Open Wide and Swallow!

On the Cape Vincent Jefferson Leaning Left  blog you will see a post Mr. Wiley put up of an editorial regarding the placement of a 143 ft. tower along the scenic Palisade cliffs above the Hudson River north of NY City.

Wiley seems to be very quick to comment on how other communities should be handling their land use and land protection issues…like Clayton for example…but we will get to that in a minute.  In reality he should keep his mouth shut as I will demonstrate why below!

Wiley makes this comment in his self righteous post.

“Even one proposed 143 ft. (much less tall than a wind turbine) tower on the cliffs over the lower Hudson River is producing howls of protest – including from the editorial board of the NY Times.  But when developers propose hundreds of very tall, blinking, rotating machines along the St. Lawrence, some key voices are mute.  Where is the pride in our own natural treasure?”

“Even one” ??????  Really Mr. Wiley??? 

Have you even read your community’s own damn zoning law that allows for industrial wind development and the absurd scenic protections within???? Maybe you should before you open your mouth!

And when this zoning law was drafted and approved…which, would allow more that “one” very tall structure near our national treasure, where the hell was Wiley’s voice on this zoning law, and the pride in our own national treasure?

I’ll tell ya where…MUTE, nowhere to be found…that’s where… except for continually slobbering all over our town leaders about how wonderful they and their new zoning law is that actually allows wind development in CV.

 In fact if you press our town leaders to tell you how many turbines their law would allow, they don’t even know!!!   I asked former CV councilman Clif Schneider once and he couldn’t answer that question, even though he was a key figure in drafting the law.

Wiley conveniently forgets to tell his readers that basically there is no height restriction that I can find on industrial wind turbines in the CV zoning.  Met towers are not allowed taller than would require FAA lighting.  Well even that would be about 200 ft.  The CV law restricts industrial wind turbine output to 1.6 MW.  Traditionally even  this type of turbine is approximately 400 ft. tall at top blade swing.  I don’t remember Wiley protesting any of this in our new law.  Guess that doesn’t both him much!

And talking about scenic protection (or not) near our national treasure, I wonder where Mr. Wiley’s voice was when the town was drafting an absolutely asinine  clause on industrial wind that set turbines back a paltry 1.25 miles from the scenic Seaway Trail corridor, or the same for hamlets or the village boundary or schools.  1.25 miles????   That is not protection…that is an absurd joke.  Have Wiley and these town officials ever seen an industrial wind turbine? You wouldn’t think so if you read the CV zoning on industrial wind !

And the protection our surrounding towns get from giant wind turbines along their borders would be about 6 times the height of a turbine.  A 400 ft. turbine x 6 = about 2400 ft.,  or less than ½ mile!  That is another joke!

Then we have a 2 mile setback from the CV shoreline.  Really…has Wiley ever looked across the river at the Wolfe Is turbine?.  Most of which are well over 2 miles away, and you can see them many more miles away in the CV interior like along county route 6 for example where they stand out like sore thumbs!  Or even see them from high points as far away as Watertown!

So where was Wiley’s hysterical voice when all this absurd and supposed “scenic protection” nonsense was being drafted into our CV zoning law. 

SILENT!!!  Not a word of protest. 

In fact he thought this was a great law and wonderful effort.  He didn’t raise a word when the attorney advising on the law even said he could not defend a law restriction just based on the way something looked or if we didn’t like the way it looked.

Not to mention that even a restricted few industrial wind turbines in CV is a direct violation of our Comp Plan intent which our law should be based on.

Where was Wiley and his blog then?  Not a word!

But now Wiley is getting behind the bitching about  ONE 143 ft. tower along the Hudson Palisades.  Maybe Wiley should just close his mouth and clean up his own yard and community law first!

Of course Wiley also chose to lecture the town of Clayton about dealing with Art 10 and how wonderful our approach to Art 10 was and wonderful our wind zoning law was, and how they should write the NYPSC to support our law. 

But the comedy on all that was that apparently Clayton didn’t agree with Mr. Wiley.  Here is a quote from their letter to the NYPSC.

“The Town Board of the Town of Clayton is elected to represent our community and to make decisions that are in the best interests of the community as a whole. With that said, we, as a board are concerned about the current Cape Vincent Ordinance as it would allow a potential negative impact on the scenic vista from the St. Lawrence River.”

Aaaahhhhh… Imagine that!!!    Sorry Mr. Wiley…I guess they saw through your bullshit!!! It’s scary when Justin Taylor starts making sense!!!

Now if you read the NY Times editorial,  mention is made how NJ just quietly altered their zoning to allow such a tower.  I wonder if Wiley disagrees with that too?

Hhhmmm…you mean like our very own CV ZBA just outright distorting the law, and then a new zoning committee re-writing our own CV zoning so our town supervisor Mr. Hirschey and others can put up what would otherwise be illegal solar projects?????

So where was Wiley back then?  Not a word of protest.

Isn’t that what you call hypocritical?  Yup, I think so!

  Of course Wiley can get away with all this nonsense because now he accepts no comments, and depends on a mostly non critical think audience who will swallow whole when he or the Hirschey govt requires it. 

Various friends of mine have had dogs who at times needed to swallow large pills.  The image of them forcing the pill into the dogs mouth, then massaging the dogs throat to make him swallow comes to mind!

The CV zoning law is an absurd joke when it comes to any actual scenic protection for the community.  But Wiley doesn’t say a word!

And this is the guy and his blog that are spouting off about  how we should be protecting CV and the 1000 Islands!!!!