Everywhere Is Someone's Backyard

The greatest number of letters to the editor in the Berkshire Eagle this summer have been about wind turbines. The county's elevations and ridge lines make it Massachusetts' second-most desirable place to build turbines, after the Atlantic Ocean and its shorelines, so quite a few wind power developments have been proposed by corporate energy entities. Also, the state Legislature has passed a bill that would make turbines' permitting process less bound by the local municipality's oversight and thus, friendlier to the developer (though each house has passed its own version and a compromise is held up by the much more unseemly casino gambling bill, my boss says). People understandably have a reason to pen a letter.

Berkshire County is one of the state's most liberal places. Consequently, it seems to be one of the places where voters would most eagerly embrace renewable energy development. But these projects' litigious history and the letters suggest otherwise. They reveal an interesting divide in how one responds to wind energy: Are turbines an innocuous and deeply needed alternative to fossil fuel or are they, at about 450 feet tall with several serious blades spinning with the wind, as industrial and potentially dangerous as traditional energy sources? Do they blend into the landscape or do they ruin it? The latter is a particularly important question considering the Berkshires' landscape is one of its most economically productive assets. I find turbines to be a wonderful site. Every time I drive north on Rte. 7 and the one at Jiminy Peak comes into view, I get a little excited.

That turbines meet such opposition says something elucidating about 21st-century politics and policy. Various constituencies support one policy or another until it arrives near them. The idea of a relatively small shared sacrifice (except for those who abut a turbine) for a large greater good is anathema. Even in as sparsely settled a place as the Berkshires, NIMBYism lives. It lives everywhere.

Then again, as one of my co-workers for the summer, who's in charge of helping towns write turbine-siting laws, says, the central Plains are perhaps a better location. The population is even thinner, the wind is even faster and human access to good sites is easier -- a very important consideration when planning and financing turbines' construction. For example, it's unclear how the 12 or so turbines for a development in Savoy, Mass., will get there considering none of the county's major paved local roads can handle them, let alone the mountain roads once those turbines get closer.

Update: Also worth noting is Berkshire County's legislative delegation and the Berkshire Regional Planning Commission oppose the wind-turbine legislation.