Take a hard look at reality 

Dear Climate Action Council:

I am appalled at what NYS government is willing to do to the people of the state. I knew your plan to “go green” was a mistake but didn’t realize how big a mistake until I found myself in the middle of a turbine construction project. I can tell you first hand there is nothing green about this at all!

We are in the third year of actual work on the Bluestone Wind Project in the towns of Sanford and Windsor. The first year was constant construction, getting roads ready for heavy equipment. For the past two summers, residents living on previously quiet, narrow, country roads are besieged by hundreds of vehicles a day when we are accustomed to a few dozen at most. Previously, it was mostly passenger vehicles; now it’s a constant stream of heavy dump trucks, tractor trailers, concrete trucks, cranes, etc. not to mention about a 100 pickup truck trips of workers driving up and down the road with no apparent goal. How can any part of this be considered “green” when my once unspoiled mornings enjoying a coffee on the porch are now tainted with diesel fumes, dust, and noise? One of the trucks recently had an oil leak that contaminated the road for more than three miles before the truck quit in front of my property dumping what was left of the oil at the road side.

I understand that you believe we are in some kind of emergency and need to act quickly. However this plan has not been well thought out, and making these mistakes now could well be catastrophic. We have seen this kind of development in other places, and we have seen it fail to provide sufficient energy to keep the grid powered. Why on Earth would NY follow suit and make the exact same mistakes other places have? Your plan seems to call for the sacrifice of nearly all of upstate New York to wind and solar projects; for what? Currently installed turbines in NY are operating at around 7% of their rated capacity. Would you install a roof that is only 7% efficient? I don’t think so.

The Town of Sanford is a good example of everything that is wrong with your thinking. A corporation came in and secretly worked with a, shall we say, clueless town board to secretly change the zoning in areas where they wanted turbines. They had no solid plan, even the size of the turbines wasn’t decided until much later, but ORES went ahead and rubber stamped the project saying our local laws trying to mitigate the impact on residents were too “burdensome”. So now, depending on which company representative you speak to (or when) the turbines are somewhere between 640 and 710 feet tall, and can be placed 1.1 times the height from a non-participating home (not a property line which ANY set back should be based on). Would you want to buy a house that is 781 feet from a 710 foot tall turbine? I don’t think so! Yet you say our property values won’t be impacted. I should point out that the town board that did this to us has all quit, I wonder why?

I keep reading that planting trees is the best way to fight climate change. Bluestone Wind started out by clear cutting 300 acres of mature trees in Sanford. They continue to cut trees, as they are preparing to run even larger equipment on our roads. I was just informed yesterday that they plan to cut trees all along my road frontage even though many are nowhere near the roadway and do not impede traffic in any way. Dozens of local landowners are facing the same destruction to allow for a project we didn’t want here in the first place. It’s shameful that NYS threw home rule out the window to allow for this. In this town of 2500 people we presented 1000 signatures on a petition opposed to this project – it was ignored.

People are leaving NYS as it is due to weather, taxes, cost of living, and other factors. If you think covering upstate with inefficient wind turbines and solar panels will keep people here you need to step back and take a hard look at reality.

Please, slow down and listen to people like Dr. James Hansen that have been working on this for decades. He is clearly telling you this won’t work, but like the Sanford town board, you choose to ignore the people that have done the research and listen to the propaganda/sales pitch of corporations trying to sell you a pipedream.

Patrice VanSlyke