April 19, 2012
New York

Lyme extends wind moratorium, again

By JAEGUN LEE, TIMES STAFF WRITER, THURSDAY, APRIL 19, 2012, watertowndailytimes.com

CHAUMONT – Lyme’s town board unanimously voted Wednesday night at a special meeting to extend its moratorium on wind-power projects by another six months.

The move halts all wind-power development in the town until Oct. 18 while Lyme’s Planning Board drafts a revised wind-power zoning law.

The town of Lyme has extended its wind moratorium several times since it was first passed in 2007.

Officials have said the new law will reflect the results of a recent townwide survey, which found that a majority of town residents were opposed to wind turbines.

Of the survey’s 1,621 respondents, 64 percent opposed turbines.

Town Supervisor Scott G. Aubertine has said Lyme also is waiting to see what kind of zoning restrictions on turbines the neighboring town of Cape Vincent comes up with.

Cape Vincent enacted its own seven-month moratorium on wind projects in February, giving the town board time to put in place a new, and most likely more strict, wind-zoning law.

Robert S. Brown, chairman of Cape Vincent’s zoning law revision committee, said Wednesday that Cape Vincent does not have much to share with the public regarding new restrictions on wind development at this point.

“We have just started working on wind a week ago,” Mr. Brown said Wednesday.

Since January, he said, Cape Vincent has been going over its entire zoning law, which was last updated in 1998, and plans to hold public hearings on the newly revised set of rules sometime in the middle of summer.

URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2012/04/19/lyme-extends-wind-moratorium-again/