Our Motto: If It Makes Sense, Don’t Allow It

Whoever runs the state Department of Environmental Protection must have called a staff meeting a short time ago. Perhaps by sharing fresh bagels and a pot of coffee the folks from all divisions chatted and learned what the other offices (cubicles?) were doing.
This meeting must have taken place as discussions outside the office talked about what to do before the great Garden State falls even deeper into a quagmire over energy.
Aren’t we foolish? We thought that wind turbines made more sense than using more oil or other fossil fuel. People are scouring the world to find innovative energy technologies, and our very own Garden State Department of Environmental Protection seems to find glee in throwing a “no” vote on such projects.
A source, who sports a bumper sticker “Piping Plover Tastes Like Chicken” leaked a copy of that meeting’s agenda to the Herald. Read last week’s edition once more, and see if the department is operating under the below agenda, especially in regard to wind turbines to power Cape May’s desalination plant.
Agenda for today’s meeting: Energy (Renewable)
Our motto: If it makes sense, don’t allow it.
1. Update on state’s Energy Master Plan, overview.
2. How best to stymie No. 1. What can we do?
3. Discuss alternative renewable energy and employment opportunities. (Jobs? What effect will they have on Unemployment numbers?)
4. What must be done to obliterate No. 1? (Come on, there must be something bad about this plan, let’s bring it up. Talk it up, folks.)
5. Offshore wind farm proposals offer a viable means of power production to meet mandates of No. 1.
6. Discuss migratory bird patterns.
7. What can be done to obfuscate No. 5? These things can’t be all good, there has to be a dark side to them. Let’s find out what it is.
8. Overview of proposals by groups, especially one based in Cape May known as Fishermen’s Energy of New Jersey, to operate wind turbines IAW Nos. 1 and 5.
9. Discuss implications of commercial fishermen operating company mentioned in No. 8. Injurious to the eco-systems offshore? Airborne? (Bring up some good ones, guys, this is why we get the big bucks.)
10. Have Fish and Wildlife discuss ill effects of wind turbines on-shore. (Blades kill birds. Turbines make bad neighbors for fish. Would you want your daughter/son to marry someone with a wind turbine in the backyard?)
11. Discuss how best to have Fish and Wildlife effectuate a drive to thwart on-shore wind turbines. (i.e. Cape May is trying to “go green” building a wind turbine to power its desalination plant.) This CANNOT be allowed to happen.
12. Thought: Embark on campaign to convince public no tall wind turbines should be allowed SOUTH of Seven Mile Beach (isn’t that where we have Piping Plover colonies). Let’s show how wind turbines, even there, WILL harm the plovers.
13. Identify something bad about solar panels. (Don’t their reflections cause glare that throws birds off course? Don’t panels cause scalding if used improperly?)
Is it any wonder the younger generation is confused? On one hand, we purport to seek ways to get out from under the oppression of oil cartels. We have brilliant local people, like Daniel Cohen and his partners, who want to place wind turbines offshore to generate “green” electricity. Do they want to make money? Sure they do. That’s the American way, when was that bad? It’s a great idea, and I hope they prevail through the head winds of government bureaucrats.
We have others, like the Cape May Energy Committee that seek to place a wind turbine (s) to power the municipal desalination plant. It’s another terrific idea, one that should be embraced as trend setting. Other towns should look at Cape May, use it as an example and point to the environmentally-friendly manner in which it powers its water source.
Would it not make sense that our state government, the one advocating renewable energy, would make Cape May a shining example of what municipalities can do to help the nation become energy efficient? Of course it would.
Then how does the state respond to the Cape May idea?
According to reporter Jack Fichter’s story on page A-8 July 30, the state Division of Fish and Wildlife, a part of the state’s illustrious D.E.P., wants to prevent tall wind turbines from being built in any location south of Stone Harbor.
Why? In order to protect migratory birds and bats.
I’ll bet you thought I was joking about that agenda. Keep on laughing.
If I were younger, I’d scratch my head and ask myself why I was toying with the notion of making my home in New Jersey. With such progressive state government thinking as that, I’d reason, “Last guy out, turn off the (battery-operated) lights.”
It’s like those old carnival hawkers yelled, “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet, folks.”