Trustees' Mistaken Trajectory

The East Hampton Town Trustees have come dangerously close in recent months to becoming entirely co-opted by the anti-wind power crowd. This has led them to inappropriately take on a role on the South Fork Wind Farm project over which they have minimal say and which runs the risk of their otherwise looking past their specific responsibilities.

The trustees’ intentions came from the right place; first and foremost they see themselves as upholders of traditional, mostly commercial fishing activities. This is, of course, a historical simplification, as their purview is to serve as caretakers of certain common lands and natural resources for all East Hampton residents. 

Certainly there are concerns about the placement of the Deepwater Wind company’s turbines and whether a power cable might interfere with dragger nets and other gear, but the trustees are getting very close to two-layer tinfoil hat territory in trying to extort unrelated high-dollar concessions from the company in exchange for permission to route the cable under the beach at Wainscott. The company has said that if the trustees make things too difficult it simply will seek to bring the line ashore on state property or on town land outside trustee jurisdiction. 

Alarming, too, is the fact that the trustees have become so tied in knots on this that they held an illegal closed-door session to go over their response, fearing they might be sued. The state open meetings law does not allow for so-called executive sessions, from which the public is excluded, on only a vague anxiety that maybe there could be, might be, litigation. If that were the case, no government business would ever get done in public. 

If anything, the trustees should be trying to make alternative energy easier, not more difficult. As stewards of much of the town’s critical wetlands, they should be concerned about the effect of climate change on sea level rise and shorelines, as well as marine acidification, both linked to soaring carbon dioxide emissions. Wind power is an essential part of a more climate-sensitive future, and the trustees should understand this. There also is an implicit responsibility to the rest of earth’s inhabitants; East Hampton should be generous enough to try to make even an incremental difference on a global scale. The trustees can and should be part of that.