September 3, 2011
New York, Opinions

Will Orangeville be the biggest loser?

By Cathi Orr, thedailynewsonline.com 3 September 2011

One would wonder if Supervisor (Susan) May had been in attendance at any of the town meetings since May 2007, as this Invenergy-led Town Board repeatedly stoically sat refusing to answer any questions and repeatedly stated “We will not discuss the wind issue at this time.”

“Discussion” means two-sided exchange of ideas, and with this current administration that has never happened. Will Orangeville taxpayers be the biggest loser at the expense of the Town Board’s self-dealing folly?

Videotape after videotape shows hours of this lack of communication with town residents, Supervisor May allowing pro-wind people to launch personal attacks on residents asking for property protection guarantees, guarantees of this limited liability corporation to “put their money where their mouth is” and back up their claims that our property values will hold and even be worth more money, contrary to all claims from people actually living in turbine projects around the country and internationally as well.

Rather, many Orangeville residents instead sat year after year at town meetings wrongly advertised on the Orangeville town sign on Route 20A as starting at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesdays, despite the fact that the town meeting time was changed to 6 p.m. over a year ago (quite often days and times changed as many special meetings were called at Town Board discretion posted as sticky notes on the town door) and never changed the sign despite the fact that this has been repeatedly brought to their attention.

Greed-driven individuals running this sad excuse for “open honest government,” mimicking rather the lack of democracy shown in communist countries such as the Ukraine where Invenergy’s founder Michael Polski hails from. Is this why he and Invenergy can hoist an outdated 30-year failed technology using giant outdated 1.6 MW turbines on unsuspecting Orangeville residents, with the aiding and abetting of the current Orangeville Town board.

Who in their right mind will willingly buy property under theses nearly 500-foot tall monstrosities that can cause unbearable noise and infrasound in our homes as well as intolerable shadow flicker, when property without these negative impacts is available elsewhere? Orangeville is now popular because no industry exists and this turbine project has been a well-kept secret according to many new residents who have bought property here and state that this project was never disclosed. Ask new residents on Krotz Road who bought their log home in the last couple years, or the Hamburg couple who bought the former Cheney property on Standish Road near where proposed turbines 1, 2, and 3 would overshadow the peace and beauty of their many ponds and awesome countryside there, if they are permitted. Who is going to guarantee these peoples’ investment? Surely this is an infringement on their property rights.

The Town Board led by Ms. May and Deputy Town Supervisor Hans Boxler has put no protection guarantee into this agreement with Invenergy even though residents asked that a “high-risk” property guarantee bond to safeguard Orangeville taxpayers’ biggest investment, their life savings invested in their own property, be included. This plan was given to the Town Board by Steve Moultrup last year and again asked for by myself recently, written up by environmental lawyer Gary Abraham, retained by Orangeville’s rural preservation coalition. These properties could be rendered virtually useless depending on the severity of negative impacts from this poorly studied turbine project plan. These properties would then be sited in the midst of an industrial turbine high-voltage electrical complex, 700 feet from their pre-existing property lines.

A three-minute statement at a public hearing does not suffice for “discussion,” Ms. May, and all the thousands of pages of documented studies, comments from doctors, sound engineers, scientists, physicists and energy experts supplied to you from the citizen’s group CSOO has all been ignored in deference to industry-funded and therefore biased studies from the wind industry. My husband’s doctor, familiar with industrial-scale turbines as he is from the Southwest, says he can not live within five miles of a turbine project. I submitted this letter in the DEIS and it was ignored by people who do not have medical degrees and were paid by Invenergy, so how is that for bias?

Sadly, there are no winners in this game, if Invenergy prevails, Orangeville and all its taxpaying residents will remain the biggest loser.

What to do now: Attend or comment as follows to the: Public Service Commission, Sept. 14 , 2011, Notice of Public Hearing on Stony Creek Energy LLC’s proposal to construct, own, and operate a wind electric-generating facility in Orangeville. Invenegy is also seeking lightened regulation as an electric corporation and approval of its debt financing plan. New York State taxpayers, it’s time to say “Stop the pork!” New York State can’t afford to forever perpetuate this unreliable, irratic, and unaffordable energy that is not available on demand.

Stop these tax subsidies and stimulus to multi-million dollar corporations! Statement hearings on case 11-E—0351 will be held at Wyoming County Department of Social Services building, Room D, at 466 North Main St., Warsaw, at 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. Also internet or e-mail comments may be sent to: Hon. Jaclyn A Brilling, at secretary@dps.state.ny.us, re: Stony Creek Energy LLC for a certificate of public convenience and necessity. Toll-free option line: 1 (800) 335-2120, press 1 to leave comments 24 hours daily.

Cathi Orr lives in Orangeville.


URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2011/09/03/will-orangeville-be-the-biggest-loser/