July 29, 2016
Opinions, Tennessee

CMPC getting some aid from unexpected places

By Jay McCarthy, CPMC Committee, For The Vista | July 28th, 2016 | vistanewspaper.com

The Cumberland Mountain Preservation Coalition is getting help from unexpected places.

Since launching our Web Site several months ago our social media is now is full swing. Linda and Greg Clark, who live in Homestead, and others from Crab Orchard, Renegade Mountain and as far as Knoxville, have been having discussions on Facebook. The Facebook page is primarily dedicated to the Crab Orchard industrial wind project and getting much attention. The Clarks have been one of our strongest allies in this battle and we are grateful for all their help.

I was not present for the County Commissioners meeting this past week so I can only comment on what I have heard from people who attended. Sandra Dutcher, our 9th District Commissioner, did an outstanding job arguing our case to Mayor Carey and the Commissioners attempting to get a resolution passed to stop the Industrial Wind Farm project from moving forward.

Unfortunately for now it has appeared to have fallen on deaf ears. Most of the Cumberland County Commissioners feel that this resolution would be negative for their constituents. I heard before this meeting Apex held a barbeque for Chamber of Commerce members, Commissioners and anyone else who wanted to attend to hear more of the same propaganda in order to have some influence over the resolution vote.

Heck, if we would have known that then the CMPC would have offered the Commissioners Filet Mignon prior to the meeting.

Cumberland Mountain Preservation Coalition welcomes anyone who’s has not attended our meetings to get more information and to hopefully join us in taking this fight outside Cumberland County – where it seems that the deck is stacked against us.

I can assure when we started our coalition we knew this wasn’t going to be easy. Especially since our Mayor and the Chamber of Commerce have seemingly been quiet behind our backs almost 3 years to get this project under way. We all have seen the Apex strategy and their many attempts to deny the effects that people have experienced from Wind Farms worldwide. (Google it, my fellow residents!)

You understand now after we have exposed all the facts that there are a select few that benefit from this financially. It is sad that a few greedy people would put at risk the public health, killing of innocent wildlife, ruining the existing property values and not giving a hoot about the Cumberland Mountain Skyline.

The sad part about all of this is, if this project were to happen, Apex doesn’t care about all the lawsuits that certainly will take place.

And they don’t care about all the fighting and bad feelings that have developed between many good people and friends that disagree.

They don’t care about the effects it will have short and long term between Fairfield Glade and the town of Crossville. The money and time we all will waste in fighting this bad project.

No Apex and their minions have done what they set out to do: Create a divided Cumberland County and get us fighting between ourselves so they can run rough shod over everyone. When the project is completed and all the problems start, guess where they will be. LONG GONE. The only people from Apex you will ever see again are their attorneys once the litigation starts.

CMPC will keep up the fight and make every attempt to stop this project and, with your help, hopefully that will occur sooner then later.

Again, I urge everyone who opposes this including our Glade Board members to help us in this fight and as you can see, even now we are getting help from unexpected places.

The CMPC recently received a surprise check donation of $100 from Mr. Hugh Gibson in Maryland. Gibson said he donated the amount because he has noticed on the internet what is going on here. He has made other similar donations made previous donations to other wind farm resistance campaigns in his part of the country where “similar issues” exist.