Irene Gilbert is a 76-year-old retired state employee on a mission, fighting energy projects like large wind farms in Oregon’s rural communities. Renewable energy advocates and lawmakers treat activists like her as gadflies who should be stopped.

What those lawmakers didn’t plan for was that 50 years later, an Oregon citizen activist would use that same bureaucracy to hinder some of the very energy projects that today’s liberals want: wind farms and the new high-voltage lines needed to support them.

They didn’t plan for Irene Gilbert.

The 76-year-old retired state employee, former gun store owner and avid elk hunter from La Grande, Oregon, is on a mission to keep turbines and transmission towers from blighting the rural landscape. She has filed more challenges to energy projects — 15 in all, including lawsuits — than anyone in the state, according to Oregon’s Department of Energy.

“I kind of have a reputation,” Gilbert said.

  • KnitWit@lemmy.worldEnglish
    341·
    15 days ago

    If she were really worried about objects blighting the landscape of la grande, that one super obvious confederate flag that can be seen from the highway (that I assume is still tacked up in a trailer window) is probably a good place to start.