What The Town is Not Talking About or Telling You About the New Zoning Law and Comp Plan

Now there is a question nobody seems to be asking, and it is a very important one.  (get to that in a minute)  But we need a little history to understand it.  We are essentially making a major revision to our zoning laws in many ways,similar to adopting them for the first time.  We are also revising our comprehensive plan. These are some significant actions by our town govt….would you agree?  Well if you don’t the NY DEC does!

Now how many you have been in this wind battle long enough to remember back to about July of 2006?  Why is that important?  Because it was the approximate time of the first attempt by the town at a wind law zoning amendment.  It was also the time of the first public hearing on that law and the Rec Park building was PACKED, it was standing room only!  A lot of people on both sides of the issue spoke that night.  I spoke about the comprehensive plan and how it essentially, by its scenic resource protection language, precluded any  industrial wind development in CV.  It was the first time in a public forum it was brought up and examined.  Clif Schneider was on the board then and brought it up prior to the public hearing among board members to which he received an answer some what like “we will take our chances”

But something else occurred at this meeting that is relevant right up to today. The Town Board after the main part of the 2006 wind law hearing then took action on the requirements and their obligations to  the State Environmental Quality Review Act laws, commonly referred to as SEQR.  It is part of the environmental laws of the State. The reason the Board did this is because they were potentially making a major change to their zoning laws to include wind development. A change to zoning laws on this magnitude would be considered a Type I action under SEQR and this means you have to fill out a long environmental assessment form (EAF) assessing the potential impacts of your action.  I think we can agree that with wind development there would be some major impacts to the town with this new zoning amendment action. Did anybody else agree…YES… Tom Rienbeck, Mickey Orvis AND Clif Schneider, all on the town board back then.  So Town attorney Mark Gebo led the board, right there in the meeting, through the long detailed EAF process. He asked a series of questions from the EAF and the board answered and he checked boxes or filled in spaces on the form.  Joe Wood and Marty Mason recused but still remained in the room and looked over Gebo’s shoulder as Rienbeck, Clif Schneider and Orvis answered the form questions. We all held our breath since this was critically important.  I remember one question from the form.  It asked whether the action the board was considering, wind development and a wind law, would have any major sociological impacts on the town or was it controversial.  The Board laughed as did all of us observing, and that box was check with a definite YES.   I guess after 6 years since then of this wind bullshit we are all living proof that the question was answered correctly.

      

                                     

Will there be any environmental impacts to our beautiful town

                                     from industrial wind energy, or a law that may allow it to

                                          appease the State, Article X , the courts, and
                                           the wind developers so they won't scream foul ?                       

                                 Should we do a State mandated study to consider the impacts?

                                       At one time Councilman Clif Schneider definitely thought so!

                             So will we do it again with these zoning law and comp plan changes?

From SEQR Law Type one actions which require an EAF and declaration of impact.

(b) The following actions are Type I if they are to be directly undertaken, funded or approved by an agency:

(1) the adoption of a municipality's land use plan, the adoption by any agency of a comprehensive resource management plan or the initial adoption of a municipality's comprehensive zoning regulations;

(2) the adoption of changes in the allowable uses within any zoning district, affecting 25 or more acres of the district;

When this process was over, then the Board guided by Gebo, had to make a declaration based on the questions on the EAF as to whether their action could cause a major environmental impact to the town.  A positive declaration  ( pos dec.) says it will cause major impacts or has that potential.  A negative declaration says it will probably not cause major impacts.  We in WPEG and our lawyer all held our breath because we knew if we got a pos dec it would slow the high speed convoluted corrupted town process way down because the next step if you pos dec is an expensive and lengthy required environmental impact study town wide.  You can criticize Gebo for a lot of things and some I agree but he did a good job that night, and the Board voted a POS DEC…even Rienbeck and Orvis, believed it or not.  It's  from this point that the wind issue accelerated  into the mess it is today.

That is a long story, so what is the point here Pundt????   Well here it is.

The point is we are redoing our zoning laws AGAIN…and now even our comp plan is being revised.  Both appear to be Type I actions under SEQR So it looks like the Town Board is going to have to do another EAF and possibly an impact study with a positive declaration…right?   Unless of course they are going to try to sell us that changing our zoning laws and our comp plan to include regulation of industrial wind development to appease Article X will have NO impact on our community. 

So why are we not talking about this question about the SEQR law requirements, or are we just going to ignore that fact.  I don’t see the Board, or the zoning committee talking about this.  I don’t see the comp plan committee talking about it.  And the other CV blogs are ignoring it too.  Don’t they know about this, being they are such great researchers? 

So do we get a positive or negative declaration under SEQR, and are we going to address whether we will have to do a town wide EIS…not just this BS EIS we have been handed by the wind companies?  With the BS in both wind company studies, and both being supervised by a planning board as lead agency under Edsall with deep conflicts of interest,  they are pointless uselessn pieces of paper. .

When you consider this, in effect we are moving ahead with a wind law and NO responsible SEQR town wide environmental evaluation of wind energy development has been done in our community to this very date. NONE!!!

And three  other important notes.

1. If the Town tries to dodge this SEQR requirement or tries to feed us a negative declaration , which they would still have to justify, remember that our current councilman Clif Schneider was on the board back then and voted for a positive declaration AND a town wide SEQR study.  He voted as well not to stop that process when Orvis and Rienbeck finally killed it in  Aug. 2006. So he should address this in a similar fashion don’t you think?  Remember if we go ahead with a neg. dec. or, worse no study then we have had NO environmental study of wind development in our community…which I think is a violation of the SEQR law.  And both these actions would make any zoning law very vulnerable to a legal challenge. When SEQR law suits are won they are often won by claiming a municipality didn’t take a hard look at the impacts under or not under the SEQR process, or ignored it.  In fact that was what the last WPEG law suit claimed in which Mr. Schneider and Mr. Byrne were involved concerning the Acciona FEIS. No hard look.

2.  We can not be fed the excuse that the wind companies have already completed one SEQR study and it was accepted.  That study was corrupted from day one with blatant conflicts of interest, and that FEIS was legally challenged by WPEG with Clif Schneider and John Byrne’s  names on the law suit. Both are now CV town councilmen.

3.  They could say that our new zoning law is so tough on wind there will be no impacts and no study needed. Well the 2006 law was very tough too and they wanted a environmental study on it too.  It said wind turbines were NOT utilities, and said the noise should not exceed 5dba above ambient at the property line of a non participant.  This alone would have killed any wind development in CV as we now know.

And let me say it one more time.  No matter what our new law says we are faced with wind development, and  after all this time NO, NONE, ZIP, ZERO,  credible comprehensive environmental study has been done in CV on the town wide impacts of wind development, and we know one hell of a lot more than we did then!!!!   There have been bits and pieces, economic, and sound, but no comprehensive study, certainly not the BS Acciona came up with.

So pay attention on this one folks, because the zoning law and comp plan committees are on aggressive schedules to get their work completed, and it will be very interesting to see how they handle this SEQR obligation on both documents. 

AND no one to this date has been talking about this!