To the Editor:
At first glance, Ballot Question 4 looks like a good thing: a bond to help the environment. Who doesn’t want to protect the environment?
But the $53 million Ballot Question 4 is a “Green Bomb” and a bad deal for Rhode Island. It is a giveaway to foreign offshore wind developers, and it rewards the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management (RIDEM) with more money to mismanage our forests and harm our biodiversity.
Read the fine print and you’ll see you are being asked to approve millions of taxpayer dollars to subsidize offshore wind projects that damage our coastal waters, kill marine life and raise electricity prices.
This Green Bomb was always conceived as a big bowl of candy for offshore wind developers. Community advocates and conservation-minded state legislators objected, and supporters hastily inserted $13 million for state open space, agricultural land preservation and forest and habitat management – a mere 25% of the entire allocation.
Even this Potemkin change has flaws. Look closer, and you see that 40% of that money supports RIDEM’s misguided forestry management programs, which emphasize logging and likely clearcutting of state-owned old growth forests. This technique destroys biodiversity and produces habitats for species that don’t need it, like the tick-ridden white-tailed deer.
Despite this green fig leaf, WPRI reports that “the largest infusion of cash, $15 million, would be invested in Quonset Port. Gavin Black, the president of the R.I. Ports Coalition, said the money will be used to make infrastructure upgrades … Quonset needs to reinforce the piers and invest in its shoreside capacity to capture more offshore wind cargo.”
Translation: they want to use “green money” to turn Quonset Point into a private port for humongous, diesel-belching offshore wind vessels.
Everyone agrees that more vessels and more vessel trips lead to more collisions that kill whales, dolphins and sea turtles. Why make it easier to kill endangered species?
Revolution Wind wants to build a power substation on Quonset Point, but it had to delay construction for at least a year because of existing contamination there. Why add to it?
Why spend more public money for offshore wind when 20% of our current electric bill is already a direct charge to support it? Foreign wind developers are already receiving billions of dollars in federal tax credits and subsidies through the Green New Deal! Why give them more?
Ballot Question 4 is just not green enough to justify a $53 taxpayer giveaway to offshore wind. Question 4 is a bad deal for Rhode Island.
We ask you to please oppose Question 4 and tell the State Legislature we don’t want our coastal waters ruined by offshore wind developers or our forests destroyed by RIDEM’s misguided management.
Barbara Chapman
Newport, Rhode Island
Ms. Chapman is a long-time champion of protecting Rhode Island’s environmental bounty and riches.
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