||| FROM KING-TV NEWS |||
Locals on Decatur Island in the San Juans worry a sizable chunk of their island is being sacrificed for green energy and are pushing back against a proposed solar grid expansion.
Decatur Island, located due west of Anacortes, is just 3.5 square miles.
Like most people on Decatur Island, Ramy Tipton appreciates the simple life. Only about 70 people live on the island, year round. There is a one-room schoolhouse. There are no paved roads and a small water truck acts as the fire department.
“We feel like we’re in the womb of mother nature here,” said Tipton.
But that simple life isn’t quite so simple anymore.
“Well things certainly get complicated,” said Tipton.
Seven years ago the local power company, OPALCO, installed a 3.5-acre solar grid. For the most part, everyone was fine with it. Then came word about phase two: Twenty more acres of solar panels along the one main road that runs through the community, in the middle of an island that’s only 2,200 acres to begin with.
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I really don’t understand why some Decatur residents don’t like this idea. Is it because solar panels might occupy 1% of the total land on the island? Do some of them live by the proposed site, and don’t want to see them “in their backyard,” so to speak? Perhaps they are opposed to the concept of local, green energy production and hope that the mainland will always meet our ever-growing energy demand in San Juan County, and on their island? Sure, Orcas and San Juan islands are larger, does that mean they believe that there are large tracts of available land here for a 20 acre solar installation? Perhaps the logical approach might be for OPALCO to stop promoting use of heat pumps, electric vehicles and other sources of increased demand for electricity, and just forget the solar panels, tidal power, and other alternative energy sources and just keep burning wood, oil, gasoline and propane?