Apex ignores community’s overwhelming opposition to Lighthouse Wind

Editor:

The response of the Apex representatives to the results of the Yates survey is baffling. What part of “No” don’t they understand?

Every survey that has been taken, in Somerset, in local newspapers, and in Yates has been overwhelmingly against building an industrial wind facility in this area. Apex seems unwilling to admit this fact. More likely, they know that residents’ opinions are ultimately irrelevant, that the State can force it down our throats whether we vote against it or not. Cronyism triumphs.

A dispassionate look at the situation shows our region with the Niagara Power Project running under capacity and the Somerset power plant barely running at all, and the STAMP facility using the availability of under-used hydropower to attract new factories. But we need to put 600-foot towers on pastoral farmland to generate more power?

If there was a legitimate case for industrial wind here, why is Apex leasing the land for the turbine towers instead of buying it? The life of a wind turbine is 20 years. Apex builds the facility and sells it; that’s in their business plan.

Whoever owns those leases in 20 years can choose to walk away from them. Then the farmer who leased his land has a 600-foot tower with an oil-filled dead turbine on top of it, sitting on a huge block of concrete, and it’s his problem because it’s on his land. Apex won’t be around to help, and whoever buys the lease from them will have no obligation to do so.

We who live here are being shut out of the decision making process. That’s insulting. We are smart enough to tell a good idea from a bad one. And we are certainly smart enough to tell when we are being sold a bill of goods. The survey results prove that.

Douglas Pratt
Lyndonville