So.
Boston.
Last week, Tuesday and Wednesday, I traveled from Muskegon, Michigan to Boston, Mmaassaacchhuusseettss (I'm never sure which letters are doubles in that name so I'm just playing it safe and going with ALL of them). I went to an offshore wind activists forum funded by an organization called the Civil Society Institute. There were about a dozen of us, representatives of offshore wind activist groups from around the Great Lakes and East Coast.
The Civil Society Institute brought us all together so the 12 or so of us could talk shop about our various experiences working to promote offshore wind projects in our area.
We were paired off in our respective geographical regions to discuss important stuff. One thing that was pretty clear early on was that if you want offshore wind power or ANY wind power in your area, START PROMOTING IT BEFORE A DEVELOPER MAKES A PROPOSAL.
Seriously, dude.
Want wind power in your area? Get out there RIGHT NOW and start letting folks know it's not going to scramble their brains with infrasound or sneak into their homes and eat their sweet and sour chicken leftovers from the fridge. Contact or even MEET WITH your local representatives, the city council members and the county commissioners, and have a reasonable, accurate, passionless discussion about wind power's benefits and challenges.
Do it NOW.
Because if you wait until a proposal comes along, you have as likely a chance to have crazy information start oozing out of the woodwork into the ears of citizens and respresentatives and panicked, empassioned residents as not. Hell...you have MORE of a chance of having panicked, empassioned residents than not. And the misinformation is nutty as all hell from wind turbines killing livestock to scrambling your insides.
The folks who had a notion to start an offshore wind farm before a proposal had a lot more luck and less resistance at the outset. The folks who swept in to support a wind farm proposal faced an uphill battle. That was a pretty consistent theme.
While at the meeting I also had the pleasure to meet with an individual from the Maine Island Institute, which helps island communities deal with the logistics of island living...like, how to dispose of trash or send your kids to school. One thing they dealt with was how to lower the energy costs which are as high as SEVENTY cents per kilowatt hour. One way they reduce those costs is with wind power on the islands. You may or may not have heard of the infamous Vinilhaven wind farm on the island of Vinialhaven..there's a youtube vid and lots of literature of how the wind turbines turned the peaceful island community into sheer hell with the noise and the ominous presence...
As it turns out, there are just 5 folks out of over 1200 on the island who hate the turbines and they've been raising quite a stink about them, giving speeches and pounding the media trying to make it seem that everybody on Vinilhaven island hates the turbines...apparently that's not quite accurate. Approval of the turbines after they became operational went over 90%.
In the end, though, the meeting was more like a support group. People working toward the same stuff, experiencing the same issues as one another, hearing the same wacky arguments.
I must say I appreciated that meeting quite a bit. Made folks in our activist group, myself included, feel a little less alone in this venture. And, really, there are a lot of local organizations working on this issue as well...so we really have no right to feel like we're in it alone. There's a whole lot of us here who want this future for our region, and a whole lot of us who are putting in the work to make it a reality. And that's a comforting thing.