November 6, 2017
Letters, New York

We told you so: Orangeville to sue Industrial Wind

Cathi Orr

Oh, if only The Town Board of Orangeville of 2007 thru 2013 would have listened to Clear Skies Over Orangeville, the neighbors preservation group formed to save Orangeville from subsidy-driven corporate wind wolves. We tried to tell them that Invenergy’s ever changing LLCs and all their subsequent empty shell corporations would run roughshod over their promises to Orangeville after their Industrial Wind Factory was up and running. Oh what a tangled web they wove …

After tons of diesel-spewing equipment had to be called in to fix “Clean Green” turbines that had been up only 3 yrs (they told us they had 20 yr lifespan), The Town of Orangeville passed a resolution to sue Invenergy LLC for not maintaining roads as promised. What a Surprise! Ironically the same law firm that sat side by side with Invenergy’s lawyers in 2013 against the citizens that lived in Orangeville were now going to sue this same company.

This compromised Town Board with Sue May at the helm proceeded to ignore research from other industrial wind projects, citizens’ complaints of noise, problems with well water, lower property values and the impossibility of selling some of the homes after these massive turbines were installed. They are too large and in too close proximity to residents’ homes.

Today in 2017 Orangeville residential property sales show homes, if they sell at all, selling well under assessment: 21% less than 2012 assessments and 30% less than 2016 assessments. Thanks, Sue May, for not insisting on a property protection plan that CSOO insisted on!

When it became evident that Orangeville was going to be sold out by the compromised Town Board of Orangeville and then Supervisor Susan May, many of us cried as we left what we had hoped would be our permanent homes, farms that had been the homes of our dreams. Many of us from Clear Skies Over Orangeville, the rural preservation group that friends and neighbors who cared about the character of the town formed, had sunk our hard earned cash into what we thought would be our lifetime investments, and many of us lost valuable dollars, because of the too close proximity of monstrous, noisy, environment devastating close to 500 ft high Industrial Wind Turbines. This size turbine had been designed for off shore or nonpopulated desert environments. Orangeville Town Board “sold their souls to the company store”.

Now in 2017, The Town of Orangeville is wasting precious money that would never have needed to be spent if Susan May, Hans Boxler Jr., Jim Hermann, David Flint and sons, and other town employees, planning and zoning officials who had signed “Good Neighbor” agreements, had not compromised the Town Board. $$$

Although the grassroots movement to save Orangeville started in 2007 and continued for many years, Susan May’s cronies, many of whom signed wind contracts with Stony creek Wind LLC have managed to re-vote her into office …

People of Orangeville, Harold Hopkins is a loyal, very intelligent, focused, and determined fighter for the people of Orangeville – Vote Harold Hopkins for Orangeville Town Supervisor! He has tirelessly kept Orangeville informed about the ever-rising taxes and self-serving political greed of the current Wyoming County regime. Stop the continued devastation of your economic base, and quality of life!! “If you always do what you always did, You will always get what you always got!!!”

Cathi Orr


URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2017/11/06/we-told-you-so-orangeville-to-sue-industrial-wind/