaces where turbines could be installed. However, eastern Long Island is also over-loaded with wealthy, energy-ignorant people who don't care about their electric bills or about a reduction in energy footprint. They are more concerned with surface issues ... like how a wind turbine will destroy a view (it wouldn't - they just haven't thought the issue through and reject it due to preconceived notions).
As the article also points out, wind has been leveraged as a source of power on Long Island for a long time. I was within 20 feet of a 50 foot tall windmill this weekend. The windmill is used to power a water pump. Residents of areas that are amenable to wind energy need to take a breath, and think before they reject ideas like private wind turbines. We need to stop reading these types of articles in the papers around this country. If we don't start getting smarter, we're going to regret it in the long run.
