Climate Change & Nantucket Part 3: Searching For Local Solutions To A Global Problem

Climate change is already impacting Nantucket. From droughts to pine beetle infestations, the signs are obvious. But what can one small island do about a problem so big?

For some, it starts with awareness.

“Having a more aware and engaged community is going to help us in the long run,” said Emily Molden, executive director of the Nantucket Land and Water Council. “We don’t want our community members to walk around blind and to not know what’s going on.”

“We kind of forget in conservation that we also manage people,” added Sarah Bois, director of research and education at the Linda Loring Nature Foundation.

Bois teaches a coastal ecology class with Jen Karberg, director of research and partnerships at the Nantucket Conservation Foundation, and also regularly talks to classes of island students about climate change.

“We’re trying to reach a lot of different audiences,” she said.

The most high-profile projects tend to focus on coastal resilience, but there are many other efforts underway as well. Some local conservation groups are working hard to root out invasive species that spread as the climate warms and strengthen fragile local ecosystems like wetlands and sandplain grasslands. Others are lobbying for changes to local regulations and bylaws that might help Nantucket adapt. The Conservation Commission, for instance, recently voted to alter local wetland regulations to require that pools are designed to never interact with floodwater so that the toxic chemicals in pool water don’t mix with the ocean.

Changes like this are controversial. They limit the property rights of landowners and restrict their ability to use their land as they see fit. To some, it’s a perfect example of government overreach. To others, it’s a necessary step in a long journey towards preparedness.

“It’s really a matter of having a short-term versus a long-term perspective and figuring out as a community what are we willing to do in advance to prepare for scenarios that may be coming down the road in a decade or two,” Molden said. “Our community and our island are definitely going to face some difficult questions.”

Even when changes like those proposed by the Conservation Commission — or the recent ban on single-use plastics that passed Town Meeting — do go into effect, they are sometimes nearly impossible to enforce.

“Enforcement is one of the town’s greatest challenges,” Molden admitted.

Nearly everyone interviewed for this article agreed.

Meanwhile, the town has other plans beyond just regulations. Last year, the town unveiled Nantucket’s first municipal solar project, a 232-panel array on the Surfside sewer plant that will offset 106 metric tons of local greenhouse gas emissions each year.

Solar, however, just can’t match the sheer wattage of offshore wind.

Vineyard Wind alone will provide over 800 megawatts of power—more than 7,600 times more than the Surfside sewer plant solar project. In terms of sheer scope, no local project is close to Vineyard Wind. Comprised of 62 wind turbines 15 miles southwest of the island, the wind farm will projected to reduce more than 1.6 million tons of carbon emissions each year. And it’s just the first of many offshore wind farms planned for the waters near Nantucket - part of Massachusetts’ and the Biden administration’s ambitious climate agenda.

That is, if it ever gets fully operational.

After a blade failure on one of Vineyard Wind’s turbines occurred on July 13 resulting in debris washing up on Nantucket’s beaches in large quantities, the federal government shut down the project, and there’s no guarantee it will ever deliver all the energy it was supposed to. The blade detachment, and the potential health risks it poses to the island community, not to mention the economic impacts of beach closures and the possible dangers to marine life, have re-ignited the long-simmering opposition to offshore wind on the island.

With the project located in federal waters, Nantucket authorities had no regulatory power to approve or deny Vineyard Wind, other than a small section of the undersea cable which runs through island waters and was approved by the Conservation Commission. But that hasn’t stopped island residents from sounding off in recent weeks since the blade failure.

The local non-profit ACK For Whales argues that the sonar mapping and pile-driving associated with the projects along with the many vessels servicing offshore wind farms like Vineyard Wind will kill endangered right whales, a cost no amount of clean energy can offset. Several lawsuits funded by the group against Vineyard Wind have been dismissed, but that has done little to silence their opposition and ACK For Whales has vowed to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Many renewable energy advocates say there is no factual basis for their claims and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has repeatedly stated there is no known link between offshore wind and whale deaths. But the Vineyard Wind incident has broadened the opposition to offshore wind on the island, and prompted many to question the turbines themselves, as well as the potential for catastrophic operational failures given the sheer number - more than 1,400 turbines - that are planned for the waters southwest of Nantucket. It isn’t the first time a blade has detached from an offshore wind turbine, and many locals feel sure it won’t be the last. Suddenly, a project marketed as an environmentally conscious solution to climate change appears to many on Nantucket like a looming environmental catastrophe.

Regardless, no amount of renewable energy will be enough to protect Nantucket from the impacts of climate change. No matter how effective local projects are, they can’t solve a global problem.

“We just have to be ready,” Molden said.