Please Explain!

The idea of the wind law proponents is to stop wind energy in your community, you would have to write a restrictive wind law, so restrictive essentially the wind developer could not reasonably develop a viable project.  They hope the developer would then walk away.  And to accomplish this any law they draft would have to be extremely restrictive to preclude wind development.

However, to accomplish this they have to get past the formidable  NYS Art 10 law and siting board that will be actually the ones to determine if any local zoning law will  prevail and become law, since home rule has been removed by the state on this large scale wind issue. 

This means the town can not just write  wind energy zoning and make the developer abide, till the state determines if the law is "reasonable" for the developer.   Of course we are left completely in the dark by the state as to what "reasonable" means.  As a result we have a huge intensive debate going as to the correct approach to zone for wind.

Quoted below is the language that addresses this local law and preemption issue directly from the Art 10 law.

"...except that the board may elect not to apply, in whole or in part, any local ordinance, law, resolution or other action or any regulation issued thereunder or any local standard or requirement, including, but not limited to, those relating to the interconnection to and use of water, electric, sewer, telecommunication, fuel and steam lines in public rights of way, which would be otherwise applicable if it finds that, as applied to the proposed facility, such is unreasonably burdensome in view of the existing technology..."

 

In my view, what restrictive wind law supporters fail to explain sufficiently or recognize is how they expect their law to prevail, when it is very clear the state can preempt any such very restrictive law.  It seems fairly obvious that any law so restrictive a developer can't even develop a project would NOT be reasonable to the developer nor the state, and would have a very high probability of failure to withstand Art 10 preemption. 

 

So the first thing they need to do is step back an answer a couple simple yet KEY questions central to the ENTIRE debate. 

 

Why was Art 10 passed by the state?

 

Why does it have the power to preempt local zoning laws?

 

And why is a very restrictive wind law the way to battle against Art 10 under this state law with preemptive power over local zoning?

 

How do you expect your very restrictive law to prevail against a process designed in large part to further wind energy in NYS by preempting very restrictive local zoning laws?

 

So far the restrictive wind law supporters have not, or can not answer these simple questions sufficiently...or at all.  Let's see if they can answer them here.