This is a tale of two commercial wind projects (and by extension, a lot more than two).
A couple of weeks ago, we reported on the first commercial wind project proposed for Oswego County. Mad River Wind will occupy 20,000 or so acres on the southern verge of the Tug Hill Plateau, where winds are steady and people are scarce. Our reporting indicated that no serious opposition has emerged, and most of the people most affected by the proposal are raving about the plans. The portion of the project in the town of Worth has received a similar lack of opposition.
Meanwhile, the level of opposition to the Galloo Island proposed wind cluster is, if not increasing, gelling into a solid body of active opponents. Cliff Schneider, a former DEC …
... more [truncated due to possible copyright]This is a tale of two commercial wind projects (and by extension, a lot more than two).
A couple of weeks ago, we reported on the first commercial wind project proposed for Oswego County. Mad River Wind will occupy 20,000 or so acres on the southern verge of the Tug Hill Plateau, where winds are steady and people are scarce. Our reporting indicated that no serious opposition has emerged, and most of the people most affected by the proposal are raving about the plans. The portion of the project in the town of Worth has received a similar lack of opposition.
Meanwhile, the level of opposition to the Galloo Island proposed wind cluster is, if not increasing, gelling into a solid body of active opponents. Cliff Schneider, a former DEC wildlife specialist who rattled several state departments with a letter suggesting the DEC was not objectively reviewing the Galloo project, followed up with another powerful letter saying that using available numbers from a recent survey, the danger from the proposed giant towers and rotors to birds and bats should be unacceptable to both DEC and the federal Fish and Wildlife Service.
He has already received a positive response from the latter.
These stark differences just 35 miles apart, as the crow flies, should be noted by Public Service Commission staff as perfect examples of what should be, but has apparently not been, abundantly clear: Not every place a wind project is proposed should be considered appropriate to the site.
The commission is charged with enforcing Article 10, a process for reviewing and accepting large-scale energy products of any ilk. PSC and other state agencies are part of the permanent review committee, which is augmented in each review by representatives from the area in which the project is proposed.
The siting board is supposed to take local approval or opposition into account in its reviews. That effectively means it can rubber-stamp any proposals that are heartily endorsed by the vox populi. It should also mean, by extension, that it should review with greater completeness and skepticism those that are heartily opposed by local residents, and be ready to rule against them. Unfortunately, that premise is not fully and clearly spelled out in the Article 10 guidelines.
Ambiguity creates the damnations of most flawed rules. The two wind projects under consideration in Jefferson County that are not buried at the top of the Tug — Galloo Island and Horsecreek, in the towns of Clayton, Orleans and Brownville — face strong opposition because residents and seasonal property owners know that a major wind farm, using the latest in tall towers and giant rotors, would be aesthetically ruinous in one of the most beautiful regions in the United States.
And ruining a tourist mecca (a quarter of a million people visited Boldt Castle during its six-month season) that is of such value to the state, the region and the municipalities within it is just bad policy.
According to the PSC website dealing with Horsecreek, there are now more than 200 letters of opposition. This has an effect on the siting board because that level of negative intercession is noteworthy.
In fact, in nearly any other universe, the level of opposition to the two proposals on the Golden Crescent would have gone a long way toward killing these projects. Sadly, in this universe, opposition to commercial wind is in contravention of the governor’s new energy policy, which has set unrealistic goals for conversion of the state’s electrical supply to renewable energy sources.
The pressure is on every even marginally related state agency, and by extension the department heads, to facilitate the energy plan, which calls for 50 percent of the electricity produced in the state to be from renewable sources by 2030. Thus there is a great disincentive for the agencies permanently assigned to the siting boards to stick a thumb in the governor’s eye.
Still, the tale of the two wind proposals show what should be clear in this home-rule state: some wind farms are embraced and have relatively fewer environmental concerns, and others have deep environmental and economic concerns, and should not be allowed on those sites. Location, location, location, as the old real estate saw goes — if the site isn’t right, the wind project shouldn’t fly.