The Story of NIMBY

It's about time we had a honest discussion about energy. Join the conversation below.

Comments

[Robert Godfrey]

I had numerous email exchanges with your staff where I provided, and after considerable effort on my part your staff had included (and thanked me for), extensive information regarding the Quoddy Bay LNG project in Maine. Then, after supplying information regarding Downeast LNG, your staff abruptly emailed me that the developer information was correct, contrary to the incontrovertible evidence I provided -- and that any further communications should be by posting to the developer-page comments.

I went to your pages and found the comments feature absent. I emailed your staff regarding this absence. My emails were ignored, in that the courtesy of a reply was not made, even when a workaround was made available. That indicates a reluctance by the US Chamber to receive my information.

I only happened by accident upon your "Comment Error" notice when revisiting the site. I recommend moving the notice to just above the Comment section on each page, to make it more apparent to users.

I expected a more businesslike exchange from the US Chamber of Commerce, more like I originally experienced than has occurred of late.

[ChamberPost]

Mr. Godfrey -- We had opened the ticket and posted notification of the work-around prior to your post. You didn't see it, that's ok, we didn't accuse you of anything. Also, we did not ignore your email, on the contrary we took action on it. (BP)

[Robert Godfrey]

Had the Chamber actually submitted a problem ticket with Typepad prior to my post, and had the Chamber not ignored my email when I reported the problem several times, I would not have made the post.

The US Chamber's refusal to communicate with me by email -- even though it had previously been willing to do so -- demonstrates the organization's lack of interest in open exchange of information.

The US Chamber has done itself a disservice.

[ChamberPost]

Mr. Godfrey -- We are not protecting any pages and have a ticket open with Typepad on this problem, we have provided a work around which is detailed in the Comment Error note -- in the upper left of each page. -- BP

[Robert Godfrey]

The US Chamber omits Comment Forms from several Project pages (Downeast LNG and Calais LNG in Maine, for instance), even though I have pointed this out several times in emails.

Why is the US Chamber "protecting" those projects from wider points of view beyond its own?

[Robert Godfrey]

The US Chamber of Commerce inappropriately paints all opposition to all development projects with the NIMBY brush.

In the case of liquefied natural gas (LNG) development in Passamaquoddy Bay (Maine and New Brunswick), the LNG industry's own best practices indicate the proposed sitings are inadvisable, putting the industry at risk. Federal permitting agencies (FERC and the US Coast Guard) cast aside these best practices in favor of inappropriate developer decisions, rationalizing that best practices are not law.

See LNG Terminal Siting Standards Organization...
http://www.LNGTSS.org/
...for an abbreviated list of LNG terminal siting best practices.

See Save Passamaquoddy Bay 3-Nation Alliance...
http://www.SavePassamaquoddyBay.org/
...for more about proposed inappropriate LNG development in Passamaquoddy Bay.

See Society of International Gas Tanker and Terminal Operators (SIGTTO)...
http://www.SIGTTO.org/
...for more regarding the organization that represents the over 95% of the world LNG industry and promulgates the industry's best practices.

[John Caulk]

With all due respect Monika, the sun is our most abundant energy resource, right?

Now, to follow the rest of your statement, I agree in principle that getting energy from foreign sources is not sound fiscal, social or environmental policy. Neither, though, is conceding that simply because we have coal, we should use it. By analogy, we also have people that we could theoretically use as energy sources (as had been done in this country), but thankfully slavery was outlawed a very long time ago. Producing "cleaner", domestic electricity from coal (as you call it) is justified only because we have coal and know how to produce electricity with it, right?

I want to believe that one of your reasons for promoting prolonging the use of coal as an energy source is to attempt to have many people in the coal industry gainfully employed. If so, I applaud your selflessness and compassion. You could not argue, however, that that industry has even a short-term reliable future, given the finite quantity of available coal, the associated pollution during its processing and the technology's increasingly higher operating costs, not to mention the growing opposition to this technology.

Luckily, those workers have a viable (and, I believe, better) alternative. Some use to call it "American ingenuity", though I imagine this quality is more universal. One of the greatest tools available to us is the ability to recognize transferable skills and bases of knowledge. It would follow then, wouldn't it, that it is very likely that everyone involved with the coal industry in the U.S. already has the skills to be a productive contributor to industries that are safer, healthier and more reliable, such as solar power, geothermal and wind energy. Additionally, there are opportunities in energy conservation technologies and organizations. It appears to me that the federal government (with the possible aberrant exception of the commerce department), hundreds of state and local governments and, most importantly, the majority of U.S. citizens/residents support the rapid development of these "true" green technologies as well as energy and resource conservation practices. Monika, did you not get the memo?

With respect to credibility, I think it would be helpful to the readers of this blog to know who you are, in so far as, who/what "interests" you represent. When I followed YOUR suggestion and investigated factuality.org, I found that it is clearly stated on its homepage that it and its sister group, AmericasPower.org, "is sponsored by the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), which is a partnership of the industries involved in producing electricity from coal." This is a direct quote from that page. I respect that you have a "particular" point of view. I hope that you are more open and forthcoming in your future statements and endeavors.

I , on the other hand, renovate houses and do not represent, nor have significant assets to support, any powerful "interests".

[Monica]

One thing many Americans don’t realize is how important domestic energy is to our country’s economic recovery and overall security. Currently, half of our electricity comes from coal—which happens to be our most abundant fuel resource. In fact, we recently kicked off the America’s Power Factuality Tour—a country-wide road trip in search of the people, places and technologies involved in producing cleaner, domestic electricity from coal. We started in Wright, Wyo., at the Powder River Basin, which produces more coal than any other site in the U.S. Take the tour for yourself and see our most abundant domestic fuel at work. factuality.org

[Lawrence Turner]

I would like the funders of this project - Project No Project - to identify where they live. If they do not live within 2 miles and downwind of a coal burning plant then before they can complain anymore about the NIMBY's they need to move next to a coal burning plant or a biomass plant. Once they have lived there for 6 months then they have the right to continue in the vein under which this web site was started.

[Mike Graham]

NIMBY = Nobody's Into Manipulating Belgian Yo-Yo's

By the way, I'm on my 5th beer now, and the sun is still getting closer. Feels warmer, for sure.

NIMBY = Nice Internet, Maybe Bring Yo-mama!

email me: kissmycod@bigrodpie.net

[John Caulk]

Energy efficiency, geothermal energy, solar energy, wind energy, biomass energy and co-generation are the "green" fields to explore, right?

Not one of the projects in my state (Pennsylvania) that are listed on this site (to date) are what I would consider a green project. Let me say that again; NOT ONE! There are coal projects, ethanol projects and large-scale (interstate) electric power line projects.

If asked to, I will post references for the following later:

This first one is easy... The production of energy from coal is extremely costly and inefficient to make "clean" (-er) energy from. In my opinion, these projects throw good money after bad, utilize a diminishing resource at best and, of course, continue to pollute anyway. It's like saying that it would be health(ier) to smoke if the tobacco was organic and was rolled in chlorine-free bleached paper. C'mon, we can do better than that... Is an argument against coal-produced energy really necessary?

Ethanol, most commonly produced from corn (as it is in the Pennsylvania project that disclosed this information), produces only 20% less greenhouse gas emissions than the gasoline it's supposed to be offsetting. Currently, it can only be used with gasoline at a maximum 10% mixture. Theoretically, it could be made from other plants, but only with a far smaller resource-to-fuel ratio (which is why worldwide it is overwhelmingly manufactured from corn and cane sugar- That's where the energy is). To put this in perspective, if ALL of the U.S corn production was diverted to ethanol production, only 12% of the country's gasoline consumption would be displaced. Simply making new "farms" for ethanol crops would inevitably increase deforestation, water scarcity and run-off problems.

When transmitting electricity from one place to another, typically more than 7% is lost. Concerns have been raised about the dangers of exposure to EMFs from transmission lines, though these are commonly regarded as non-conclusive, to date (and many birds seem to love them). Therefore, I believe the focus here should not be on transmitting electricity farther away from it's source, but rather on developing solar and wind turbine sources closer to where the energy is intended to be used.

Most importantly, even for Pennsylvanians, as Amory Lovins showed us more than 30 years ago, we can get far more energy by not wasting it than by producing more of it. It's not necessary to shiver during the winter, but rather only to change our habits: If a ship is filling up with water, we need not more-furiously bail out the water, but instead find the hole and fix it.

Finally, since I've been given the opportunity, here's my quip- NIMBY is a term of pejorative assumption about people that infers that they are selfish and parochial rather than knowledgeable, courageous, ethical and compassionate. Do the families of polluting business owners live near their factories?...

[Lee Barron]

You missed the wind energy project in Florida! Governor Crist decreed that some magical percentage of Florida's energy would be from renewable resources by a certain date. (I don't remember the percantage or the date.) Florida Power and Light saw the writing on the wall and wanted to install several experimental windmills at its nuclear powerplant and adjacent public lands in St. Lucie County. This ignited a firestorm of controversy, and junk science and experts were popping up everywhere. The River Idiot (as in the River Keeper Orginazation)tried to convince us that vibrations from the windmills would disrupt fish spawning, bird life and so on. I had difficulty understanding why so many opinion letters in the local paper kept beating FPL. Since this is clearly another case of "I am from the government and I am here to help you", FPL was only responding to a governmental mandate. As far as I know, this entire project is DOA.

[mark carroll]

A nice angry,inflammatory video. Your whole argument goes away if you inject the term responsible energy. It's not that people don't want green, clean energy of course we all do but it has to get done honestly and responsibly with no more collateral damage or profiteering by L.L.C.'s under the banner of the good of the people in a frantic race for carbon credits and old loophole tax incentives. Responsibility is where it's at in America. Wake Up!!!!

[Josh Kealoha]

Why does the State of Hawaii not appear on the roster of states? Hawaii excels in stopping projects. An Imperium biofuel power plant on Oahu faces opposition in a PUC docket. An island-island SuperFerry was just chased out of state by the Hawaii Supreme Court. Is the Hawaii CoC covering up? Let's get Hawaii's story in the mix here!

[DY/DX]

More Al Gore propaganda. When will the American public FINALLY realize the the whole global warming/green movement was POLICTICAL. There is no consensus among scientists, over 30,000 just in this petition (www.petitionproject.org), and many others also disagree. STOP all superfluous alternative energy - it does not work.

[lee]

In Columbia, Maryland, NIMBY is a strong feeling that the community does not need urban =style growth and more traffic. This is a perfectly honest view of long term residents accustomed to a reknown planned community.

It is foolish to use NIMBY as a label of radical aggression all the time. These are basically quiet neighbors not passionate organized anti-nukes

I personally favor the development and chair the downtown community village board where it all takes place. Strategy is to keep the plusses out front in the debate

[Michael Stuart]

The "states list" on the side should include Maryland, since they are well on their way towards licensing Calvert Cliffs Unit 3. This project enjoys a lot of local support from citizens and government, and of course draws the fire of all the usual anti-nuclear suspects (e.g., Greenpeace, Sierra Club, NIRS, Public Citizen).

[Guillem López]

To those interested in the NIMBY Syndrome, you will be able to very soon the first World NIMBY Experts Directory (www.nimbyexperts.com). It will bring together a huge variety of professoinals; from real estate professionals to political consultants, public affairs experts, mediators, government officials, attorneys, architects, researchers, etc.
A lot of professionals from all over the World have already registered to be part of this directory. Now you can do the same by visiting owr site.
Owr goal: Get a complete and multidisciplinary sight of this social phenomenon!
Jump in now!
www.nimbyexperts.com

[Ben Kelahan]

The NIMBY phenomenon and impact can be sliced a million different ways, and both the developers of projects and opposition can share the blame. In addition, the politicization of the development process is also a reason NIMBY interests are so effective - elected officials fear the political impact NIMBY activists can have when they're next up for election using votes on those projects as the source of their pain.

On the development side, applicants for intense land uses don't do nearly enough early in the process to gain trust in the communities that they are about to change. Trust leads to sharing information that will too be trusted and taken more at face value, rather than discounted as financially-motivated public relations spin looking for a local "yes" vote on a project.

On the opposition side, passion rules, and that's not a bad thing. It is easily transferred into civic engagement and political action, but can at times lead to local decision-makers casting votes based too much on sensational rumors and not fact-based science and planning, resulting in a loss of jobs, economic development and renewable energy that communities also need, especially now.

In that respect, each side can borrow something from the other. Opposition based on NIMBY impacts needs to take a bit more time assessing the broader value of these projects based on diverse sources of information, and once in a while, say "yes" to a good project based on the facts. It provides more credibility on the projects that they find are a net negative on their communities and are a significantly harmful to their communities.

On the development side, the approach needs to change in terms of information, activism and organizing. Selling your energy project for instance by an over-focus on "just the facts" ignores the passions of people who legitimately are emotionally attached to their neighborhoods and towns as they are today. Remembering that "they vote, you don't" in town is important. In the end, voters go to the polls based on emotional trigger issues, not necessarily spreadsheets with the facts. Likewise, local project decisions are made by elected officials more often than not based on the former, not the latter.

[JD]

Here's the issue. NIMBYism is a destructive force. However, so is inappropriately located development (whether residential, commercial, or industrial). We need new investment in our communities, but what we don't need is sprawl and rural powerlines through national parks and across the Chesapeake Bay (see MAPP project in Maryland). That's just stupid. Period.

With infrastructure transmission, lets work within existing corridors. With development, we all have to deal with our communities growing and changing, and simultaneously we should all invest in the preservation of natural beauty and agricultural heritage. That, my friends, is not NIMBYism. I live in an urban area with thousands of acres of vacant suburban and urban land. BUILD THERE. Bring on the people, their money, and (unfortunately) their cars. Don't put them out on the fringes.

[Errwigger]

Aren't many local Chambers "NIMBY", since they know the actual adverse impacts such industrial development would have on their communities?

http://www.wind-watch.org/news/?s=chamber+of+commerce

[Dan W.]

>>What can/should the Congress or the Administration do to address the problems outlined by the stories on this website?

Give more power to the people who's back yards will contain these facilities, that's what to do. Don't let the Federal government override state siting authority, as is currently proposed. Treat landowners as partners who can profit together in these ventures, rather than an obstacle to be overcome and a sacrificial offering to be made for the greater good, and you will find a lot more cooperation.

Let me tell you my story. And for those on this thread hurling vitriol at NIMBYs, read it and ask yourself, what would you do if in my shoes? Am I merely a pawn in the scheme of some power-hungry opposition group? I think not.

I recently fulfilled a dream of mine: moving back to the farm of my youth to raise my own family there. When you grow up on the land, it becomes a part of you that you can never shake off. No sooner than having done so, however, we heard rumblings of the CapX2020 345kv transmission project (see "Minnesota" link on the left). Sure enough, now that the route app is in, it's set to go right past my house. I wasn't worried, however, because I (mistakenly) thought I, as the landowner, would have some control over where exactly it goes on my property. I've since learned, however, that while I can certainly provide input into the state routing process, once the app is okayed I really have no real power over where the utility wants to put it - they can either listen to me or not. The choice the utility has is either putting it my open field across the road, or in my yard. I of course choose the field, and early indications are that the utility may too, but they still want the flexibility of changing their mind. Please understand that placing it in my yard is, in effect, forcing me off my property. We're talking the removal of over a hundred trees, and more importantly, with the uncertainty regarding EMFs, I simply can't take the risk with my young children. It angers me that they would even consider that as a viable option.

Let me be clear: if the line is truly needed, I am not opposed to it crossing my property, and neither are most of the people along the route I've talked to. We only ask three things:
1) That the facility be truly needed - and not be just a way for a company to make more money
2) That we have some real say in where it goes on our property, because we're the ones who are going to have to live with the consequences
3) That we are treated as a partner in this venture. The guys with wind turbines on their property get a yearly payment; why shouldn't we with the transmission get something similar? We're equally important in the scheme of things. Yet we're told: "if you don't cooperate, we'll take your land anyway."

In my situation, number 1 may well be satisfied; we lie betwen a wind-rich area and the Twin Cities metro area. But numbers 2 & 3 are, in my opinion, not fulfilled. I resent the fact that I am at risk of losing everything important to me (except my family) and will have no control over it, even though there are perfectly acceptable options that wouldn't require that sacrifice; And "Fair market value" is no consolation - nothing will ever replace the land where I was raised. Utilities: please don't steamroll my family in search of your profit. Look: the question isn't *whether* we should stimulate new green energy jobs; it's how we should go about it the right way so that it betters *everyone* (not just some people).

And one more comment before I sign off. I definitely appreciate the ability to sound off on this forum. But I do resent the fact that this site is clearly designed to demonize people like me. C'mon people, have a heart! What do you expect people to do when something near and dear to them is threatened by a larger, more powerful group that stands to profit off our misfortune? Must our society be built upon the cannibalization of the weak and powerless by the strong and powerful? There has to be a better way...

[Patrick Slevin]

A new chapter of NIMBYism in America is currently begin written. Check out the NIMBY America Newsletter sponsored by NIMBY expert and author Patrick Slevin. Go to www.SlevinGroup.com for more information.

[Ross Eisenberg, USCC]

To all who have posted:

On behalf of the U.S. Chamber, thank you for your responses. Please keep the discussion going. We created this website to try to bring national attention to a very difficult issue, and from the looks of the comments thus far, we have certainly struck a nerve.

I urge everyone using the site to post links to projects or stories we may have missed. For those who have done so already, thank you for your input. We are researching these projects and will upload them to the site soon.

Finally, for purposes of keeping the discussion going, I'd like to throw an additional question into the mix: What can/should the Congress or the Administration do to address the problems outlined by the stories on this website?

[ChamberPost]

Deb - "solar, wind, wave, geothermal energy and green building/remodeling" Yes. That is sort of the point here.