“As an island community, we can do great things,” said First Warden Keith Stover at the onset of the ceremony to celebrate “the lighting” of the new fiber optic broadband network on Block Island.The network is the first municipally owned fiber network in Rhode Island, and such an accomplishment was duly feted on Monday, June 5 at the Southeast Lighthouse, complete with both of the state’s U.S. senators and students from the Block Island School, who not only built the ceremonial switch, but got to flip it too.Although Stover warmly welcomed Senators Sheldon Whitehouse and Jack Reed, he said “We would not be here today without Kim Gaffett, Ken Lacoste and Amy Land – especially Amy Land.”“It’s amazing what you do,” said Reed, citing the five-turbine wind farm three miles off the coast but in clear view Monday, despite the haze, and the transmission cable to the mainland that includes the fiber strands. “You did things ahead of the curve.”Reed recalled that he was also there at the Southeast Light at the ceremony in 1994 commemorating the successful move of the Gothic building away from
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