Wind site bill misses the point of conservation

While the Cape Wind-Nantucket Sound drama between US Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and the Wampanoag Indians drew the wind-energy spotlight last week, a quieter play opened on Beacon Hill, where the Senate Ways and Means committee reported out its version of the Patrick administration's Wind Siting Reform Act.

Good news for a greener Massachusetts? Not entirely. Rather than a comprehensive set of siting standards for onshore wind farms, the bill assaults the integrity of the Commonwealth's environmental regulations and conservation legacy.

The Berkshire Natural Resources Council, a land conservation organization, recognizes that wind power, in the right places and at the right scale, is one potential component in a larger strategy to address climate change. But we deplore the bill's willingness to sacrifice generations of environmental progress to satisfy an agenda that is as political as it is scientific.

The bill punts on the central question: What constitutes an appropriate site? That is, how much environmental degradation is tolerable in the name of creating "green'' power to run our 47-inch TVs?

Is appropriate siting all about a location's wind speed? What about the site's proximity to caves that support bats under pressure from white nose syndrome? Is a site's historic or economic context pertinent? What about state forests? Are those the first place we should look, or the very last?

Instead of grappling with these questions, the administration has pushed a "fast-tracking'' bill based on the specious premise that developing wind power in Massachusetts is made too darn difficult by obstructionist local authorities and irresponsible NIMBYists exploiting regulations.

In fact, no wind project in the Berkshires has been denied a permit by local authorities. And at the state level, the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs has excused most, if not all, onshore wind projects from the task of preparing an environmental impact report.

The Berkshire poster children for fast-tracking - Hoosac Wind and Berkshire Wind - have been hamstrung not by regulations, but by self-inflicted wounds suffered after taking calculated shortcuts. Yes, their opponents have taken advantage of the openings, but ironically, had Energy and Environmental Affairs taken a stricter oversight role and required environmental impact reports, the agency almost certainly would have headed off the mistakes.

Wind development is essentially the industrialization of sensitive ecosystems. As graceful as they may look from afar, wind turbines stand on massive concrete blocks sunk deep into mountain ledge. To build these machines, 18-wheelers climb up to and along remote ridgelines. Powerline cuts further fragment the surrounding forest. The projects must be held to high standards.

But the bill instead would let wind projects avoid laws like the Wetlands Protection or Endangered Species acts by getting a one-stop permit from the Energy Facilities Siting Board.

Supporters will point to the bill's mandate that the siting board develop "standards'' for wind projects that are "at least as protective'' as existing law. But in multiple instances the bill gives the siting board the power to waive or relax those standards.

Along with substituting malleable "standards'' for time-tested law, the bill shuts the public out of meaningful participation in the process.

Once the siting board receives a complete application, it would hold one omnibus non-adjudicatory public hearing. The process would not establish a framework for judicial review. The only redress would be to the Supreme Judicial Court, and the range of parties with standing to appeal would be narrowed practically to invisibility.

The Patrick administration wants Massachusetts to be the nation's green leader. But we can't build our way out of global warming. By focusing on regulatory relief for developers, the wind energy bill endangers the Commonwealth's conservation legacy.

We're not in a strict either/or situation here. We must seek multiple solutions as we address climate change. But conservation - of land, water and carbon-sequestering forests, as well as energy - must be the first principle.

Tad Ames is president of Berkshire Natural Resources Council, Inc. in Pittsfield.