While reading the SASS report I noticed this little gem
which is quoted here.
“Consequently, massive industrial and infrastructure projects
should not be built within the SASS district or within its surrounding
viewshed. There are presently no techniques to mitigate the visual impacts
of these structures because they are so tall, massive and frequently in
motion.’
Well no sh!!.
It took over 8 freakin years to get a report that would finally admit
the obvious!!!! Well good for them. It’s
hard to fathom we are really serious to protect the 1000 Islands region when it
takes nearly a decade to figure this out!!
The second part of that quote that I
underlined is the clincher. I was pushing hard for an industrial wind ban over 8 years yet received lots of criticism
from the supposed “anti wind” faction as a raving irrational lunatic for promoting a ban, and that was to
radical of an approach.
Even Wiley at the JLL blog was sniping that
you can’t go into meeting screaming no wind no wind. Well guess what pal… suck it up and go read
this report and see how many times over and over basically this report suggests
that exact thing!
With this being such an obvious no brainer for
so long, my question is…why in the hell have so many of community governments
along the St. Lawrence River sucked into the idea of trying to use zoning to
“mitigate” the impact of wind turbines …when in fact you can NOT mitigate them
as this report finally recognizes?
So if you can’t mitigate them, then guess
what, you ban them, which I have also been saying for 8 years. Not play games
with zoning and absolutely absurd setbacks fooling yourself into believing you
are somehow controlling what can’t be controlled then patting yourself all over
your back for it.
Traditional zoning is in fact completely impotent to control massive scale industrial wind
development for precisely the reason given in this report…they are way to huge. Zoning set backs are a joke and show complete
ignorance on the part of town officials and their zoning lawyers who have
sucked into this scam. And frankly,
right now they have a lot of egg on their faces trying to support the SASS
designation when their very own land use regulations allow what this report
indicates should not be allowed.
For example in the Cape Vincent zoning law
there is a setback for wind turbines of 1.25 miles from the scenic corridor of
12E, and a two mile setback from the River.
These are absurd jokes…and basically this report is verifying that.
When CV drafted its law, I submitted a paper
to the committee that gave well considered rationales based on visual research
and my own experience at numerous wind farms on both ends of the country, that
they should not zone for wind development which is pointless, but instead ban
the development.
Sadly they completely ignored that input and
in fact some refused to read it at all. In
CV the model laws that they review had only the setback approach and no
consideration of a prohibition. Now we
have this SASS approach and our land use laws on these tall structures in
numerous local towns will be completely
out of step with the designation if we get it.
Not only are they out of sync with reality in
the local zoning on wind development, but wind zoning laws are invitations to wind developers, when
this reports states we should not have this type of development in the first
place.
And as we speak a developer is trying to bring
back the Galloo Island wind development from the dead.
Maybe it’s time for our town leaders to get in
sync with reality and the painfully obvious now that this report states what
they didn’t have the political courage to deal with in the first place.
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