By Samuel Strait, Reporter at Large – October 5, 2021

Seems like now the Harbor Commission has a solar installation limping
along in the harbor, every crack pot energy idea is fair game to
consider rather than a functioning harbor and its facilities.  With
hundreds of millions of dollars in past due deferred maintenance hanging
over its head, dredging issues, and substantial debt, the harbor’s
latest “brain fart” is to plunge into off shore wind farms.  How
lovely.  Most folks would assume that went by the way side with Don
Quixote’s epic failure, tilting at windmills.  Apparently the local
harbor commission is unaware of the colossal failure of a land based
wind farm just a few miles up the coast.

Like most liberal/progressive “good Ideas” very seldom is the likelihood
of it being cost effective nor feasible before expending tax dollars to
“investigate” the possibilities nor learn from past attempts at similar
projects.  It normally takes the route of willy nilly spending, without
any consideration of whether it benefits anyone until all that is left
is the broken remnants of a field of rusting, broken down wind
generators.  And that project was not twenty five miles off the coast in
the primordial soup of the Pacific Ocean.

True there are wind farms that produce some electricity.  In the United
States it represents a minuscule percentage of all power produced and
occupies a great deal of arable land.   They have been found to be
harmful to some birds, and are considered a visual blight.  In the Ocean
they represent an obstruction to navigation.  All that is well and good,
but maintenance is the biggest issue, particularly in an ocean setting.
Of course none of that seems to have hindered the Harbor Commission’s
Brian Stone and Wes White into deluding themselves that it was something
to be considered.

As was pointed out earlier in this piece, it is not as if the harbor
commission does not have more pressing issues to solve, let alone have
millions of dollars to spend on wind farms.  Now that a large collection
of government alphabet soup agencies and the natural drifting of non
profits towards a collective of wasteful spending, what more can the
liberal/progressive mind set orgasm over.  Insufficient electrical
distribution network costing billions to upgrade, requirements the
harbor would need to upgrade to service the wind farm, and the wind farm
itself, a Governor Newsom “wet dream”.  Billions of dollars in new
spending, and a plethora of “new” jobs is the promise.  “Someone” else
will come along with the cash to fund the whole thing.  It won’t cost a
single penny for the local population.  What could possibly go wrong?

As with most things that sound too good to be true, the Harbor
Commission’s Brian Stone is a wide eyed dreamer.  Along with his
compatriot, Wes White, rational minds are not in charge at the harbor.  
Perhaps balancing the budget, fixing a few of the many maintenance
issues and a bit of dredging should come before any consideration of
offshore Quixote style windmills.