Obstructionists should give up baseless arguments against Lighthouse Wind

Editor:

If the news is true that State Senator Rob Ortt has been indicted and that Representative Chris Collins is scurrying with his tail between his legs after the collapse of the national health care legislation he championed, S.O.S. (Serve Our Selves?) has lost two of its biggest supporters in the halls of legislative power.

Their demise may not be inevitable, but it will be excruciatingly harmful to their political stars. Will Rob find few friends in Albany now who will talk to him, let alone seek his advice? Collins faces a similar fate: Chris who?

Both men failed to do their homework relating to the Article 10 application for the planned windmill farm stretching across swaths of Yates and Somerset. They were suckered into the untruths about the dangers imposed to the Niagara air base by the windmill farm.

Now that the missions cobbled together to breathe life into the Falls facility have radically shifted, the phony-baloney bogeyman espoused by S.O.S. and their political lackeys seems pathetically irrelevant. The myth of the physical threat and the dangerous radar-interference evaporates. Some of the local political leaders are sophisticated enough to recognize that radars are being replaced by satellite and cellphone technology, emasculating their proximity argument.

The Somerset board, like a petulant child, approved the two MET towers last week, but only after imposing odious requirements on them that are not required on any other such structures in their town.

Where were these same Luddites when the coal pollution belching Somerset power plant was being planned? Sometimes, it seems like the Somerset board is just trying to shake down Apex like they did Senator Maziarz when he got them three-quarters of a million dollars for Barker schools because the obsolete Somerset plant wasn’t generating the obscene tax revenue it did in its heyday.

If the disgracing of their parochial championing pols isn’t enough, they both may need a good “slap in the face” to come to their senses: stop your obstructionist follies. Let the Article10 process proceed. You’re both beating a dead horse.

Ralph E. Smith

Lyndonville