August 19, 2015
Letters, New York

‘Green’ energy destroys hometowns

Lockport Union-Sun & Journal | August 19, 2015 | www.lockportjournal.com

I’d like to address Steve Freeman’s online comments against his neighbors (S.O.S.) regarding the Lighthouse Wind site. His rant is against the people living, working and playing along the St. Lawrence Seaway Trail, specifically the Lake Ontario shoreline. These are the very people standing up to protect their homes and families in Somerset, Yates and the surrounding countryside from a corporate welfare Ponzi scheme that will destroy their homes and lives in New York state.

It is amazing to me that anyone would sign their future destiny away to these sap-sucking, parasitic, money-grabbing, multi-national stockholding corporations – and allow this valuable national migratory Great Lakes shoreline to become corporation-owned towns and counties.

Freeman stated at a Yates town board meeting that if Yates and Somerset taxpayers did not want to have a bird- and bat-killing human health hazard – a high-voltage industrial power plant complete with overhead and underground high voltage wires, switchyards, transformers and 70 nearly-600 foot high wind turbines constructed overhead – stuck in the midst of their homes and waterfront recreational areas, “they should just move.”

I have already lived through this whole process of a government-facilitated industrial wind factory coming to my hometown. The government created a stimulus, a corporate welfare program, that encourages these companies to construct huge-footprint, useless energy projects that are not founded on sound, scientific energy solutions – and then those companies are spared state and federal taxation.

I have witnessed first-hand the devastation and stress that naturally follows the process of being forced out of your home because of the industrial-scale negative impacts of industrial wind. Existing properties are devalued; people can’t afford them or sell them because of these monstrosities that are built too big, too close by.

Is it any wonder that people fighting this absurdity may become emotional when they consider all they will lose, while a handful of people will get money for selfishly thinking only of themselves and not considering the devastation to lakeshore migratory wildlife, the environment and the lives of their very own family members and neighbors?

I personally know many people related to large landowners both in Wyoming County as well as Niagara and Orleans counties who are agonizing over the decisions of their family members and in-laws. The consequences of signing these wind contracts (with confidentiality clauses) can’t be mitigated after the turbines take over these towns, shore-lines and beautiful countrysides.

In his comments to the Public Service Commission, Mr. Freeman stated that he has been a member of the Yates planning and zoning boards for years. Sadly, I realize that he knows nothing of the personal tragedy that is being ushered into the lives of the very people that he’s representing as he sticks up for wind-less energy that causes electricity prices to skyrocket and is, after all, unaffordable and un-dispatchable upon demand. Wind farms produce less than 1 percent of the world’s electricity.

I personally experienced the frustration of the phony global warming computer model-generated “green energy” industrial wind epidemic from 2007 until 2013, researching, fighting and finally being forced out of my beloved home and horse farm in the once-beautiful hills of Wyoming County by the continual assaults of noise, shadow flicker and other factors that make living under industrial-scale wind turbines unbearable.

I have the dubious distinction of being able to name many very unhappy people still living in Orangeville, Sheldon and Eagle, N.Y., who can testify to the misery of living under these abominable industrial machines.

I wish Mr. Freeman and other vocal corporation farmers and contracted landowners in Yates and Somerset could live in close proximity for one year, no Florida wintering, so they could experience for themselves the legacy they are trying to foist on their neighbors, families and friends.

Cathi Orr is a Somerset resident, self-described “Wyoming County wind refugee” and a founder of Save Ontario Shores (S.O.S.).

URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2015/08/19/green-energy-destroys-hometowns/