[Whew! NY Times to the rescue! The blog was getting really heavy on the Theology category this morning. Here’s something a bit lighter… Loved the Cruella De Vil line!<\/i> \ud83d\ude09 ]<\/p>\n
BEACH HAVEN TERRACE, N.J.,<\/p>\n
July 10 \u201d\u201d Tired of paying as much as $340 per month for gas and electricity at the Cape Cod home here where he has lived for 18 months, Michael Mercurio erected a 35-foot windmill in his backyard last fall that helped reduce his bill to about $114 \u201d\u201d a year.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt just makes sense,\u201d\u009d said Mr. Mercurio, who is 61 and runs a company selling and installing windmills. \u201cThis is a clean, renewable source of energy.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n
Some of his neighbors say it is also annoying. They say it is too big. They say it is too noisy. And some residents in this middle-class borough on Long Beach Island have gone to court to try to make him take it down, while the township has stilled it since winter.<\/p>\n
It is a collision between the ideals of alternative energy and the suburban reality of New Jersey\u2019s notorious not-in-my-backyard culture, casting Mr. Mercurio in the role of a latter-day environmental knight errant and his neighbor and principal adversary as the ecological equivalent of Cruella De Vil.<\/p>\n
What started as one man\u2019s attempts to find a cheap, clean energy source has become a frequent topic of coffee conversation among the small community of year-round residents in this town, where Mr. Mercurio has lived since he was 4, and has galvanized some segments of the state\u2019s environmental community. And, oh, how the Don Quixote jokes have flowed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hear it all the time,\u201d\u009d Mr. Mercurio said, standing in the shadow of his still windmill Tuesday afternoon. \u201cI tell them, \u201d\u02dcYou\u2019ve got it all wrong: I\u2019m not fighting against the windmills, I\u2019m fighting for the windmills.\u2019 \u201d\u009d<\/p>\n