We were promised activity and updates on the important but open aspects of a decommissioning plan and a transmission line alternate route through the town of Hounsfield. When eight Jefferson County legislators voted yes to allow tax breaks, we all feared that our leverage was lost and a bad deal was just made worse.

Today, we are confronted by the crisis of climate change. Descriptions are so fearful, confusing, and occasionally contradictory that it's hard to know what to think. We each try to do what we can to reduce our personal impact on the earth, and ponder how to preserve the planet from a catastrophic fate that could be imminent and irreversible. For many people, renewable energy has become the panacea: producing power from wind, trees, grasses, and the sun.

The state Public Service Commission recently said that before industrial wind projects could be approved that they had to: 1. Prove that their electricity was not just going to replace an existing source of renewable (i.e. low CO2) energy, and, 2. Verify that available transmission capability was sufficient to carry their anticipated new power. Wow. My first reaction was, "You mean to say that these things haven't been being formally checked out all along?" The admission of that is simply astounding.

There is considerable data now available to anyone with an open mind and objective perspective that clearly shows industrial wind generation has severe limitations as an efficient alternative-energy source. The experiments in many European nations as well as those in operation in the U.S. and now also including the Wolfe Island project which dramatically impacts this region can only boast at best a 20 percent to 25 percent rate of production.

I was one of a number of citizens representing 33-plus New York state grass-roots groups that attended the June 16 NYSERDA [New York State Energy Research and Development Authority] environmental stakeholder's meeting on wind power in Albany. The reasons for this unique meeting were to answer citizen's questions on industrial wind power that we have been asking NYSERDA for years now.

Opponents of New York Regional Interconnect's scheme to force a 400,000-volt power line through our area had to be cheered last week when a federal court essentially ruled that the issue should be decided on a state rather than a federal level. The Fourth Circuit Court in Richmond, Va., struck down rules that would have allowed the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to approve the power line.

What were the problems with Reunion Power's 24 windmills proposed for Cherry Valley's East Hill? Foremost, they presented an industrial use in a rural setting. Would a steel mill be appropriate on the rise above Route 20? Or a coal mine? Beyond that, there were concerns about noise, possible impacts on the health of people living in the vicinity, occasional transformer fires, interference with TV signals and degradation of property values.

A renewable portfolio standard is said to be needed for creating and improving renewable energy technologies. In practice, however, it does little to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and makes energy production excessively expensive. Coal-fired power plants produce more than 83 percent of the electricity sector’s carbon dioxide emissions. But because coal is cheaper than natural gas or oil, it is the least likely to be displaced by solar or wind power. Natural gas has a relatively low carbon content. But it is likely to be the first to be displaced by renewable sources of energy because it is more expensive than coal. That means that even a renewable portfolio standard as high as 20 percent would reduce emissions by only a small fraction of what is needed to lower the risk of catastrophic climate change.

The guidelines included in State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's Wind Industry Ethics Code provide vital oversight into the wind energy industry. The proposed ethics code establishes public disclosure requirements that will allow residents to know the full extent of any involvement between public officials and wind energy companies. ...Three wind energy companies have already signed on to the Attorney General's Wind Industry Ethics Code. We hope Babcock & Brown, sponsor of the proposed Ripley-Westfield Wind Farm, signs on in the very near future.

State Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo has taken the lead at the state level to bring some oversight to the proliferating proposals for wind power developments across the state. Mr. Cuomo has drafted what is now a voluntary set of ethical guidelines for wind power companies and municipal officials in the wake of a corruption investigation in Franklin County, where wind companies are alleged to have improperly influenced local officials to get permission to build wind towers.

Everybody knows we need to get off oil, especially foreign oil. Naturally, as oil and gasoline prices climb, there is that feeling of desperation about wind and gas drilling. Of course, what's lacking is an energy police with authoritative government planning _ just as what was missing on Wall Street were government oversight and regulation of loan practices and packaging. We can't just let some companies put a few windmills on that ridge, a few gas wells in that pasture and a couple of huge solar panels on that hillside. It is too haphazard. We need energy leadership before it is too late.

State Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo is investigating allegations that wind power companies improperly influenced local officials in Franklin County to secure permission to build wind turbines. He is also examining whether certain companies colluded to divvy up land and thus avoid bidding against each other. ...Northern New York should not become a rural wasteland at the mercy of wind development. Siting decisions for both turbines and transmission lines must be made carefully.

New Yorkers are now under siege in many communities across the land by renewable wind energy. We do need to generate electric power, and we just cannot wish away fossil fuels as some would like you to believe, namely Al Gore. From the governor and legislators, to the Public Service Commission, they have sold out the citizens of this state. Our elected officials were sworn into office to protect the people of the state. Selling out to foreign wind companies like BP and Iberdrola and trying to make it look like what they are doing is for the people, is hogwash, to put it mildly.

One industry insider, Mick Sagrillo of the American Wind Energy Association, warned in an interview in Renewable Energy World that the some companies may try to exploit the concerned public's inflated hopes: "It's great that people are looking for alternatives, but it's amazing how little people know when they seek them out. That leaves people open to purchasing a product that is less-than-reliable. We are a very gullible culture, we're always looking for the magic bullet."

Integrity of all government-regulated and supported programs is an absolute requirement in a democratic society. However, characterizing wind energy as a "vital industry" demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding of wind energy's capabilities to contribute in a significant way to our energy needs. If your editor had attempted to understand some simple technicalities of wind energy, via even a cursory glance at readily available resources, he/she would have learned the following: ...

Some business leaders and politicians are upset that a state agency is putting roadblocks in the way of a merger between a Spanish power company and RG&E's parent company. ...The PSC staff and the judge are just doing their jobs - to independently review whether the transaction is in the public interest - and politicians shouldn't criticize their recommendations, says Fairport resident Charles Straka. He's not involved with the merger case, but he is an unpaid representative of the average customer - an intervener in technical terms - in an ongoing RG&E rate case. And much of his interest in the merger deals with competition and its effect on rates. "If the Public Service Commission process is overruled, who's going to control rates at all?" he says.

The five-member commission next month has a key decision to make: whether to allow a large Spanish energy company, Iberdrola, to buy Energy East, the corporation that owns Rochester Gas and Electric Corp. and New York State Electric and Gas, which between them serve 1.3 million upstate homes, farms and businesses. Price tag: $4.5 billion. The staff of the commission has recommended that the board turn thumbs down, partly because it would give one company control of not only the wires and pipes that carry gas and electricity to customers but also some power plants and other facilities that generate the electricity. "Full divestiture of all the generation Iberdrola and Energy East own, and their complete exit from the generation business in New York, is needed to fully protect ratepayers from the pernicious effects of vertical market power,'" according to a staff report on the plan.

Wind energy is not a local issue. Small towns and schools don't have the high-priced lawyers and experts to evaluate a project or fight on their behalf when payment in lieu of taxes agreements are inked. Nor do they have jurisdiction on projects that might be just over the town or district line. Before New York began its push for renewable energy, it should have funded objective research into the proper siting of wind towers. Surely somewhere between 1,000 feet and 1 1/2 miles is a setback that most people and wind energy companies can live with. ...State lawmakers manage to issue a press release on every headline of the day, from sex offender registries to a proposal for a gas-tax holiday. They are strangely silent on the gradual, haphazard implementation of wind utilities across the state. The time of leadership has come and nearly gone.