Tilt at Windmills in Wainscott

a letter to the editor of the East Hampton Star

August 18, 2020

Dear David,

What drives the Citizens for the Preservation of Wainscott on their Quixotic quest, and to tilt at windmills? The proposed wind turbines off Montauk will be 50 miles from Wainscott Beach; they will not be visible from Beach Lane. The proposed transmission cable will be six feet under the road at Beach Lane; it will not be visible. The underground concrete vaults that they fear so much are constructed of the same concrete of every basement of every house on Beach Lane; and they will not be visible.

The electricity from the wind turbines will provide power to 70,000 homes. How much diesel and gas would it take to produce that much electricity? If C.P.W. succeeds in their ill-conceived plan, they will deprive us on the East End of cleaner air and a cleaner ocean. Why are they doing this?

The water temperatures in the mid-Atlantic are as high as they have ever been. Death Valley, which is always hot, reached 130 degrees the other day. World temperatures for each decade over the past 50 years have been higher than in the previous decade. And yet C.P.W. keeps fighting against a cable that would be six feet under the road, 30 feet under the beach, and out of sight. (By the way, eight-and-a-half miles of water mains installed last year in Wainscott are six feet under our roads.)

By the end of Cervantes’s masterpiece, Don Quixote’s wits have returned and he is once again, “Quixano the Good.” I hope the same for Citizens for the Preservation of Wainscott.

Michael Hansen
Wainscott, NY