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Stamford residents differ on parts of wind-farm law
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The Stamford Town Board is voting Wednesday on a local law to regulate commercial wind-energy facilities, Supervisor Patrick Ryan said Monday.
The vote will be at the regular meeting at 7:30 p.m.
In September, a wind-farm developer presented a plan to erect 34 wind turbines on the Moresville Range in Roxbury and Stamford, setting the desire for a local law in motion.
“The town has no zoning and no comprehensive plan, so we were at the mercy of any wind-energy company,” Ryan said. “The law is not inviting windmills. It is an 18-page document that we hammered out that is designed to protect our people.”
But Tony West, spokesman for the Concerned Residents of Township Valley, said more than 90 percent of people where Invenergy Wind LLC has proposed building turbines want the town board to reject the company’s proposal and reconsider the law.
West said the group thinks Invenergy representatives had too much input on the regulation.
“We do need a local law,” West said Monday. “We are just trying to make sure it is more our law than the energy company’s. I plan to ask if Invenergy wrote the law.”
He said he has been going through the transcripts of the numerous workshops and meetings the town held on the law and found passages where Councilman Floyd Many made references to Invenergy officials’ reaction to certain aspects of it.
Ryan said the purpose of the law is to regulate wind power but not to ban it.
“Any wind-power company will have at least 10 hoops they will have to jump through to develop a wind farm in Stamford, and all of the cost will be on the applicant,” Ryan said.
Stamford Councilman Michael Triolo said that as far as he knows, the town board is in agreement to adopt the law, even though there might be some dissenting votes.
“I don’t think we are all in agreement with all of the components of the law,” Triolo said Monday.
A call to the Invenergy office in Stamford was not immediately returned Monday afternoon.
Eric Miller, Invenergy Wind LLC project manager, said previously the proposed towers will be 262 feet high with 148-foot blades for a total tip height of 410 feet.
Ryan said that even if a wind-power company completed all of the requirements in the proposed local law, it would still have to complete the State Environmental Quality Review Act process.
“You are not going to see wind turbines for at least a year and probably longer than that,” Ryan said.
Miller said plans for the project tentatively began in November 2003, when Invenergy installed a temporary tower to test wind speed in Roxbury.
By Patricia Breakey
Delhi News Bureau
15 May 2007
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