In New York, the Town Of Freedom isn’t free from big wind
The fight over Alle-Catt shows how extreme New York’s energy politics have become under Cuomo. Over the past few years, the state’s regulators have outlawed hydraulic fracturing (and therefore, essentially all drilling for oil and natural gas) and have repeatedly blocked pipelines aimed at bringing more natural gas to the state. Cuomo’s appointees are now in “police-state mode” and is stripping small towns of their zoning authority because they stand in the way of adding more wind-energy capacity. Freedom and other low-income towns in rural New York are fighting to be free of Big Wind. Under Cuomo, those towns had better be prepared for a long fight.