Wind Company Met Towers Still Standing - Look Here If You Want The REAL Story

Both blogs Pandora's box of Rocks and JLL are reporting on the wind company’s meteorological study towers (met towers) and the permits for those towers.  They don’t have all the facts.  Wanna hear the real story??? Then look here, and see how it still very much applies today.

Back around June or July of  2006 the first action I took in the wind battle before even being heavily involved in WPEG was to ask  the town clerk  Arlene Ingerson about the met tower off
Constance Rd.   I was told the CV Planning Board had that info.   So I attended a PB meeting around the same time and asked Edsall a question about the tower.   This was my first experience with Edsall and it was what actually tipped me off  that there was something really really screwy going on with the wind issue in Cape Vincent.  I did not know Edsall and he did not have a clue who I was. When I respectfully inquired he lit into me with a vengeance about how I was trying to trap them in to some FOIL violation and how he was sick of people bothering him about his conflicts of interest yada yada yada!  He was stupid enough to volunteer way too much information on the conflicts!  He assumed his bullying was enough to deflect this little piss ant seasonal who didn’t have a right to be asking these questions! Well think back Richie…this didn’t end very well for you now did it!  You pissed off the wrong guy (people)! But it didn’t end there.  Then Andy Binsley, a former PB member started up.  He started yelling at me that my questions were stupid, and a waste of his time.  Finally Edsall I think realized what  flaming asses they had made of themselves and that they had revealed way too much information too me (who was a stranger outsider) and he finally answered my questions.  He also said I could FOIL the town clerk for the met tower permits which ironically when I did I didn’t know it would include the permit for the met tower on his in-laws property too along Burnt Rock Rd.  Then things started to add up why he came unglued on me and I got real interested. I guess you could say in one way this was  actually the  starting point for me of the long investigative process that with others brought the AG Cuomo to town.  That meeting is what prompted me to start investigating the CV wind fiasco because it was obvious from Edsall’s aggressive behavior  that something really smelled and I figured that if these guys wanted a fight…I would give them one. After this experience with Edsall way back from summer 2006 you can not begin to fathom how pleased I am he and Binsley are GONE!!! 

                             Below are some documents related to the met towers that tell more of the story.

 It's important to note the date of the above letter and the notation from the town clerk that files will be available Aug 10th.  Note the date on the letter below.  You can bet money Edsall saw my above  letter!!!  Why would it take 10 days to get these relatively simple documents from a file and copy them???  Look at the next document.  The original met tower permit was for 3-18 months, and if you use the 18 months from about June or July 2002 of the original permit this tower should have come down around the end of 2003.  that tower has NEVER come down.

Note first that Hopper is now the project manager and NY Wind Power is now AES/Acciona.  But note the date on this renewal letter, of July 20,2006.   It is more than 3 YEARS after the original permit expired.  In my FOIL requests there came NO letters of any renewals within that 3 year period and none at the end of 2003 like there should have been.  Is it just  sheer coincidence that Hopper's renewal letter is dated only 9 days before my request, after his tower was sitting there with NO renewal for  3 YEARS!!!  Now back in 2006 I started to get the picture of what was going on and how fast and loose it was being played, and how bad it might get, and what quick wind money had already done.

I think what happened was Edsall got a little nervous when I  started sniffing around about these towers, and told Hooper he better get his ass in gear with a renewal letter and permit to bring the tower up to code. I would not have put it past them to back date the letter so it appeared Hopper had renewed the tower BEFORE my request letter.  Maybe that was the reason for the 10 day delay.  Either way this shows how the good ole boy wind permit system worked back then.  Put up your tower and leave it up ...no problem...we have this this all under control!!! This new letter is a request to renew the tower for 3 years till 2009.  I'm not sure there are any actual PB minutes showing this renewal. This would not be the last letter of questionable credibility to come out of Edsall's planning board.

Below are the permit maps for the Edsall in- law met tower on Burnt Rock Rd. that probably should come down, and the tower on Constance Rd.

   Now what about the met tower on Edsall's property???  Above is  the original letter  Pandora's Box of Rocks is showing which I have had since 2006.  Note that the letter says NO permit is required, yet NY Wind apparently had to get a permit for their tower on Constance Rd. on the property of Frank Giaquinto.
Note that the "Board determined " no permit was needed.  Really... or did Edsall determine this all by himself and write the letter?  It doesn't show here the little initials for the signature, but the letter is not actually signed by Edsall.  I've  seen his actual signature on his conflict disclosure letter I have and this ain't it. This letter is signed by Tracy Wood the wife of the former wind conflicted zoning enforcement officer Alan Wood since she was the PB secretary then.  That is not all that unusual or illegal for a secretary to do this, but what an interesting matrix this becomes.  By this time in 2006 my antenna was really up and buzzing! This tower had a two year permit but has been up since 2006 and I  don't know if there have been any renewals.

See below...sounds like a permit for other met towers was definitely needed, just not Edsall's in - laws.

Note the letter below from Nick Hiza of Greenlight, which became BP.  It is a little confusing since it says the tower on Edsall in-laws has been permitted and is up.  I thought it didn't need a permit according to Edsall?  I guess that word "permit is rather loosely used!

 The document below shows a power of attorney for Edsall's wife to handle all wind power issues for her parents. In effect Edsall has control and NO permit is needed.  How cozy!!

The next letter is from Hiza again and verifies that Greenlight will take the Edsall's tower down in two years.  Well maybe not Nick!!!

And what about that met tower out on County Route 8 ( Millens Bay Rd).  At least Binsely had the sense to recuse since it was his relatives, but it didn't seem to bother PB member Karen Bourcy with her conflict of interest.   PB minutes discussing that tower look at the bottom of the minutes.

Then there is th met tower on the Wood farm property, at least when I  was there last fall 2011. PB minutes concerning it.  Note here that Bourcy doesn't recuse herself and this tower is on her family's farm property.
Look at the bottom of  the first page and the top of the second.  And where is Karen Bourcy today?  The Hirschey govt has her sitting as an alternate on the planning board despite her conflicts.

Why is all this important? When I started investigating this cesspool I could see what was going to happen when and if the BIG wind complex towers arrived.  We would be screwed and it was unacceptable. Even way back in 2006 it showed just how far they would go to get what they wanted. It's insidious because when all this backroom good ole boy nonsense over met towers was going on, and all these votes were taken by PB officers on other critical wind stuff too with the conflicts in place , NONE of them had officially disclosed by LAW their conflicts.  That is a violation of NY ethnics laws outlined in Article 18 the 800 sections of NY Gen. Municipal Law and is punishable as a misdeanor. They were hiding their conflicts officially and doing all this dirty work for the wind developers.  They didn't disclose until 2008 when the OWH lawyers figured out how far out on a legal limb these people were, and they better disclose and hope nobody noticed or they could be screwed.  Well I noticed but WPEG was another matter.

This also points up why I was so insistent with WPEG that we should put aside all this stuff with the birds and bats and sound and go for the throat on this illegal stuff.  They never really pursued it fully, and in my opinion we gave away one of the best chances to go after these guys.

Note my letter below back in 2007  a full year before they did legal disclosure.  My research indicated these town officers should legally disclose conflicts, and had not done so.    After all the stuff I saw I  wanted this letter on file as proof they had not legally disclosed so they could not back date any disclosure letters in a scam to look legal.  I wanted a legal trap! People on JLL call some of us legal amateurs.  Well I am not a lawyer, but I'll bet hardly any of those cute one line commenters who say that had to, or were actually dealing with any of this legal crap back then. Yet  there sits Bourcy still on the planning board and the Hirschey govt appointed Mr. Burns who may still have a conflictt and I am not aware of any official legal disclosures from him.  Don't we ever learn!!! Maybe people will now realize why I get a little upset when I see conflicted people on the PB, especially Bourcy. It is hypocrisy! Mr. Burns may be a great guy, I don't doubt that, but he and the Hirschey govt need to clarify his potential conflict publicly.

Now K at Pandora's may be a good researcher, but she didn't have the complete story and she never had to prepare it for the NY AG's Office, the Jefferson County DA or the FBI!   And it is important right up to today because Bourcy and Burn's have conflicts on the existing planning board. Why hasn't she or Wiley at JLL raised any questions about THAT?  Of course when your husband sits on the town govt appointed by the  Hirschey govt. I guess your research gets a little fuzzy!

I agree these towers should come down.  Mr. Hirschey and Mr. MacSherry the PB chairman should clean up this met tower mess left over from a conflicted govt.  Those towers are like giant fingers saying f--- you! to the whole CV community from a former cesspool govt and the wind developers they support.  One more thing for Mr. Hirschey to investigate!


Oh... and  foot note for the record.    A couple years ago when it became clear Cuomo as AG was probably not going to do anything about the CV ethics cesspool, I sent K at Pandora's most of the research I (and others) had done for her to use since there were only a very very few people who had it compiled in one document, or file. So when you see some of that stuff on her blog...there is a good possibility it came from material and research I  and others have done on the AG investigation.  Of course maybe she
re - FOILED everything and is putting the whole thing back together by herself!

 So what do I get in return?  I get blocked from her blog because she can't stomach anybody asking pointed questions or disagreeing with the Hirschey govt. Same with Wiley JLL.  Go figure...and some people wonder why I get angry!

 So much for good research and integrity!