Wednesday, May 3, 2023

Those interned in WWII Japanese camp and their descendants resist Idaho wind farm proposed on the site

Dino Grandoni reports for the Washington Post today from Jerome County, Idaho (population 22,374) where wind farm developers and Biden's push for renewable energy have run into opposition from a group seeking to preserve the Minidoka Historic Site, where Japanese-Americans were incarcerated during World War II. 

Across the country, wind developers are generating a new wave of not-in-my-backyard opposition that threatens to stall those climate goals: from homeowners concerned about ruined views; lobstermen worried about fishing among titanic turbines; nature lovers alarmed about impacts on whales and birds and even U.S. military planners fretting about naval operations.

“The constraint isn’t the resource itself,” said John Hensley, vice president of research and analytics for the American Clean Power Association, a wind and solar industry group. “It’s the ability to site projects in different parts of the country and then to interconnect those projects with the rest of the grid.”

For many Japanese Americans, the proposed wind farm threatens to scour memories of deep suffering for the benefit of commercial interests.
Grandoni quotes Robyn Achilles, executive director of Friends of Minidoka, a nonprofit that supports the Minidoka Historic Site which lies within the former incarceration camp:  
You wouldn’t build a huge wind project over another concentration camp, or Gettysburg, or the Washington Monument... It really is a somber location.

He also quotes Janet Matsuoka Keegan, a descendant of incarcerees who opposes the project. 

I understand the climate crisis [but Biden's renewable energy push is] not well thought-out.

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