NIMBY Is Not What It’s All About

This op-ed by James Dalton, president of the Otsego 2000 Board of Directors, appeared in the Freeman’s Journal/AllOtsego.com on April 27, 2023.

The movement toward carbon-free energy production and our local and regional participation in that movement is complicated. Climate change provides an unquestionable sense of urgency to the issue. While the long-term solutions will include evolving technologies, the current tools available for expanding clean energy production are solar and wind. New York State has made a commitment to dramatically expand energy production from these sources.

Where it gets complicated is how sites are chosen to develop large-scale solar and wind facilities and how the risk/benefit calculus is determined for the communities that host these sites. Climate justice suggests that the burden of paying for climate change should be proportionate to the contribution a group has made to the problem. This concept can be applied to communities which are asked to host industrial-scale solar or wind power projects. Those communities often do not consume high levels of energy—so the energy is transmitted to high consumption regions. That is the situation in which many upstate New York communities now find themselves.

Our neighbors to the north, in the towns of Columbia, Litchfield and Winfield, are engaged in a battle to stop the development of a massive industrial-scale solar energy facility. If completed as planned, the facility will encompass some 2,500+ acres of farmland and forest and will generate up to 250 MW of power, which will be sold by the developer, primarily to consumers outside the region at substantial profit.

The citizens of those towns have mounted a significant opposition to the project. Their group—Protect Columbia—has the support of a substantial majority of the citizens of Columbia. We at Otsego 2000 support Protect Columbia. Critics of the group label them as NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yard) and charge that they are unwilling to trade their viewshed for renewable energy production—a necessary component in the fight against climate change. We disagree—the issues are much more complicated and nuanced than that argument would suggest.

NIMBY is a convenient pejorative term used to marginalize and vilify those who oppose local development. It implies selfish and self-centered motivation and a world view that is constricted. The arguments made by Protect Columbia, on the contrary, are expansive and community-centric. Yes, they do argue that the beautiful landscape that is upstate New York will be destroyed, but it is not the landscape that belongs to each of them alone, but the landscape that belongs to us all. That is not a self-centered and constricted worldview.

Even more compelling, in our opinion, than the impact on the landscape is the issue of justice. New York State has instituted policy and passed well-intentioned legislation to expand the production of solar and wind energy. But the implementation of this policy has been expeditious rather than thoughtful. The decisions as to where to site these projects have been left to a newly created Office of Renewable Energy Siting, which in turn has employed developers to “help” them with the process. While lip service has been paid to involving the communities which will be impacted by the development, this involvement comes late in the process and the communities have no power to veto the decision of ORES.

The concept of “home rule” has been suspended for renewable energy development projects. Protect Columbia has argued that viable farmland will be taken out of service, food production will be threatened, wildlife habitat will be constricted, property values will diminish, and the tourism industry and economic viability of the region will be threatened. These are not NIMBY arguments. But in the end, they could be completely rejected in favor of the developers. This is not justice.

There are other options for solar and wind energy developers. Many thousands of acres of rooftops, parking lots and brownfields could be appropriate sites for renewable energy production. They would likely be more expensive to develop and might result in lower profits for the developers, but would be closer to the population centers where the energy is needed and would not result in the degradation of our rural communities.

Otsego 2000 supports Protect Columbia. Their argument in opposition to a 2,500+ acre solar facility in their towns is NOT NIMBY. It seems, instead, to be an argument that says, “Not in OUR backyard because it is not the right and just place for it.” What is happening in the towns of Columbia, Litchfield and Winfield is happening across New York State. It is coming to us in Otsego County as well. Let’s not be NIMBYs. But let’s demand justice for our communities.

James Dalton is president of Otsego 2000’s Board of Directors.