Editor:

In response to wind energy surveys in Barre, your article said responses were taken online and in person at the Barre Town Hall. How was everybody to know of the in-person or online survey? Why was there no survey in the Pennysaver? Most residents read the Pennysaver. (Maybe that’s the problem.)

Some people received a paper copy of the survey, but not everyone. Why? You said you did a phone survey, where did you get phone numbers for this survey as most people have cell phones and numbers are not listed. Randomly selected?

The town hired a consultant, Labella Associates, which did the survey for the town. Only 290 responses. Apex also conducted a survey – 170 responses stating 52 percent are in support of the project.  Maybe that’s where the problem starts – Both groups conducting surveys are working with the town.

There hasn’t been complete honesty about this project so far. How about letting everyone know about this survey, print one in the Pennysaver or send out a mailer.

Thank you,

Ronald and Susan Carr

Barre

Editor:

As most of all of you know, we in Orleans County are facing a deforestation crisis. When you travel in Orleans and the surrounding two counties have you noticed the industrialization of much of our rural landscape? We have growing industrial solar projects, growing industrial dairy farms and now some people dream of industrial bird-killing, 600-foot wind turbines in someone else’s back yard.

I spent some time a few days ago speaking to a man who knew the fathers and mothers of the people involved with local promotion of the Heritage Wind project, which by the way lies in the middle of a major flyway for many migrating birds. He said that the ancestors of some of those people must be rolling in their graves. He said many of the people who dream of raking in the money from the turbine leases at the cost of our rural landscape ought to be ashamed of themselves.

In the Bible, part of Romans 14:10 states that we shall all appear before the judgment seat of Christ. Knowing this I can only say, how could you! How could you sign leases that will cause the destruction of many more acres of what is left of our rural landscape. How could you understanding the delicate balance between man and nature allow that to be usurped for money. How could you allow a company such as Apex/Heritage Wind to come to our town and destroy the integrity of our town boards in that many who are seated there have signed wind leases.

How could you, knowing that we already face a rural habitat crisis, allow outsiders to destroy even more forest that for so many generations have been enjoyed by so many of your friends and neighbors. How can you go to church every week and look at those neighbors and hold your heads high, knowing that they and their children will have to suffer the consequences of your actions for generations to come.

As I was a child I was taught that I should endeavor to leave the world a better place than I found it. I’m sure many of you were taught the same things. I’m not going to judge any of you, that’s someone else’s job, but please consider this, when your children and grandchildren look at you and when you look at yourselves in the mirror, is that person who is looking back the same person who was taught as I was so many years ago?

As I said earlier I’m not your judge, that’s someone else’s job. Well there you have it, all the things many wish to say but are afraid to. In closing I just want to say, I still pray for all concerned.

Your friend and neighbor,

John Metzler

Barre

Editor

DPS Comments Assessment Regarding the Lighthouse Wind Project (14-F-0485) for Q3-2018

The table below shows the results of an empirical assessment of public comments made to the DPS website in relation to the Lighthouse Wind Project as proposed for the Towns of Yates and Somerset by Apex Clean Energy.

All comments made to the DPS site regarding the Lighthouse Wind Project were included in the assessment and cover the time period from January 1, 2015 through September 30, 2018. All comments were read fully in order to ascertain position regarding the industrial wind turbine project.  The positions were tabulated as in favor of or opposed to the project.

The results are as follows:

The overall results for the time-period January 2015 to June 30, 2018 are as follows:

Comments in favor of Lighthouse Wind Project =  289

Comments opposed to Lighthouse Wind Project = 1194

Percent of comments in favor of Lighthouse Wind Project = 19%

Percent of comments opposed to Lighthouse Wind Project = 81%

Q3-2018 saw receipt of form letters in support of Lighthouse Wind.  A significant number of form letters were from outside of the Yates and Somerset area. To assist in understanding, the following assessment of local vs. non-local Q3 comments follows:

Q3-2018 results show that 39% of total comments in favor of Lighthouse Wind were written by residents. However, 91% of opposition comments were submitted by residents.

The nearly four-year opposition to Lighthouse Wind remains overwhelming.

Apex Clean Energy needs to pack up their Lighthouse Wind Project and leave Yates and Somerset.  Our towns desperately need to heal the wounds inflicted on us by Apex Clean Energy and Governor Cuomo’s Article 10 Process.

Thank you,

John B. Riggi

Councilman, Town of Yates

Editor:

To me—in my opinion—Dr. Christine Blasey Ford was telling the truth. That said, why does that matter?

I was a teen in the fifties and sixties. After college, I taught grades 9-12 for 34 years. I had a fairly close look at teenagers for nearly fifty years. All teens do not feel entitled to harass and assault females against their will. If assaulting females is the yardstick, the notion that, “Boys will be boys” is bunk from my experience.  At any rate, they do not need to assume they will never be held accountable.

What Dr. Ford came forward with took enormous courage. And accountability is an issue here.

Though different in many ways, beyond all of what we know is the type of damage likely to be done to females and males should Brett Kavanaugh be confirmed to the Supreme Court. After the Clarence Thomas fiasco, what standard of behavior—by males, toward females—would we be reinforcing in males by turning a blind eye to such disrespect?

When retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens weighs in on Kavanaugh’s fitness for office by saying he is lacking, we may need a time out—as Stevens says—“for the good of the Court.”

There are plenty of ostensibly pro-life justices who also believe the President is ultimately accountable on earth only to the impeachment process and separation of powers. Let someone familiar with the law—and less baggage—be chosen for the long-term good of the Republic.

Sincerely yours,

Gary Kent

Albion

Editor:

This letter is to get some information out to the residents of the Town of Yates. In April of this year, your/our Town Board passed a resolution that committed the Town of Yates to splitting the attorney fees 50/50 with the Town of Somerset to fight the turbines coming here. There was no limit stated as to how much the Town of Yates would be required to pay.

The Yates Town budget for attorneys this year is $19,000. Somerset has already spent almost $278,000 in attorney fees as of December 2017 to stop the turbines. When the board was asked if this would make the taxes go up in our town, we were told we would have to see when the budget came out!

This past week, the Yates Board and the Somerset Board filed a motion to stop Apex from having the public forum to release the preliminary layout of the project without first releasing it to the Town Boards. The forum was to give the communities (including the town boards) the  information about the project.

ALJ Sean Mullany’s ruling was that Lighthouse Wind has been and remains compliant with requirements under Article 10 and the motion was struck down.

So Yates residents, this is where some of our tax dollars are going that the Town Board agreed to share with Somerset on lawyer fees. We are paying fees for a lawyer to fight the release of information about the turbines! Where is the transparency? How much was spent to file this motion?

What are they afraid of?

True, verifiable facts should be made available to the public about this project. In my opinion the only reason to stop the forum was that the lies that have been being spread for years are going to be exposed as lies.

The Town Board is using our tax money to stop a project from coming here that will put money into our town that has the possibility to lower our tax burden, support our schools and breathe some air back into our dying economy.

This is our tax money they are wasting!

Every resident in the town should be asking our town board these questions at the next board meeting on Oct. 11 at 7 p.m. at the Yates Town Hall on Main Street in Lyndonville.

Susan Campbell

Co-leader of the local Mothers Out Front Team

Lyndonville

Editor:

I want to thank Lighthouse Wind for offering the towns so much information and transparency Tuesday night at LA Weber Middle School/High School.

Not only did Lighthouse Wind bring in experts who presented a wealth of information and then answered questions for over an hour, they videotaped and documented the evening and will post those and answers to remaining questions on the Lighthouse website within a month.

What many of us find so baffling is that the opposition continues to blast Lighthouse Wind for not doing enough outreach and then blasting them for having an info session.

The towns even went so far as to use our tax money to interfere with Tuesday night’s information session. This kind of action is making it clear that the opposition is not actually interested in facts. In fact, they are afraid of facts. They are obstructionists only.

Linda Fisk

Lyndonville

Editor:

Back several years ago, the Lyndonville School Board, envisioning declining population, made an attempt to discuss a school merger with Barker.

The Lyndonville School Board decided to let the voters make the choice to pursue a merger. Barker’s board rejected the merger without a public vote. I attended the public hearings, the common remark from the Barker meetings – “We are not here to subsidize the Lyndonville tax payer.”

Evidently they were unwilling to share in the revenues generated from the coal plant. Little did anyone realize at the time that Cuomo and Obama would declare war on coal and natural gas. We need to go green and subsidize unreliable wind and solar and raise the cost of electric.

The Somerset plant no longer produces the tax revenues it once did. The declaration of evil coal was within two years of that merger study. A merger sure would have made sense for both parties.

The question I have for our Yates Town Board: Why are we willing to subsidize the Somerset tax payers on the legal fight with a 50/50 split. The split should have been 80/20 at best. We are not hear to subsidize the Somerset tax payers.

Edward Urbanik

Lyndonville

Editor:

This letter is written in response to Mr. Joseph Rak’s letter to the editor dated October 4, 2018, in which Mr. Rak makes numerous conclusory statements about the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh without offering an iota of substantiation besides emotional anecdote.

I, too, watched the entirety of not only the September 27, 2018-U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, but also the Committee’s hearings on September 4, 5, 6, and 7th, 2018. I also have my Juris Doctorate from the University at Buffalo School of Law, and I am currently pending admission to the Bar.

Mr. Rak’s synopsis of the events in question sorely misses the mark at every turn. First, Judge Kavanaugh did not display the requisite judicial temperament and impartiality to serve on this nation’s highest court. Don’t take it from me, take it from the more than 2,400 law professors from around the country, including 17 from the University at Buffalo, who have signed a letter stating exactly that.

Second, Judge Kavanaugh openly and repeatedly perjured himself under oath. “Boofing” does not refer to flatulence, it is a term used to describe the ingestion of illicit drugs or alcohol through the anus. The “devil’s triangle” is not a drinking game, it is a sexual threesome involving two men and a woman. Furthermore, Judge Kavanaugh testified that he did not partake in any way in the vetting of judges during his tenure with the George W. Bush administration. His own emails from his time in the Bush White House prove otherwise. There are many other well-documented instances of perjury that I will not go into here.

The rest of Mr. Rak’s regurgitation of conspiratorial talking points from Breitbart are without merit and do not warrant much of a response. Mr. Rak even mischaracterizes what Constitutional “originalism” is. An originalist falls into one of two camps: (1) original intent, which is when the jurist attempts to interpret the Constitution consistent with what was meant by the Founders; and (2) original meaning, which is when the jurist attempts to interpret the Constitution based on their view of what a reasonable person living at the time of the Constitution’s adoption would have understood the text’s ordinary meaning to be. Judge Kavanaugh is decidedly in the latter camp, like former Justice Antonin Scalia.

I believe Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. Nearly all of the psychological research indicates that normative misogyny and patriarchy provide a marked disincentive to those who have been the victims of sexual violence from coming forward. I believe that those who reject her allegations out of hand are perpetuating a rape culture all too prevalent in this country. There is no question that the controlled, scientific research in this arena unequivocally concludes that there are far, far (1,000:1, or more) more unreported victims of sexual violence than there are falsely accused individuals.

I hope that Judge Kavanaugh and Mr. Rak’s rigid, regressive ideology are soundly defeated at the ballot box in November. Judge Kavanaugh is utterly bereft of the impartiality, open-mindedness, and temperament required to serve on this nation’s highest court; and I vociferously urge the U.S. Senate to reject his nomination.

Andrew Remley

Albion

Editor:

Last week I watched the deliberations in the US Senate chambers. This, of course, is the continuing drama of the Senate confirmation of Judge Kavanaugh. He is, by all accounts, an excellent choice for Supreme Court Justice.

We all saw the accusation by Dr. Ford, of high school age sexual harassment by Judge Kavanaugh. We all saw Judge Kavanaugh defend himself with strength and righteous indignation! If you think you witnessed a search for justice, you are wrong! You also did not see a Democrat Party support a victim of sexual abuse.

Dr. Ford and Judge Kavanaugh are both pawns in the attempt of the DNC to control the Supreme Court. Kavanaugh is expected to be an originalist. A Supreme Court Justice who will interpret our Constitution as original in meaning. The Democrats are willing to use lies or any underhanded means destroy his reputation and stop his confirmation.

The American people have long lived under the threat of decisions made by activist judges. The issues of abortion, separation of church and state, same-sex marriage and Obama Care are all tainted by activism. Judge Kavanaugh must be confirmed. The Democrat Party must be defeated at the ballot box.

Joseph Rak

Lyndonville

Editor:

I wish to provide some clarification to your recent article regarding the Lighthouse Wind presentation at the Lyndonville School on October 2.

First, your article correctly states the nameplate rating of the facility at 197.4 megawatts (mW). Information regarding the actual output was conveniently omitted by Apex representatives.  Over the course of a year, output will average about 60 mW due to the variable nature of wind.  That’s about one tenth the capacity of the existing Somerset plant.  During the summer months, when wind speeds are generally lower, and when demand for electricity is highest, output will average 25 to 30 mW.  On those steamy calm summer days when you want to crank up your air conditioner and swimming pool pump, output will be near zero.

Mr. Williamson stated that the facility will make the towns “..a high value area to live and work.”  Hard to believe that people leaving a once quiet but now industrialized area would result in a high value area.

Mr. Williamson touted a 1.5 million dollar annual tax payment to the six taxing jurisdictions in the project area. That number is based on their proposed Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT).  Given the objections from the towns and counties affected by the project, it is highly unlikely that a PILOT arrangement will be accepted. More likely is the idea that the facility will be taxed as an industrial facility, which would result in 6 to 9 million dollars in annual revenue. That, at least, would result in some real benefit to the communities. You can be sure that Apex will fight tooth-and-nail to avoid that type of arrangement.

Apex advised that 200 to 300 construction jobs would be created over the course of 6 to 8 months of construction.  Conveniently missing from the discussion, although asked, was a response to a question regarding how many of those jobs would be from local workforces.  It is also worth asking whether those local jobs would be under prevailing wage agreements or at lowest possible wages.

The 41 studies that Apex must conduct as part of the Article X application are not all environmental studies.  In fact, only a few fit this category. Others deal with electrical production, construction and other unrelated areas.

Mr. Williamson pointed out at the beginning of the meeting that this public meeting was not part of the Article X process (read that as “we’re doing this out of the goodness of our hearts”) but at the conclusion of the meeting, stated that the notes from the meeting will be submitted to the DPS as part of their Article X requirements. Which one is it?

Finally, only a few questions were answered by the Apex panel of “experts” at the meeting.  No opportunity for public discussion was offered. The audience was advised that all (repeat all) unanswered questions will be answered on the Lighthouse Wind web site after November 2.  Anyone want to take a bet on that?

Steve Royce

Appleton