The “Falmouth Experience” Lives

“This is not about Falmouth” is seemingly echoed in the halls of town, county and state government buildings throughout New England by the Wind proponents.  This has everything to do with Falmouth, for this small sea side community has developed public awareness toward what Wind Developers hoped they wouldn’t.  Public awareness will resolve the problem, and the gross injustice, of the adverse impacts of wind energy on communities.  As truth becomes more widely known and acknowledged, community and neighborhood relief will be realized.

A National Public Radio interviewer commented to me: “Falmouth has changed everything.”  Indeed it has!

The obvious first step in achieving a solution is keeping it local.   Force  Towns, and the public, to acknowledge the problem — rather than to deny it.  The more accounts of experiences in public — and the more people like those “Falmouth Experience” veterans describe all of the ramifications of being subjected to such intrusion, including sleep deprivation, degradation of quality of life, consequences for personal investments in your homes — the more the arguments on the other side are revealed to be nothing more than false — hollow — abstractions.  Putting a human face on the problem and forcing the appropriate parties to acknowledge the legitimacy of your interests as members of the community will have profound effect.

The other side routinely dismisses, or devalues, first-person testimonials as mere anecdotal evidence.  They claim that their arguments are “science based” and then they brandish the same 3 or 4 widely discredited studies that have been funded by AWEA or DOE. It is one thing to dismiss accounts from Vinalhaven, Maine, or Ontario, or Wisconsin or Australia as unreliable bits of information obtained by critics who troll the internet for any negative scrap of information. But it is quite another thing for them to dismiss one of their neighbors who rises to say, “let me tell you what MY experience is like — and allow me to ask you why you feel justified in doing this to me.”

It may not be apparent to the reader, but I and my wife and neighbors are living under duress in Falmouth.  In my experience, the trajectory of events in matters like these is often deceiving in that it often seems as if nothing meaningful is being accomplished. Dead in the water?  Getting nowhere?  Then, suddenly, matters are having a viral effect in town hall, the Cape Cod Commission, the Massachusetts State House.  The industrial wind solution has begun it’s collapse under the weight of too much evidence marshaled against them.

The surest road to prevailing is to win hearts and minds of elected officials, regulatory agencies, health and safety agencies, perhaps ultimately even judges.  Force them to listen. Forced them to respond and take action.

A pissed off Citizen of the United States of America is something to behold!

Firetower Road

Falmouth