Consistency And Alternatives

The documents below are a couple pages from the last law suit WPEG filed against the old planning board challenging them and the SLW SEQR FEIS (environmental study) This is judge Hugh Gilbert’s  decision.  Keep in mind that at one point or another four officers on our town board were either officers of WPEG or heavily involved with them.

Let me ask you a question. 

If you ran a business would you hire somebody that you thought used such poor judgment while running your business on numerous occasions on some critical matters, that you thought they should be named in a law suit and you attempted to actually sue them?  Think about that for a minute?  Look at the names on the planning board being sued.  See any familiar names that are now members of our planning board?  See the name Karen (Wood) Bourcy ?  She was among the others being sued by WPEG in their capacities as Cape Vincent Planning Board members.  Where is Mrs. Bourcy now?  Well…she was reappointed by the very people who tried to sue her, sued apparently because she and others used very bad judgment, so bad in fact some of the people who recently reappointed her to the board thought at one time her behavior was so egregious it actually warranted a law suit.  Does any of this actually make sense to you??? How about some consistency?  Mrs. Bourcy should be nowhere near a town office alternate or not based on her previous lapses of judgment, and conflicts of interest which she did not disclose in a timely manner while she voted with her hidden conflicts in place on everything Edsall wanted on critical wind and SEQR issues.  Yet there she is right on our planning board put there by WPEG endorsed town officials. And people think I’m nuts…go figure!!!

So that is point one.

Point two is to look at the name of the petitioners (WPEG).  Notice that there are no individual names listed.  This was the final fatal legal flaw that caused Gilbert to deny and dismiss the case in favor of St. Lawrence Wind and the Planning Board. There is case law on this from  Irondequoit, NY.  You need individuals from the group to basically show at least one of its members has standing.  Ouch!   Each previous law suit by WPEG had individuals listed.  Now why is that important?   Well, for one it got the case dismissed…that ain’t good.  But this goes to the “experts” debate everybody says I and others must defer to in the zoning matters.  The attorney who handled this case and made this rather fundamental blunder, I was told was a real SEQR “expert” and I was told we should defer to him too.   No let me correct that…we will defer to him.  In fact I thought another lawyer should either handle this case on a different approach or at least be co- counsel.  But NNNOOOO.  I was blown off once again and could not possibly know what I was talking about.

Well in this wind battle I have interacted with at least six lawyers, and never saw one make this basic mistake.  So much for experts!

Now point three.

Note my underlining on this page below where it says “require agencies to act and choose alternatives…let me say that again. ALTERNATIVES.  State environmental laws  and SEQR require they look at alternatives.

Now lets apply this too our current zoning committee process.  Have they looked at alternatives?  They and the WPEG people on the town board have been hell bent on ONE path, at that is the zoning setback approach while marginalizing everything else, especially the prohibit approach. This zoning setback approach actually has been in the WPEG thinking for years, and the idea of prohibiting does not get into their thinking and was always dismissed.  This recent zoning process started behind the scenes way back in November after or maybe even before the elections, and that direction was set in stone then and has not changed.    The committee didn’t start its official work until a few months later. That after all is an approach, and in fact has been used by other towns in NY.  I guess they must have at least consider it. 

Changing a zoning law or adopting a new one is a Type I action under SEQR law.  It is unclear whether they have to go through this process although it might be likely.

Now what happens if somebody challenges this law on SEQR grounds, and says that no alternatives were looked at.  And if I was asked by a judge what I thought I would have to say that yes a detailed alternative was offered to the committee and was refused outright with no further thought.

Now what if BP or an A-10 siting board comes in from the other side with another approach but says the same thing…”you only considered a restrictive setback approach and nothing else, and did they even do a SEQR study to consider our alternatives?”    Are our experts setting us up yet again  for another blunder????

Ironically when you look at a wind company SEQR studies they know what they want too…they want the project as it is proposed by them, and that is all they will consider…and you will see they discard any other alternatives. Acciona did it in their FEIS and so did BP in their DEIS.

So why are we acting like the wind developers?