Friday, February 24, 2017

Whatever works.

corridor

Here's the lead from a 2009 story in The Virginian-Pilot:
In 1994, Currituck County published a plan with a goal to make the N.C. 168 and U.S. 158 highway corridor "one of the most attractive roads in northeastern North Carolina by the year 2004."
Starting last month and continuing through the summer, a corridor sweep team plans to notify business owners along the 43-mile-long highway of violations, including oversize signs, clutter, junk cars and dilapidated buildings.
Eight years later, the solution has been found:
Currituck County bans solar farm development
Neighbors complained the solar arrays are an eyesore, and that they fear "flying shards of glass" in bad weather.

In 2015 another rural eastern NC town laid the groundwork for the establishment of Luddism as civic policy. Woodland also banned new solar arrays on the basis of this testimony:
Jane Mann said she is a local native and is concerned about the plants that make the community beautiful. 
She is a retired Northampton science teacher and is concerned that photosynthesis, which depends upon sunlight, would not happen and would keep the plants from growing. She said she has observed areas near solar panels where the plants are brown and dead because they did not get enough sunlight. 
She also questioned the high number of cancer deaths in the area, saying no one could tell her that solar panels didn’t cause cancer. 
“I want to know what’s going to happen,” she said. “I want information. Enough is enough. I don’t see the profit for the town. 
Bobby Mann said he watched communities dry up when I-95 came along and warned that would happen to Woodland because of the solar farms. 
“You’re killing your town,” he said. “All the young people are going to move out.”  
He said the solar farms would suck up all the energy from the sun and businesses would not come to Woodland.
Local government does not, however, have any similar power to ban fracking. The Republicans in Raleigh have their thumb on that one.


1 comment:

  1. Alas, if only solar energy were an infinite resource, like fossil fuels ...

    ReplyDelete