Surfers 4 Solar | Haleiwa, Hawai‘i | Surfers4Solar.org | surfers4solar@gmail.com

November 26, 2016, Draft of Letter to Department of the Interior Secretary, 1849 C Street, N.W., Washington DC 20240

Dear Secretary of the Interior,

We are pro-green energy surfers writing to ask that you not authorize development of wind farms in areas where they would damage O‘ahu’s North Shore surfing conditions because environmentally preferable alternatives, such as solar photo-voltaic (PV), are reasonable, feasible, and readily available.  Please don’t allow at-sea wind platforms where they would cause diffraction of inbound open ocean swells and please don’t permit wind turbines in areas on land and in the ocean where they would disrupt the offshore winds that power our wind-and kite-surfing sails and groom our clean North Shore wave faces.  Your website indicates your Department is “Protecting America's Great Outdoors and Powering Our Future” and we believe you can achieve both by assessing and selecting solar PV with energy storage alternatives to your proposed wind farm development projects.  Maps of areas that sould be excluded from wind farm development to conserve North Shore surfing's ocean swells and offshore winds, and an example of North Shore acreages that could be considered for solar PV development, are shown in Figure 1.

Until the solar alternatives and other less harmful, readily available energy solutions are exhausted, please don't select harmful wind farm development as your agency's preferred alternative.  We believe Hawai‘i’s clean energy needs can be met without harming Hawai‘i’s (and the International Surfing Community’s) “Great Outdoors” in the process.

The complete letter we will transmit, with illustrations, is online at www.surfers4Solar.org

 Aloha,

Surfers 4 Solar

(Alphabetical Order) John Amundson, Konrad Bright, Chris Bruns, Jeff Bushman, Tim Caroll, Larry Cass, Sunny Erickson, Serena Erstad, Eric Forgerson, Douglas Godfrey, Chip Hartman, Coco Ho, Michael Ho, Blake McElheny, Dan Moore, Jamie O’Brien, Emilia Perry, Tamayo Perry, Carol Philips, Makua Rothman, Kevin Senn, Mike Slattery, Jamie Sterling, Reo Stevens, Jock Sutherland, Mike Takahashi, John Thompson, Tai Vandyke