It's time to pay some environmental costs for energy

About a year ago, back when I first started ranting in this column, the city was engaged in the middle of a hot debate about a proposed wind power project on the Eastern Promenade. It wasn't even a true project, just a proposal to build a tower for gathering data to see if putting up a wind turbine project would be feasible.
Wow. Imagine my shock that the issue went away to die a slow, malingering death in the City Council Chambers.
Everybody has fallen in love with the concept of sustainable, renewable energy. It's in the news daily, and everyone from our local city council all the way up to the President likes to get in front of a camera and yammer away endlessly about what we need to do. Here's a clue. We need to stop planning board and commissioning them to death and just build the things.
Sure, looking back a year later and stating what was blatantly obvious at the time to all involves is not a gift. The true gift of Cap'n Obvious is that I pointed it out at the time.
And here we are a year later, and not a single plan has come forward. There was some chatter about a proposed project out on Peaks Island, but that kind of disappeared with all the summer folk and fell into the lost dustbin of potentially great ideas.
Looking back at a years worth of "progress" on this issue via the Energy & Environmental Sustainability Committee Minutes on the city's website led me to one obvious fact. We are real good at applying for federal grant money to study stuff, but need a little "follow through" once we get to the plate.
Just like a batter to takes a half-hearted whiff at the pitch, we seem to be missing the point of the entire exercise. Are we REALLY serious about alternative energy and all that go along with it? A quick shake of the magic 8-ball gives me the answer "All Signs Point To No". That came up multiple times, with not even an "Ask Again Later" in sight.
Let's step back a few years in the Way-back Machine, and visit those heady days when Jimmy Carter was President, we were all putting on sweaters due to increased oil prices caused by embargoes, and the world was abuzz with alternative energy projects. A Massive dam was proposed for the St. John River. It was called Dickey-Lincoln. It was a project that promised to provide up to 17 percent of New England's Peak power usage, a whopping 800 Megawatt facility that was clean and renewable power.
After fighting every obstacle in the book, the project was killed by a plant, the Furbish Lousewort. Science could not find this plant anywhere else on the planet, so the clean energy project was tossed into the scrap-bin of history to be forgotten.
Just looking at the fact that this facility could have produced a full THIRD (2.4Gw) of our peak power usage in Maine alone, from a non-polluting renewable resource..was the plant worth it? With the 10th highest power costs in the nation, go take a look at your bill and tell me.
Last week, new national policy initiatives were announced to build 52 new nuclear power plants. Sounds kind of cool, unless you remember that we haven't built one in over twenty years. Why? In case you forgot, we hate nukes. Want proof? Just look to the new budget that came out of our nation's capital this week, on page 70, and you will see that the only facility ever built for the purpose of storing high level nuclear waste was just red-lined. If we are going to build new plants, that means new waste, and now there will be no place to put it. That's some smart thinking there.
Wind turbines? Nope, they turn flights of migratory birds into airborne cat-food. Solar? Not efficient enough, and is more polluting to make than the energy it saves. Ocean tidal power? Imagine all those schools of fish swimming by, and remember back to the "Super Bass-O-Matic '76."
No matter what path we chose, there is an environmental cost to be carried. Perhaps we in this city should sit down and have a discussion about what prices we ARE willing to pay, and soon. That would be a lot better than monthly meetings that use all the buzzwords, fill in all the forms, and get the big federal grant money for the purpose of studying something to death ... and accomplishing so very little.

(Bob Higgins is a regular contributor to The Portland Daily Sun.)