This is the second of two new, monthly columns now appearing in the Working Waterfront E-Weekly. Let us know what you think of these new features.
“Field notes” is the term that many social scientists use to describe experiences and observations they have made while doing research, and to raise questions about what they are seeing and experiencing. As vice-president of programs at the Island Institute, a big part of my job is to listen to islanders and residents of remote communities to help figure out how to align the Island Institute’s resources around their priorities. I am also an anthropologist by training, and this column is a way for me to reflect on what I hear and to connect the questions I encounter in my travels with ideas circulating around the country. I hope that “Field Notes” will create a space for discussions that inform our work with island and remote coastal community members for the benefit of our coast.
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A lobsterman hauling gear off Vinalhaven looks up to see his home, his island, crowned by three, newly erected wind turbines. The image of the Maine coast is transformed.
Two iconic images: the wind turbine, a symbol of the future, of technology and, increasingly, of politics; the fisherman and the commercial wharf that supports him is also a symbol of our coastal economy and heritage, but is more often linked to our past than to our future. And, unlike the wind turbine, the wharf will be the place where the limits to this emerging technology are determined along our coast.
People are leery of new technologies and rightfully so. Ask native peoples that inhabit the lands around Yucca Mountain about the benefits of nuclear energy, or go back in time and read about how Minnesota farmers fought the introduction of high power lines in the 1960s. What are fishermen leery of today? Some issues include displacement from historical fishing grounds, the impacts of cables on lobsters and access to jobs that ocean wind energy might create.
I recently heard Barbara Herr-Harthorn from the University of California, Santa Barbara speak about public perceptions of emerging technologies (she studies nanotechnology). She quantified many of the issues we care about: distributional justice, or how the costs and benefits are distributed; recreancy (government mismanagement); lack of trust of developers and government; confusion about the public input process; and lack of collective forms of consenting.
These concerns stand as a call for more democratic approaches to the introduction of new technologies.
The building of three 1.5-megawatt wind turbines off of Midcoast Maine is stunning for a variety of reasons. Perhaps most of all because they attest to the deep-seated concerns in small communities about equity, but also because their presence on this iconic Maine coastline raises questions about the future of ocean wind energy.
During early discussion about pursuing ocean wind energy, I shared a car ride with a Fox Islands Electric Cooperative board member, who described how household-scale energy solutions like solar or “going off the grid” create inequities in small communities. When one person installs energy star appliances, solar hot water, or upgrades all of their light bulbs, the fixed costs of operating the electric cooperative are transferred to others in the community, particularly those who don’t have the means to make these same improvements. This was simply unacceptable to him and to many others I have spoken with since.
In order to crack this issue, the Fox Islands Electric Cooperative requested support from the Island Institute to develop a community-outreach process and a community-ownership model. A significant focus of the outreach process included efforts to gather data from the proposed site and to translate this scientific information for the public so that people could come to their own conclusions about whether or not wind power made sense for their community.
The community-owned co-op became the developer. The opportunity for public debate was, and continues to be, maximized. A vote of electric co-op ratepayers stood as a collective form of opinion.
Translating this approach to the ocean is the next challenge, both for the state and the communities that will be impacted. The state’s work to identify ocean wind-power test sites has begun with attention to sharing as much information as they have available. With the Governors Ocean Energy Task Force wrapping up, and test site selection moving toward the legislative process, a new, much longer process of educating ourselves about commercial-scale ocean wind energy must begin.
The ocean is a public trust, and the island and remote coastal communities we live in should have a say. Yet, when all is said and done, our wharves are where debates about ocean energy will likely be settled. The wharves will be the stepping-off points for developers and for turbine components, and the communities near our harbors will house the crews that will build them. Someone or some community of fishermen will be impacted. We should all be thinking about what questions to bring to this debate, but the fishermen should be particularly focused on this. These questions are at the heart of a move to democratize the integration of technologies into our lives. The decisions we make will forever change the coast.
Rob Snyder is the vice-president of programs at the Island Institute.