Perhaps We Need a New Approach

Recently the Barnstable Old King's Highway Historic District Committee denied the erection of a wind turbine at Cape Cod Community College. This action was not an isolated incident as there are examples of similar actions across the country in historic areas. Some states have even taken to stripping historical commissions of their authority to review wind and solar installations.

Perhaps, proponents of wind and solar need to pursue a new approach. The National Park Service, among many others, has raised concerns about the impacts of acid rain on historic structure, What are we doing about acid rain?

Perhaps, we need to pursue this angle. We have focused much of our discussions on the energy savings - and dollar amount - saved by entities seeking to use solar and wind in historic areas. It might be time to quantify the savings in tons of pollutants removed, reductions in acid rain producing compounds in the environment.

As planners we might want to direct our historic committee members to read a few of the documents that are out there on the impacts of acid rain, such as Acid Rain and Our Nation's Capital which discusses the impacts of acid rain on limestone and granite buildings. We need to direct them to the impacts on homes, Acid Rain's Effect on Your Home, to illustrate the increase in maintenance costs, costs which can be quite extensive on historic properties. We need to point out, ultimately, that acid rain is directly related to fossil fuel burning for electricity.

We need to point out that, for every megawatt of energy produced by a wind or solar installation, 20 tons of sulfer dioxide and nitrogen oxide (the two leading contributors to acid rain) are avoided.

Finally, we need to point out that the same chemicals which cause acid rain also produce smog and haze, ruining most peoples views of our lovely part of the world.

Perhaps this approach needs to be explored prior to stripping historical commissions of some of their review powers.