SOS is run by dedicated citizens, not ‘Big Oil’
Editor:
For the 100th time, please let me point out to those who cannot grasp this: SOS is not funded by the fossil fuel industry!!!
SOS is not a “membership” group. We have a board consisting of three people and a treasurer. It as an entirely volunteer organization. We do not charge anyone dues nor do we pay the board members.
We make donations to the group from our own pockets to support our activities. We sell T-shirts. Sometimes we sell our signs but many of them we give away.
We have come together to fight the industrialization of our towns by outsiders planning to rape our landscape, slaughter our birds and leave us with up to seventy 650-foot non-recyclable pieces of “out-dated before they begin” wind turbines. We have come together to fight the loss of home rule and for the return of the democratic process.
Apex is a privately held corporation funded by tax subsidies, production tax credits and the selling of RECs (a totally ludicrous method of easing people’s conscience about their energy usage by purchasing something that doesn’t even exist to “offset their carbon footprint”).
Peoples’ persistence in the absurd thought that we are funded by the fossil fuel industry is laughable. If they could see our balance sheet compared to the millions of our tax dollars Apex has to spend promoting wind turbines they would be astounded. Are they incapable of understanding that some people are willing to fight for their beliefs, their property, and their future with everything they have including their own money?
Some people are equally incapable of understanding the exaggerated claims made by Apex regarding the financial benefits of a PILOT agreement. They might as well plant a few beans in the backyard and wait for that beanstalk to climb into the clouds.
The list referred to in an earlier letter accusing SOS of being funded by the fossil fuel industry is a list of participants in a meeting. They are listed in alphabetical order not in order of anything else. This meeting took place long before SOS came together as a group and the person “implicated” in the letter is not a founder of SOS.
There are lobbies for both sides of many issues in this country. This is one of them. I suspect Apex is quite generous with the pro-wind lobby groups including AWEA. I suspect Apex has an agenda on how to deal with the opposition, after all they have a full time public relations manager.
I suspect their coffers are much richer than SOS’. I suspect they solicit naïve local people to be their shills, pumping up the idea of “moral responsibility” in direct relation to installation of wind turbines.
Apex themselves appear to have no moral responsibility when it comes to the democratic process and the will of the people. A majority of the citizens of both Somerset and Yates have said via surveys that they do not want this industrial wind facility in their towns. Apex refuses to move on.
The counties of Orleans and Niagara have said they do not want this project here. Apex refuses to move on. What has happened to democracy?
For the last time, SOS is NOT funded by big oil. We are a dedicated group of concerned citizens who want to see APEX GO HOME.
Sincerely,
Susan E. Dudley
Lyndonville
