Support Uneven for Establishing Energy District

By IAN FEIN

Edgartown selectmen are poised to play spoiler in an Islandwide
effort to put an energy conservation proposal before Vineyard voters
this spring.

At their meeting last week, the selectmen all but announced that
they would not place on the annual town meeting warrant a proposed
article that would start the process of creating an Islandwide energy
conservation district of critical planning concern (DCPC).

At the time, selectmen cited the need for a public hearing, and said
they had forwarded the concept on to town land use boards for
consideration.

The Edgartown planning board, however, sent a letter back to
selectmen this week, saying they support the proposal and recommending
that selectmen add the article to the April town meeting warrant. The
board further noted that it will hold a public hearing on the energy
DCPC concept on March 6.

The regional initiative also received a strong consensus of approval
last week from members of a work group examining energy issues for the
Island Plan, a comprehensive planning effort underway at the
Martha's Vineyard Commission. The group is composed of about a
dozen Island residents, a number of whom are from Edgartown. At least
two Edgartown members said this week they were disappointed that their
selectmen will not allow voters a chance to discuss the concept this
spring.

Work group member Paul Pimentel of Edgartown said he would have
circulated a citizen's petition to get the article on the town
meeting warrant, had he known that selectmen would balk on the issue.

"We as a town should absolutely be talking about this at town
meeting," said Mr. Pimentel, who has spent his entire career
working in the energy field. "It is an item of critical and timely
importance, and it is something that I think represents a long-term
interest for town. If we don't start to address this, our energy
costs are going to go out of sight."

The purpose of the energy overlay district would be to lower
Vineyard carbon emissions and foster energy independence by regulating
consumption and promoting sources of renewable energy. The district
designation allows Island towns - through the enabling legislation
of the Martha's Vineyard Commission – to adopt land use
regulations that otherwise would not be permitted under state law.
Though no regulations are on the table at this time, some examples of
possible steps would be adopting a more efficient building code and
requiring solar panels or wind turbines on homes over a certain size.

In a telephone interview this week, Edgartown selectman Margaret
Serpa would not share her personal opinion of the DCPC concept. She
repeatedly said that, even given the planning board recommendation, she
did not know whether the article would make it onto the warrant.

Selectman Arthur Smadbeck, sharing the concern of a number of Island
selectmen who warn that the concept is too vague to merit consideration
at this time, said he would not vote to put the energy proposal before
voters this spring.

Because the energy DCPC would be the first of its kind - both
on the Island and in the commonwealth - a number of procedural and
legal questions have been raised, many of which remain unanswered.

"I'd like to know at the end of the day how much
electricity we are going to reduce, and how much it is going to cost to
do that. At this point, I don't even think the proper questions
have been framed yet," Mr. Smadbeck said yesterday.

"Before doing anything and going off half-cocked, we have to
know the costs, so we can present something that makes sense," he
said. "You just can't ask people to vote for a pig in
poke."

Selectmen chairman Michael Donaroma was off-Island and not available
for comment.

While the energy DCPC article has made it onto town meeting warrants
in Aquinnah, Tisbury and West Tisbury, selectmen in Oak Bluffs and
Chilmark have not yet decided whether they will allow voters to discuss
the issue this spring. Chilmark selectmen are exploring whether they can
pursue energy tax credits on the town level, as opposed to joining the
Islandwide initiative, and Oak Bluffs selectmen will discuss the energy
district next week.

The Vineyard DCPC proposal comes as public awareness about climate
change is reaching an all-time high. The lack of support from Island
selectmen stands in stark contrast to a growing consensus among
political leaders elsewhere that immediate action must be taken to
address the energy issue.

A landmark report released last Friday by an international panel of
scientists declared for the first time that global warming was
"unequivocal," and that human activity was more than 90 per
cent certain to be the primary cause.

The panel, made up of hundreds of scientists convened by the United
Nations and widely accepted as the authoritative voice on climate
change, found that effects of climate change are already evident across
the globe, and that extreme events - such as heat waves and heavy
precipitation - are very likely to continue and become more
frequent in the decades ahead.

The release of the report was heralded by many as bringing an end to
the debate about global warming. Even top officials in the Bush
administration, who long avoided declarative statements on the topic,
now refer to climate change as fact.

But not some of the political leaders on Martha's Vineyard.

Mrs. Serpa this week refused to answer a question about whether she
believed in climate change, while Mr. Smadbeck and Chilmark board of
selectmen chairman J.B. Riggs Parker both said they did not feel capable
of stating a position on global warming one way or the other.

Aquinnah selectman James Newman, who circulated the energy DCPC
proposal among colleagues in mid-December, expressed frustration with
the reception it has received from other selectmen.

"I guess there is a lack of belief that there is a real
problem here," Mr. Newman said yesterday. "But we're
not crying wolf. Everything we've been saying has been
substantiated."

With ice caps melting due to increasing global temperatures, the
international panel report last week conservatively estimated a sea
level rise of seven to 23 inches by the end of the century, and
concluded that the oceans will continue to rise for at least 1,000
years. Widely published computer models put much of downtown Edgartown
and Katama underwater with three feet of sea level rise.

"Edgartown could be the next Atlantis," Mr. Newman said
this week. "I say that tongue in cheek, but it's a
reality."