Monhegan for some part of the 20th century was powered by a cable to the mainland, since defunct. The Monhegan Plantation Power District warns of the challenges and impact of renewing such an Island to shore power link (along with accompaniments like high speed internet), though one can’t help but predict lower operating costs to operate the cable, compared to those of a Monhegan hill-sited wind turbine. While some Monheganites might call that cable relying on foreign energy, Likely not all would. The questions, too arise: it rebuilt, how much would it obstruct or annoy lobsters? Halibut? The lobstermen who fished the area when the old power cable was working, they would know, more than anyone else how the benthos was affected or not, time back.

Were a windmill built atop Monhegan, it would in most seasons produce more electricity than the community can use. Would not the DeepCwind Consortium – some appendage of which which would eventually own a piece Monhegan, thanks to the financial instruments these wily cavalry of capital will offer – seek to market the excess juice? How? Voila: a new power cable!

There is no belittling the serious threat that a spill of the fuel oil currently generating Monhegan’s electricity poses: disruption of nearshore ecosystems, from juvenile lobsters to seabirds, with negative consequences for local and regional fishing communities. The disastrous 1996 North Cape oil spill slew millions of lobsters in less than a week. Preventing THAT must be paramount. But does it need to require a “taking” of some of the island’s most sellable assets its wild beauty and its lightness of human touch. Transformed, Monhegan would join the ranks of federally overseen New England’s energy sharecropper communities, and, as an energy producing municipality, will also become subject to oversight by a yet another subdepartment of the Homeland Security consortium of agencies.

The question rests so much upon beauty. How much beauty can or should be sacrificed? Monhegan’s is that “everlasting loveliness” described by Plato, “which neither comes nor ages, which neither flowers nor fades.” The state of Maine’s tourism people certainly agree, as does state law, but that part of our government is being told to stay out of the way, those laws have been overriden and the island’s small businesses have become understandably cautious ever since the new energy boosters rolled their bandwagon up to the dock. How much? you will be asked. How much would the people of Monhegan accept from industry as weregild for their violated ambience?

The Monhegan of my son’s childhood is different from the Monhegan of my childhood, is different from the Monhegan of my father’s childhood.

The addition of wind power will be less invasive than the addition of another new house, for instance. Think of the houses that have gone up in your lifetime, and how they have changed Monhegan forever. New houses often improve Monhegan’s social system, by making it possible for people to live and work there, but it is always at the expense of Monhegan’s ecosystem, because it reduces the wild land and puts more pressure on resources.

The only difference with wind power is that it benefits both the ecosystem and the social system, by reducing both the expense and the ecological risks of carting fuel to the island.

My prediction is that those beautiful wind turbines will eventually become as beloved a landmark as the lighthouse.