A letter to LN this week from oil and gas man Mike Stovall who divides his time between homes in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Wrightsville Beach pretty much says, Not in my Back Yard. Ironically, Mr. Stovall is a recipient of the Association of Energy Service Companies’ Golden Rod Award in recognition of his lifetime achievement in oil and gas. As you will read, Mr. Stovall points a finger at those he labels liberals, endorsing wind over furthering the petro industry, for not caring about the mortality rate of sea birds who will fly into 80 foot tall windmills if erected off our shores. He does not wish to see winking red lights on his night sky horizon.
The opposition to the Coral Drive sidewalk is another example of Not in My Back Yard, or in this case, front yard. The beach town board will vote on the sidewalks during its March 12 meeting.
Residents and nonresident property owners of rental properties that line Coral Drive voiced their objections during the November public hearing regarding the proposed project. Most of these residents would normally support the construction of a town sidewalk, but not at the expense of their entitlement to real estate not their own.
While the sidewalk would admittedly increase safety for children walking to and from Wrightsville Beach School, especially those in overflow classes at the Baptist church, sidewalks would intrude into the real estate that Coral Drive residents have long considered their own yards, but, which is actually North Carolina Department of Transportation right-of-way. Homes and duplexes on this street have traditionally used the sides of the street for their parking.
Tuesday night, along with the possibility of freezing rainfall, two diverse groups, one small, and one large, gathered to protest; one on the oceanfront, one on the riverfront.
Both groups were bent on defending their turf, however, the 150 or more protestors at the Blockade Runner resort were far more organized, and diverse, while the group from the river was a tad more invested in these completely different, Not in My Back Yard protests.
Down on the Cape Fear River, adjacent to the state port is a historic neighborhood, Sunset Park, originally developed as a 225-acre “first class residential park” in 1912, prior to the two shipbuilding war needs facilities that followed the 1917 (World War I) declaration of war with Germany. Later, following the Depression, the neighborhood would boom with housing for defense workers during the Second World War. The neighborhood does indeed enjoy a glorious sunset backdrop to the activities of the 562-acre port of Wilmington that sees approximately 3.5 million non-container tons of goods and materials pass through annually, plus containers.
Running along Burnett Boulevard from the shipyard to just below Greenfield Lake, bounded by the port’s heavy industry and the rail line that services it, west to the river itself, sandwiched between this and the commercial development along the Carolina Beach Road corridor including Legion Stadium, Sunset Park is a treasure trove of historic homes, bungalows, ranch homes and churches.
Many of Sunset Park’s homes have been rehabbed in the last 25 years. As the recession has backed off, crime on the streets has become managed and residents have seen property values climb. They would understandably be concerned by anything that would potentially threaten their quality of life, or economic investment in their homes (castles).
At the request of Enviva LP, the city is considering modifying the requirements of what can be done inside the port’s fenced and secured boundaries. Residents have two issues; the first, location by Enviva of two 172-foot tall, by an equal width, storage domes to hold wood pellets for export through the port. Construction is set to begin immediately. The pellets will come from North Carolina harvested wood. Translation: jobs, economic growth for the city, county, state and port.
Residents said Not in My Back Yard please, requesting the domes be relocated to some other, any other area, of the port property other than where it is proposed, which they say is 200 feet off the edge of the residential neighborhood.
But the heavily industrial port itself is just feet off the edge of the neighborhood.
The cranes servicing the port dominate the landscape at 200 feet tall.
The second protested issue is a request for exemption to landscaping and parking around the roughly 3Â million cubic foot Port of Wilmington Cold Storage plant about to be built on port property, also inside the fence.
Surely to be cited in support of the request would be security to the port facility in these tenuous post 9/11 times. A tree buffer obscuring the fence and building would do away with a clear view of the fence by those charged with protecting the port.
Residents voiced their concerns Tuesday night and the issue was continued by the city council.
Down at the Blockade Runner, the well-organized protest was a coalition of Surfrider, Sierra Club and Oceana members, as well as Southern Environmental Law Center reps — along with several other environmental groups, a total of 10 — all in ocean blue T-shirts. The object of their ire was the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) meeting at the hotel. It was not the meeting itself that was being protested per se, but the absence of a platform for individuals to speak publically.
The federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management public meeting was held to inform those in attendance, but not open to public comments. So the protestors held their own meeting down the hall while BOEM was educating and offering a bank of computer terminals to submit concerns, questions and comments in writing on the draft proposal which could be open to oil and gas exploration within 10 years.
But behind the protest is the objection to opening up the state to offshore oil and gas drilling leases, plus the hydraulic fracking that comes first in the exploration process.
We all can’t have our way, not everyone who argues Not in My Back Yard can “win,” or there would be little progress. At the end of the day, a top priority to those making the decisions, the obvious greed factor notwithstanding, is the quality of the waters and the marine life in them because these waters are the Golden Goose for the entire economic picture on the coasts.
Not in Our Back Yard.
