What Good Is It??? - Comments To The NYPSC By Cape Vincent Citizen Sarah Boss - Head of WPEG.

          "What good is it to zero in on Cape Vincent?"

         (Sarah Boss - WPEG - On the visual impacts of industrial wind development).

 
            Industrial wind turbines on Wolfe Is. far beyond the Cape Vincent town   
            boundaries.  Local zoning???...what good does it do for visual protection? 
            It does nothing, essentially as Mrs. Boss points out, even thought that is    
           exactly what our Cape Vincent zoning did with industrial wind!  Zone for
           something that can't be zoned for. "What good is it ?"


Recently Cape Vincent citizen Mrs. Sarah (Sally) Boss, who is the current head of WPEG last I knew, sent a letter to the NYPSC about the BP visual survey.

She put her comments directly on the BP survey form and sent it to the PSC.

A couple of her comments are as follows and I thought were very intriguing.

"When 500 ft. wind turbines can be seen for 30+ miles, what good does is it to zero in on Cape Vincent?

Cape Vincent is 15 miles along the river and 6 miles along the lake.   15 miles x 6 miles - Not much land compared to the whole area wind turbines will be exposed to."

What Mrs. Boss is trying to point out is already painfully obvious to her and everyone else, that industrial  wind turbines will be seen  and have a significant  negative visual impact far beyond the Cape Vincent town  zoning boundaries.  OK… very good Sally, and a look at Wolfe Island with turbines well beyond CV boundaries that are about 400 ft. verifies what you are saying in your comments.   Well painfully obvious except to our town govt and their zoning she supports!

Then she says "…what good is it to zero in on CV?"  This is the part I find very interesting.

Essentially whether she consciously knows it or not Mrs. Boss is making the exact argument I have been making for several years to not zone locally for industrial wind impacts, but to prohibit them altogether!

If you are truly going to protect Cape Vincent and the region it is absurd  to try to zone locally to control the  industrial wind  impact that will be seen for 30+ miles, as she says.  She seems to recognize in her comments  what I have been saying, that traditional zoning is a completely failure to mitigate the huge invasive visual impacts of industrial wind development, especially with the insanity of monster 500 ft. wind turbines. Yet that is exactly what her town govt. did!!!

However, here is the problem.  I wonder if before Mrs. Boss posted her comments to the NYPSC she carefully read and understood  the wind development regulations in our  new Cape Vincent zoning law? 

Does she understand that our zoning law does exactly what she is objecting to by allowing some industrial wind development!   And whether it be 124 or 5 turbines they will still be seen for 30+ miles and violate the intent of our comprehensive plan????   And whether you put them close to the lake and river, or shove them back inland, they are still going to be a visual nightmare for somebody far beyond CV town borders.  That is why this absurd idea embodied in the CV zoning law and by the govt Mrs. Boss supports is a failure to regulate the visually invasive industrial wind issue.

And very importantly, does Mrs. Boss as the head of WPEG understand she received a great deal of Art. X intervener  funding along with the town to defend a zoning law that does what she is objecting to in her comments???  The law " zeros in on CV" and allows some wind development that no matter what the scope will actually be seen for 30+ miles!!!

I assume Mrs. Boss is writing these comments to the NYPSC to support our town govt. and their new zoning.  But does Mrs. Boss also realize that our zoning law basically has NO specific visual protection criteria, , and thus basically violates our comp plan, and that the lawyer who advised our town on zoning issues indicated he could not defend a law that regulated something based on the fact we didn’t like the way something looked.  You know…like the visual impact seen for 30+ miles!!!  

It appears at least intuitively Mrs. Boss in her heart gets the idea I have been outlining for years about the failure of local zoning to mitigate the visual impact of industrial wind that can be seen far beyond the local zoning boundaries  .  You know…like why zero in on CV because it does NO GOOD!!!      Good for you Sally!  

However, it appears Mrs. Boss has created a significant dilemma for herself with her comments  in that inadvertently she is objecting to the very thing the govt she supports actually did.  Zero in on CV and zone for an invasive industrial wind impact she seems to recognize cannot be mitigated by local zoning, just like her local govt. actually approved!

Such is the problem in trying to walk both sides of the street to reconcile what you truly believe, against what your political leaders tell you you should believe to appease the State.

Now all she has to do is convince the town govt she supports to change this absurd paradigm that local zoning can control the regionally  invasive visual impact of industrial wind development, (seen for 30+ miles!) and have them prohibit what she seems to understand can not rationally and effectively be controlled any other way.

Just as Mrs. Boss says… “ What good is it to zero in on Cape Vincent?”

Exactly Mrs. Boss…thank you for pointing that out in your own way!!!  Not much…not much good at all! 

Maybe in a way the BP survey was a very good thing to bring forward clarity on the obvious about the idiotic visual disaster industrial wind will bring to our town and region!