Cape college fails to clear wind turbine hurdle

WEST BARNSTABLE — Historic preservation, 5, Cape Cod Community College wind turbine, 0.

Following more than four hours of passionate debate and deliberation, the Old King's Highway Regional Historic District Commission voted 5-0 yesterday to uphold a denial of the college's plan to build a 243-foot-tall turbine on its West Barnstable campus.

"The height as you move away from it becomes more and more obvious, it becomes more and more imposing," George Jessop, Barnstable's representative to the commission, said prior to the vote, which was cast in a meeting room at the West Barnstable fire station packed with more than 50 people. "The size is key here."

Jessop, who could not vote because it was a decision by the Barnstable Old King's Highway Historic District Committee that the project's proponents appealed to the regional commission, said the size of the turbine was simply inappropriate for the area.

Several neighbors agreed, arguing the project would have a negative effect on their property values and quality of life.

"The turbine has no place in this historic district," said Mark Bonaiuto, who lives on Acorn Drive, less than a half mile from the turbine's proposed location. The noise from the turbine, he said, would be like "dripping water."

For Bonaiuto's wife, Marianne, the flicker from the spinning blades she experienced during a visit to the turbine at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy in Buzzards Bay was "disturbing," especially because of her tendency to develop migraine headaches.

"I'd love to see a turbine," just not in the style, scale and location of the college project, she said.

'What could be better?'

But for every person who objected to the turbine two rose to support it.

"We are losing youth on Cape Cod precisely because of that type of mind-set," said Sarah Cote of Sandwich, an executive assistant at the pro-wind energy group Clean Power Now.

As for setting a precedent by approving the turbine: "What could be better?" she said.

Other speakers questioned how communication and water towers are built in the district but a wind turbine is denied.

Attorney Bruce Gilmore, who represented the college and the state, argued the Barnstable historic district committee did not account for benefits the turbine would bring to the college and the community in energy savings, environmental protection and education.

"I would say on its face that that is a fatal flaw," he said of overlooking the project's benefits. The historic district's enabling act specifically requires that energy benefits of a proposal be considered, he said.

The wind turbine would produce more than one million kilowatt hours of energy and save the college an estimated $170,000 annually, said Dixie Norris, vice president of administration and finance at the school.

The college uses about 4.6 million kilowatt hours of electricity annually and spent an average of $725,049 a year on electricity over the past four years, she said.

Norris said an estimated $50,000 of revenue each year from unused energy the turbine produced would have gone to a low-income energy conservation program.

The project would also provide a "living laboratory" for students learning about renewable energy, college president Kathleen Schatzberg said.

No one is benefiting from the turbine now. The windmill is sitting in pieces inside a hangar at Otis Air National Guard Base, where it has been since arriving from India last year.

The Barnstable historic district committee called a halt to the project in the fall because the college and state had neglected to seek the local panel's approval before moving forward.

The college, which is typically exempt from local zoning law, was unaware that it needed the historic district committee's approval, Gilmore said.

Little room to compromise

After receiving approval from the state, the college moved the project from one side of the campus to the other and reduced the turbine's height from 400 feet to 243 feet because of demands from the Federal Aviation Administration, he said.

The FAA's stance left the regional historic district committee and the college with little room to compromise, said the panel's chairman, Peter Lomenzo of Dennis. "What could we do?" he said after the regional commission found the Barnstable historic district committee had not acted arbitrarily and capriciously in its decision. Local historic district committees and alternative energy committees should get together in the future to work out issues like this before they get to this point, he said.

The college and state have 20 days after a written decision is filed with the Barnstable town clerk to appeal the ruling to Barnstable District Court, a move Schatzberg said she will try to push forward. "That would be a joint decision," she said, citing the state Division of Capital Asset Management's responsibility for the project.