If you are on San Juan island or can get to Friday Harbor tomorrow afternoon, May 30 at 1:30PM, please consider joining us in the County Council Meeting Hall at 55 Second Street!
Here’s why:
My small island community has been reeling from a meeting with our power cooperative Opalco a few weeks back regarding a test solar farm that the Opalco installed a few years ago on our main road in the middle of our island, and now their hastily made plans for expansion to service our entire island archipelago.
This affects the future of everyone in our archipelago county. Opalco currently plans to roll out solar farms throughout the islands to meet current and future power needs. Ours is their first of many planned.
Currently their expansion plan on Decatur requires clear cutting more of our public land forest, further impacting our rural island, our more-than-human neighbors and our downhill human neighbors with potential additional flooding and broken promises on top of what they’ve already endured from the first installation mistakes. None of my neighbors are against solar power. In fact most were and are excited to support the current solar farm installation.
However, that community meeting with Opalco helped us realize that we all need more time to evaluate and consider all the impacts on our small island, and the impacts of current and future power solutions for our aging current electrical system on our island and in our archipelago county.
Many of us are disappointed with our power “cooperative’s” lack of deep community involvement in exploring creative alternative power solutions outside of mainland expectations and solutions. Their dictates that we must act quickly or face rolling black outs are out of touch with our lived reality in a remote location.
Islanders know how to be self-sufficient, resilient and lend a helping hand to neighbors in need. Wood stoves, generators, our own solar arrays and well stocked pantries are just the start of the conversation. Together, I believe we can brainstorm even better solutions that have less impact on our blended communities of plants, animals and humans. But it takes time to have those conversations and take in all considerations. Slow and thoughtful Island Time - not fast and furious mainland time - is what’s needed here.
I believe that we can do better than what’s currently on offer by our power “cooperative:” mainland-style solar farm arrays. Clear cutting forests for solar farm arrays on our limited lands and rare natural habitats just doesn’t sit well with me. I believe we can work together to create an electrical power solution that doesn’t significantly impact our communities. Electrical power conservation, encouraging individual whole-house solar arrays, locating arrays in existing power line corridors - these are just a few proposed ideas I’ve heard from neighbors so far that are much more “islandy” than what we’ve been offered by Opalco.
After our community meeting with the power company earlier this month, a (literal) boatload of us travelled 2 islands over to meet with our county council to urge them to delay a decision to lease our only public land to the power company while our community continues to consider the situation and many possible alternative locations or solutions. They listened and did delay. The next council meeting was scheduled for Tuesday, June 3. Yet today we received word that the meeting has been moved to tomorrow, May 30.
We are heading over again to ask for clarity from the county as to why the meeting has been changed at the last minute, and to respectfully reiterate that we’d like to transparently continue to refine and negotiate other identified alternatives, both with the power company and with our neighbors on other islands.
If you live in the islands and are able to, please come to the county council meeting in Friday Harbor tomorrow, May 30 at 1:30pm in the County Council Meeting Hall at 55 Second Street! Please help us be heard! If you’re not in the islands, or cannot attend, emails to the council are also helpful. More information, talking points, and contact information can be found above. Thank you!