Commentary and Opinion by Samuel Strait – May 9, 2023 During Tuesday's, May 9th Board Of Supervisor's meeting there will be an attempt by Supervisors Short and Howard to sell the County's citizenry on the idea of resurrecting the decade long defunct Tri-Agency in order to breath life into the latest "get rich scheme", off shore wind power. Before we get to the "pie in the sky" push to attract the rather breath taking amount of investment to even get such a project off the ground, perhaps a brief look at what has already transpired at the behest of our local leadership and the Tri-Agency. If you will recall, the Tri-Agency acquired a rather substantial sum of grant funding to stimulate the local economy following the 1964 Tsunami. Over the course of the next fifty years the Tri-Agency was a miserable failure. The usual suspects for the reincarnation of the Tri-Agency are the Harbor, the City, and the County. The fantasy is to clear the previous fiasco's loan debt to fund the rebirth of the "new and improved" Tri-Agency, employ a director and support staff, hire a grant writer, and pursue grant funding to entice "off shore wind power" to Del Norte County. All initially on the backs of the local taxpayer, who just got finished closing the books on the previous Tri-Agency failures. The history of the past rendition of the Tri-Agency was fraught with bad business loans and a few government funded projects that were its only questionable measures of success. Local businesses who could not get conventional loans quickly swallowed up much of the funding, none of which were successful, leaving the Tri-Agency on the hook for nearly $300,000 dollars in bad debt. When the Tri-Agency failed to repay its loans and could not pay its bills in 2012, the Agency and its malefactors abruptly disappeared. Recently, two supervisors who were previously involved with this financial melt down wish to resurrect this folly to invite off shore wind power as an economic driver. The most recent effort consists of a further $70,000 draw on the tax payer tucked away in "Budget Transfers" in tomorrow's Board meeting. This funding along with $30,000 from the City, and $10,000 from the Harbor will be used to hire a Director for the Tri-Agency which will shortly be filled in with support staff and a grant writer, no doubt tapping the taxpayer for yet more funding. The end result will no doubt be a waste of money that Supervisors Short and Howard can parlay into a further financial fiasco. On to the wind power boondoggle being proposed. Clearly neither Howard nor Short are aware of some rather significant obstacles to construction, maintenance, operating cost, lack of transmission infrastructure that offshore wind power on the West Coast entails. Not only is it substantially more expensive to install and operate "floating wind turbines", more than twice the cost of their off shore compatriots in the shallow waters off the East Coast, but even the less costly versions are encountering a growing list of obstacles. Seems wind power is popular generally to those that are oblivious to the cost, at least until the bill comes due. Unfortunately, Supervisor Howard may wax elegant about all the "supposed" benefits of attracting wind power to our shores and the money flowing into local pockets, but the reality is somewhat different. Virtually all of the East Coast leases have yet to even get off the drawing boards, many simply unfeasible, or too costly. Most employment gains do not come locally, and just the cost and difficulty of transmission will be a huge obstacle to overcome as most of the power produced will have to leave the County. Maintenance in the deeper waters of the Pacific of over 200 feet, where weather is a huge factor, and repair at times becomes impossible will all factor into the feasibility of off shore wind power where customers for that power are few on the ground. Not a particularly attractive picture of "economic development". So the question becomes, what's in it for our usual suspects, Darren Short, Chris Howard, Blake Inscore, Jason Greenough, Wes White, and Brian Stone? None of this train wreck is remotely possible, yet it has the capability of swallowing up vast sums of tax payer money. Ehh, these guys don't care, after all it isn't their money.