In the late 1800’s the population of Boston was exploding. The city’s water supply was so polluted it was actually causing typhoid epidemics.  When fires raged across the city officials found there was not enough water to douse them.  This need to dramatically increase the city’s supply of clean, safe water triggered a series of events the development of the largest artificial domestic water supply system in the world at the time.

Town of Enfield, MA -- circa 1880

The Quabbin Reservoir, located in central Massachusetts in the Swift River valley, was built in the 1930’s when over 2,500 people in the towns of Dana, Enfield, Greenwich, Prescott, and parts of seven other towns, were forced to abandon their towns.  Through a series of “buyouts” the inhabitants of these towns were tossed out of their homes in preparation for construction of a reservoir.  Houses were bulldozed, ancestors re-interred (except for Native Americans), factories demolished and millions of trees across over 56,000 acres were cut down.

The citizens of Dana, Enfield, Greenwich, and Prescott were hardly pleased to have their beloved towns completely destroyed. They pressed their case all the way to the Supreme Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.  But in the end, the urgent health and safety needs of the many out-weighed the sacrifices of the few. Flooding of the valley started in mid August 1939 and in 1946 the forty square mile reservoir was filled to capacity and named after a Native American chief of a local tribe, Nani-Quaben, meaning “well watered place.”

Today, we face an urgent demand similar to the one facing residents of eastern Massachusetts in the late 1800’s.  But the need today affects far more people, its causes are far more complex, and it impacts not just the residents of a single city or state but the nation as a whole: we must become energy-independent.

As a people Americans, have triumphed when faced with even more daunting tasks. While farmers fought in Washington’s continental army, women and children fabricated home-made musket balls and ground salt peter for gun powder.  The World War II generation fought two wars on opposite ends of the globe while at home gas, electricity, meat, and milk were heavily rationed to help feed the war effort.  During the 1950’s and 1960’s to combat the threat of the cold war farms were seized, homes removed, and towns split in half to make way for the federal highway system.

But even in the face of our current energy crisis some have organized, lobbied, and raised great sums of money to stop or delay the development of the very renewable energy generating facilities this nation desperately needs to become energy independent.  Opponents to wind farms have filed law suits, packed town hall meetings, and searched the Internet for data supporting their desire not to have a turbine in their back yard.  How do today’s arguments stack up against what the people of the Swift River valley faced?

• Community Impact:  The people of Dana, Enfield, Greenwich, and Prescott were told to move from their homes and dig up their ancestors.  They were told that their homes would be drowned forever beneath fifty feet of water stretching as far as the eye could see.  And they were told that houses they or their grandfather’s had built would be destroyed, shops that provided income to some and groceries to many would be demolished, the town hall where the community danced on Saturday night would be torn down, and the local church where many found peace on Sunday would be leveled.  Today, residents near proposed wind turbine sites are seldom if ever asked to move or demolish of a single structure.  Visual impact is confined to ‘flicker’ from a moving turbine blade passing quickly in front of the setting sun or the loss of a pristine skyline.  And no town as a whole has ever been told that their community would be completely destroyed to make way for a wind farm.
• Environmental Impact:  The Quabbin Reservoir required clear cutting tens of thousands of acres of trees and forever altering the watershed of the Swift River Valley.  A single turbine requires about ten acres of open space and many are sited where open space already exists; regulations require that turbines be sites far away from any surface water.  Even if torn down in twenty or fifty years time the lasting impact on the soil from a wind turbine foundation will be hardly recognizable compared to the scar of a ten thousand acre clear cut.
• Perpetual Impact:  For the people of the Swift River valley the Quabbin Reservoir meant the end.  There was no going back, no way to drain the valley sometime in the future and return to life as it has been since colonial times. Today, wind farms are projected to operate for 20-25 years; most projects have substantial cash reserves set aside for decommissioning and removal of non-performing equipment, and should the urgent need pass most wind turbines can be removed with little to no visible or lasting impact to the land.

Enfield, MA during construction of the Quabbin Resevoir. Town Hall can be seen in the foreground

Even oil industry experts agree that domestic off-shore drilling will not impact the retail supply of gasoline for another ten years, at best, and compared to our rate of consumption the domestic supply alone falls well short of our demand.  Our coal supplies are abundant and must continue to be tapped but the impact on our environment and the health of our fellow citizens is now unmistaken.  Nuclear power can be revived but the risks of catastrophic failure are immense and disposal of radioactive spent fuel rods remains a far greater concern to local communities than siting a wind turbine nearby.

But the United States does have abundant supply of wind and solar energy.  And just as the Swift River Valley in Massachusetts was ideally suited for the construction of a reservoir, there are certain places ideally suited to harnessing the wind and the sun.  If we delay construction of renewable facilities due the temporary reduction of oil and gas prices we will surely, quickly find ourselves playing ‘catchup’ to companies from other nations in an industry where the US has no reason not to lead.

Our national demand for energy independence clearly out-weighs the desire of a few town residents.  The cost to our nation in terms of wealth transferred overseas to oil producing countries is far more devastating than the cost of a few hundred acres of land carved out of our woods or seashore to generate clean energy.  And the sacrifices being asked of people who live in areas where renewable energy must be harvested pale in comparison to the sacrifices made by the 2,500 people of Dana, Enfield, Greenwich, and Prescott, MA.

A key element of this discussion is timing. When do we want to start making measurable progress towards energy independence? A Smart Grid will help us be more intelligent about how we use and conserve energy, but it is 10 years and billions of dollars away from mass-market implementation. Off-shore and remote wind farms that promise hundreds/thousands of megawatts of power are also 10 years and billions of dollars away. Only a distributed network of community-scale facilities will help reduce demand on an already over-taxed grid because it generates power where the demand is located. Homes, municipal building, commercial installations, and small utility-scale facilities can generate a large portion of our national demand without causing major upheaval from an environmental or visual impact – and many can be implemented in a short-period of time meeting the ‘shovel ready’ requirement for federal and/or state funding. FastCompany readers understand the analogy, the ‘old’ energy model of major plants run by regulated utilities with power distributed through a grid controlled by quasi governmental agencies is like the Government/conglomerate era mainframe computing; but when a distributed computing model came along and grew into what we now call the Internet the ‘power’ and value it released was orders of magnitude greater for individuals, companies, investors, and society. We must immediately focus federal dollars in the form of feed in tariffs, tax credits, and other incentives to building the ‘energy Internet’. We lost 8 years to an administration blind to science – we need bold action. We need to just BUILD BABY BUILD.

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