Cape Vincent Councilman John Byrne Announces He Will Run For NY Assembly Against Addie Russell

You can see the story at this WWNY TV link below.

http://www.wwnytv.com/news/local/Byrne-Town-Council-Member-To-Run-For-Assembly-243018721.html

I wonder if he asked Urban Hirchey's permission????  Time for some Republican support for Byrne's unquestioning loyalty to Hirschey????

The WWNY story also includes this quote.

"Byrne is well known in Cape Vincent as an opponent of wind power development in the town."

Really?????  Is that why he voted to pass Hirschey's zoning law that allows for some industrial wind development in Cape Vincent???

If Byrne wins this should make for an interesting shuffle on the town board with Macsherry in the mix. 

Oh... this should be fun!!!

Are Cape Vincent Town Leaders Kidding Us???? Seriously????

  Now this is really a classic!!!

On the JLL Blog, Wiley in the quote below refers  to a recent CV Article 10 Advisory Committee meeting discussion.  Underlining emphasis is mine. ( By the way Rick, the date of March 17, 2013 should be 2014)

"The Committee has prepared and reviewed documents that, depending the Town Board's Approval,  will be submitted to the New York State Public Service Commission at the appropriate time.  Judge Agresta has set a control date of March 17, 2013. If British Petroleum has not found a buyer for their Cape Vincent project by that time, the committee is prepared to take appropriate actions to end "Cape Vincent's long, emotionally fraught history with industrial wind."

Now there is something really goofy or bizarre about this quote.  Read the underlined part again and think about it. Did Wiley actually get this correct?

Sooooo....as long as BP is successful at selling their project, then it is perfectly OK with the Town Board to let us be dragged into MORE "emotionally fraught history with industrial wind "????

In Wiley's usual spin as the Hirschey PR spokesman...is this supposed to be good news????
Is a new wind developer going to bring us some new panacea in wind development that BP didn't.

Are these guys that desperate to invite a wind developer in and see if they can battle Art. 10 with our new zoning and win? 

Some days I just sit here scratching my head trying to figure out the nonsense as  this govt gets so irrational in its appeasement of the State and as a result spews out this spin of its supposed "tough position",  while at the same time being a patsy to Art. X and BP.  

Seems to me, to be just a weee bit more rational about nearly a decade of our community being beat to death by industrial wind, it might make just a little more common sense to end our industrial wind/Art 10 nightmare once and for all no matter whether BP sells or not, and no matter who the next damn developer might be.

And the other goofy thing about this supposed "tough talk" is...if BP doesn't sell it might be just as likely the ending of our wind nightmare might have nothing to do with the town board. Art. 10 and Agresta may be the ones to end it.

This quote is another one that should go in the museum... like the town saying Art.10 is fair and even handed and balanced process!!!!

AND... just because BP doesn't sell, or if Art 10 ends BP's application process, who's to say another wind developer won't come along and open another application and drag us through the same bullshit for who knows how long.

When the hell are these people going to face up to reality?  If you want to end this wind nightmare you are going to have to do it yourself, and it won't entail writing wind zoning that keeps the industrial  wind door open to some wind development, and by appeasing Art. 10!!!

Makes me wonder how much influence our new deputy town supervisor Dick Macsherry had on this goofy position.

Blog Censoring? Yup, You Can Set Your Watch By It!

The other two Cape Vincent blogs, contrary to what the Aubertines think, do silence people on a regular basis to tightly control the information bubble for those people who find it inconvenient to think for themselves.

They are all for open govt...

...as long as you don't actually say anything in the open about the current CV govt!!!!

Heal The Community Meeting???

Saw this comments on the blog JLL.

"Was anyone reading this invited to the Heal the Community meeting a week or so ago at Aubrey' s?"

Anybody have any details on this, or if there actually was one?  I thought Aubreys was closed.

Watertown Daily Times - ARE YOU KIDDING????

Using the link below you can read an article in the WDT about FORMER NY Sen. Darrell Aubertine and his son Paul, who was just elected to the Cape Vincent Town Board.

 http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/article/20140127/NEWS03/701279959

 Geeees…WDT are you kidding.  Where did serious journalism go????

But first.....

I think from what I have” observed and experienced” that my readers would be very naïve to believe this WDT article and its negative statements about the blogs is  just a Democratic fluff piece. 

Without a lot of detail....let me put it this way … I think there are plenty of Cape Vincent Republican town officials I am betting are not exactly happy with blogs right now, but this statement just happens to be coming out of the mouths of Democrats at the moment. 

After reading it this piece I had to wipe off all the marshmallow fluff all over me and my computer screen.

And I noticed as the WDT reporter Ted Booker was reporting on Darrell Aubertine’s glowing job history of public service  that Booker failed to mention WHY the senior Aubertine was working as the AG. Commissioner, and now for  the Comptroller’s Office.  That would be because the NNY voters had enough of Darrell Aubertine’s wind ethics and related shenanigans, and booted him out of office!

Then there is this statement by the senior Aubertine which should be an extreme embarrassment to both the paper and the Aubertines.

“Unlike the newspaper, you can’t silence any opposition or differences in opinion” in blogs, added Darrel. “It’s counterproductive and takes away from the legitimacy of a counterargument to try and find common ground.”

Makes you wonder what prompted this nonsense.  Has the WDT and other newspapers actually been silencing opposing opinions on Darrell’s behalf?????  And I would really like to hear what both Aubertines “common ground” is.  What do they think would actually make the community less divisive. Somehow I’m betting that would be give us a lot of wind turbines, or some absurd compromise!

The fact that this would come out of the mouth of a person who would claim to publicly represent people for a career, and may attempt to represent people in a federal office, is just mind boggling.  And it is just as mind boggling the paper would print it without question.

Do the Aubertines both have any fundamental grasp on American history for God’s sake!!!

And this statement isn’t even remotely accurate on two accounts.  On my blog I have posted lots of opposing opinions from both sides of the wind issue. There have been plenty of attacks on the blogs includinh a law suit.  The other blogs have also in the past posted opposing opinions. 

However, where this statement also fails is that the other blogs DO silence opinions on a regular basis lately…mine and others who question our current town govt.

And if Booker really had any brass as a reporter at all, why didn’t he question Aubertine on the investigation that then NYAG Cuomo did of Cape Vincent officials where the senior Aubertine’s letter condoning the CV officials conflicts of interest was an included document and his wind ethics was up for discussion?   An investigation that conveniently disappeared as Cuomo appointed Darrell Aubertine as his Ag. Commissioner.

I called Deanna Nelson the local Assist. AG in Watertown and even she didn’t have a clue what happened to it.  Said she would get back to me.  That was Oct. 2013!

But to Mr. Booker…. Now there is something to report on if you really want to do some serious journalism. 

As to how the son Paul Aubertine will perform, in fairness we will get to see how that plays out.

And are my readers aware that from reliable CV Republican  sources I was told that both Hirschey and Bragdon at one time entertained plans to appoint Paul Aubertine to a council seat when Mickey Orvis stepped down!  And that would have been when Michelle Oswald was available as well. Nobody in the Hirschey govt. has explained that one yet!

Actually I was told they thought it would be fair!!!

If you think the CV wind battle is as simple as Republican vs. Democrat, so you can be shuffled along to one side or the other for the convenience of not having to think…then you are really missing the point!  Especially the stuff you just don’t see!

 

When in the newspaper business they talk about a “scoop”, it shouldn’t be spoon feeding your readers this type of marshmallow fluff!!!!

 

 

 

 

Kimball Nebraska, Cape Vincent, NY - What Do We Share?

As I read the letter by Mrs. Brennen in the WDT talking about the Cape Vincent community, my wife reminded me of a place we visited on the American high plains called Kimball NE.

Coming and going on our annual migration from Flagstaff, AZ  to Cape Vincent, NY and back we often fly  commercial airlines.  But many times in the past we have driven that trip both ways by various routes just to see the country.  And sometimes we would purposefully get off the interstate and cruise the back roads.  I have not traveled abroad yet beyond Mexico and Canada.  I decided I wanted to first see what my own country was about in more detail.  Kimball NE was one of our explorations and held a stark weird reality.

One such trip took us out of the Rocky Mountains of Colorado out across the vast American high plains.  One place of interest we wanted to see and camp was the national grass lands that have been preserved to leave examples of the sweeping high plains as they once were.  And I loved cruising through the little communities along the way.

This trip took us on route 71 south of Kimball, NE.  We noticed repeated bunker like facilities all along the route into Kimball.  It didn't take long to figure out these were underground nuclear missile silos.  I had seen similar facilities near Tucson, AZ.  The signs on the fences saying it was a govt. facility, and as politely as they could telling you, you  could officially and legally  be shot dead if you attempted to cross onto the facility.

The next day we went into Kimball NE. to get gas before we hit I-80 the black strip  conveyer belt of semi trucks and cars heading us on the long trip toward  CV.

Kimball is an idyllic little high plains town.  A place right out of the movies.  Nice well kept prairie houses, pickett fences, mom and pop store fronts,some big grain silos common in many prairie towns and a nice lazy town park. 

It was a classic post card town, a nice quiet lazy place where everybody was probably friendly and the cares of the world seemed a long way off. Much like Cape Vincent really...the friendly caring CV  Mrs. Brennen AND Mr. Landers describes in their letters to the WDT.

Well maybe not exactly.

What struck us as  extremely ironc in Kimball, was what was erected in their park.  You might have thought a statue to war veterans, or a town leader or founder, or something like that...maybe a fountain. 

Nope... a full sized decommissioned Titan I - ICBM nuclear missile!!!  A device we would use to rain down a hellish nightmare of fire and brimstone on other countries if it came to that!  And right here in idyllic, peaceful, friendly little Kimball with kids and dogs running around on a lazy warm June high prairie afternoon, was the vivid monument to that freakish potential holocaust!  What a mind bender!

The only thing that seemed to be missing was some vapor spewing from the rocket and a countdown as it sat there looking ready for launch with a payload that might help end the Earth as we know it!

http://www.lasr.net/travel/city.php?Titan+Missile&TravelTo=NE0705006&VA=Y&amtp;Attraction_ID=NE0705006a003

It was an odd reality.  Then it dawned on me.  This little idyllic high plains town representing much of the best of Americana without a care could be vaporized in a millisecond by some commander in the Soviet Union 1000's of miles away.  Actually with the concentration of nuke silos in this area the entire region could become nothing more than a burnt nuclear crater.

Kimball's idyllic atmosphere was in many ways a façade.  Oh the town was real and idyllic all right, and the people we spoke to were very nice and friendly and genuine.  But when you pulled back the curtain a bit the other reality was like a weird Twilight Zone episode.  As people in Kimball went about their peaceful friendly small community lives, just behind the veil  was a horrible unspeakable nightmare reality that at any nano - second and one button push and Kimball would simply cease to exist.  The absolute best and worst of human kind wrapped up into one little peaceful Nebraska community, as the moms pushed their kids on swings, and dogs chased balls, and kids chased each other playing tag and elders sat on benches having a conversation about the old days or town events.  In the next second it could all be ashes, and they just went about their lives as if it simply didn't exist.  The strange experience in Kimball and the extremes that were expressed there  has stuck with me a long long time.  It's right up there with the strange experiences we have had around the secret CIA airbase at Area 51 NV as the security patrols stalk you across the isolated desert on public land trying to keep you away from some of America's deepest and darkest military secrets.  Another American experience we have run into on America's back roads!

It occurs to me that with the onslaught of industrial wind in Cape Vincent we are much the same as  Kimball, NE in some respects to the tourist who cruises through.   In many ways we are still an idyllic quiet, friendly, small town nestled against the beautiful river and lake.  Yet when you pull back the curtain there is a horrible nightmare we have been suffering through when the wind developers targeted our community, not for war but for profit, and in effect dropped a social nuclear weapon on the heart of our community.

Mrs. Brennen's letter as a reaction to Mr. Lander's letter at first glance look very opposed.  But they aren't really.  Both are frustrated and to their credit are simply trying to somehow deal with it as survivors of the horrible reality thrust upon our community.  A reality were someone 1000's of miles from CV saw our community as a target on a map, simply because they thought our town might be breezy, and pushed a button setting into motion  a freakish nightmare to descend down on the social fabric of our community.  And the developers pulled back the veil and refuse to let it shut.

 Harry  Landers and Liz Brennen and all of us no matter which side we are on are the survivors of the nightmare wind developers brought us,  hoping to somehow piece the community back together. Back to better days, back to better times.  That may not have exactly been CV, but it was what we thought it was, and if nothing else something we could hope for.

That is what they took away from us.  Hope!

  Before the wind developers turned us from living our lives in relative peace into struggling as survivors.   Yet behind the façade of nice hellos and helping your neighbor in a small town, still the nightmare just won't go away, no matter how polite we are and how many piano concerts we have even though we try to ignore it or simply survive within  it somehow.

We don't have a monument in the park like Kimball that openly expresses a frightening reality.  The monument we have is hidden and is personal, a  burden and frustration we all carry deep inside. Something both Landers and Brennen are trying to deal with like the rest of us.

Kimball NE really had no choice.  They were sucked up into the  frightening reality of geopolitics, and their landscape became a tool to that end. 

But the reality in CV may be slightly different.

The reality and choice all of us must face here is that the nightmare isn't going to go away, no matter how many letters we write to anybody and no matter which side you think you are on.  We must take control and make it go away ourselves.  Nightmares only end when you shake yourself from a deep sleep!

And we can't do that by ignoring the ugly reality that keeps forcing itself on us and appeasing  and compromising with the very forces that pushed the button and brought this nightmare to our community and to ourselves forcing us to be mostly survivors.

Kimball NE has never suffered a nuclear attack, and hopefully for all of us they never will.  We in CV on the other hand in effect have, and at best will be only survivors hoping for the good old days until we actually do something substantial and lasting about it.

Art Pundt

A Letter To The WDT By Cape Vincent Resident Mrs. Elisabeth Brennen

  Use the link below to see Mrs. Brennen's WDT letter.

http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/article/20140124/OPINION02/701249965

Below is a quote from Mrs. Brennen's letter.

"I know that when people in the Cape see a person in need, they don’t ask themselves what side of an issue that person is on before they step forward to help. They just help."

Although I am certain Mrs. Brennen is genuine in her spirit to shed a positive light on the Cape Vincent community and I give her credit for that, but I am not sure I agree with this overall statement.

They just help????  let's examine that statement for a  minute.

Now many of my readers already know that Mrs. Brennen is a very influential voice in Cape Vincent, particularly in the village since she is a village trustee and involved in many important CV activities.

However, this  makes me wonder where Mrs. Brennen's spirit and influence was last summer when CV town zoning officials ignored the pleas of a fellow woman citizen Mary Grogan and her son, while the same zoning officials made a travesty of the town zoning law at significant expense to Mrs. Grogan as her rights.  Even though it was the town govt. not the village govt that created the zoning mess that hurt Mary Grogan.  I assume Mrs. Brennen's letter is referring to the town and village, not just the village.

Town officials even had to admit what had occurred with the CV town zoning process against Mrs. Grogan would not have held up in court.

I assisted Mrs. Grogan as best I could, and a couple other people spoke on her behalf, but otherwise Mrs. Grogan was a lone voice trying to protect her rights and her property to no avail.

 With this egregious situation even hitting the WDT as a front page story...the same paper Mrs. Brennen posted her letter in and I am sure she reads,  I don't recall many CV citizens  nor Mrs Brennen just helping.  Many citizens knew quite well what was going on but very few were willing to just help.  And had there been more outrage by Cape citizens maybe it would have made a difference.

What's far worse is that the people who should have helped and didn't despite Mary's direct and repeated pleas to them, were town officials. 

Of course it was an election year, and the town supervisor was even caught up in this same zoning mess!!!  Apparently that was more important than just helping! 

It is one thing to write a nice letter to the editor to shed the Cape Vincent community in a positive light, as a small friendly community where people jump to help one another.

However, it's quite another thing to take some actions that actually demonstrate Mrs. Brennen's claims.

I think Mrs. Brennen should call Mrs. Grogan and ask her how she feels about the overall CV town village community and Mrs. Brennen's letter! 

And just for clarification, Mrs. Grogan is the woman on Cty Rt 7 who has a private wind turbine zoning screw up looming her house. She has pleaded with the current govt to do something about that issue too.  Then she had to deal with the solar zoning fiasco on the same property.  Her property values have probably tanked as a result...and virtually no one has stepped up to just help, especially town officials.

After last summer I doubt Mrs. Grogan not is quite as enthusiastic as Mrs. Brennen about the CV community's willingness to step up and help.

I think who in the CV community will just help often depends on how much it will upset the "well established " apple cart!

* A final note.  I do want to praise CV ZBA official Ms. Hester Chase who heard Mrs. Grogan's case when it came before the  ZBA, and did show the type of spirit Mrs. Brennen is talking about while attempting to help Mrs. Grogan by voting to deny a permit that will now have a high impact on Mrs. Grogan's property.

Yup... We Want To Make Sure They Are Comfortable!!!

A portion of an article in the WDT March 2011 talking about the Cape Vincent planning board.

The CV PB at this time would have been:

Rich Edsall - Chair
Tom Rienbeck
Patrick MacCarthy
Karen Bourcy
Dick Macsherry

"The board agreed to a set of criteria for Acciona's St. Lawrence Wind Farm in October, but new Planning Board member Richard H. Macsherry wants to have broader considerations, such as a property-value-assurance plan.

"It is not just the developer who says this is what we want to propose," he said. "The tail has been wagging the dog and now the dog is going to take the tail back."

The board agreed to a set of criteria for Acciona's St. Lawrence Wind Farm in October, but new Planning Board member Richard H. Macsherry wants to have broader considerations, such as a property-value-assurance plan.

"It is not just the developer who says this is what we want to propose," he said. "The tail has been wagging the dog and now the dog is going to take the tail back."

The board did not set a work session to discuss the criteria, but Mr. Macsherry said Planning Board Chairman Richard J. Edsall and member Karen Bourcy should be involved.

The two have stated potential conflicts of interest with leases by themselves or family members.

"It is incumbent on us to have criteria that all five of us are comfortable with," Mr. Macsherry said."

So what does Mr. Macsherry, who is a wild card at this point in my opinion, think is the type of industrial wind siting in CV that his other 4 very pro wind colleagues, two with major wind conflicts,  are going to be comfortable with?   And apparently he has no problem with those blatant conflicts, and letting those PB members participate.

Mr. Macsherry says about wind siting criteria that the tail (the wind developers) has been wagging the dog (the planning board and the town).  So how is it he doesn't grasp that with his 4 pro wind colleagues participating in wind siting, two with wind conflicts...

...that the tail would still be wagging the dog!!!! 

Silence???

As you see in the post below I have listed the members of the 2014 Cape Vincent Zoning Law Revision Committee.

I looked on JLL and Pandy's blog going back a few weeks and I don't see any mention of this committee or especially the people on it.  Please correct me if I am wrong about that.

You would think that with all they have said previously about pro wind and the Dems. that the names
Paul Mason who as far as we know has a wind lease and Paul Aubertine whose family has wind leases might raise at least a comment by the other bogs.

So I would assume if there is any discussion about revisions to the zoning regulations on wind that Mr. Mason and Mr. Aubertine would recuse themselves????

I don't know about Mr. Aubertine, but I can't fathom that Paul Mason wouldn't raise a fuss and try to water down the current zoning law wind regulations.

Wonder if someone has passed along the message to the other blogs to stay quiet on the entire  issue.

After all we have to "heal" the community and be "reasonable"!

The New Cape Vincent Zoning Law Review Committee 2014

Mike Bourcy - Jeff. County Planning


Bob Brown - Chair CV Planning Board

Paul Docteur  - CV Planning Board

Dennis Faulknham - Chair CV ZBA

Ed Hludenzski - CV ZBA

Jim Millington - CV ZEO

Paul Aubertine - CV Town Board - Replaces Urban Hirschey

Kathy Pierce - Recording Sec.


Steve Hall - CV Citizen

Paul Mason - CV Citizen

Corky Martusewicz - CV Citizen

Failure To Grasp???

This is an ad I researched and designed for WPEG in early 2009. Several people in WPEG (and out)
helped edit it and get it  placed as a half page ad in the WDT.  We thought the critical wind conflicts of interest should be very publicly revealed so people could see what was going on and just  how badly our town govt was conflicted on the wind issue and how that was tearing apart the community.

It was carefully researched mostly from the town's own records..

Of course pro wind had a fit, and  former pro wind town supervisor Rienbeck went ballistic, even though he didn't have a conflict nor was he mentioned.  Pro wind never really challenged the information.  They couldn't because it was all true.  The only objection  I remember to the specific info was somebody said we didn't know what we were talking about because we had spelled Jeri Mason's name with two r's.

But wait...I almost forgot, there actually were two other significant objections.  And those two people asked me what the hell did I think I was doing and accomplishing?  Was I just trying to piss people off?  They thought it would piss off Rienbeck and pro wind. 

Now keep in mind since then this ad has been posted a number of times on the other CV blogs to show the conflicts that existed.

So who objected????

Current CV Councilman Clif Schneider ... and current CV Deputy Supervisor Richard Macsherry.

I had some real heated emails and discussions over this ad with them.  At this critical point they were far more interested in appeasing Rienbeck than facing the obvious truth.

What was it they failed to grasp then about how the conflicts of interest  had been tearing our town apart for 4 long years, and was the central issue to all our CV industrial wind nightmare????

And later Schneider would run for council on  mostly an ethics platform against some of the very people in this ad as the blogs that supported him would repost this ad. Go figure.   I guess it fit his agenda better then!  Actually the ad was ahead of its time.

But the important question today since these two men are still in critical positions in our gov is what kind of thinking process put Schneider and Macsherry so far off the mark on this issue when it was ripping our community apart in critical 2009 and a real no brainer to see what was happening?

This ad was a WPEG sanctioned ad which included Hirschey the head of WPEG then.  This would have put Schneider and Macsherry thinking at direct odds with WPEG and Hirschey.

They were working on a wind law with Rienbeck and I guess they thought a good compromise was in the works.

That is how a fixation on compromise can distort your reality.  And now these two men and the Hirschey govt are appeasing the Art. X system, saying it is fair and even handed as it removed our home rule.

Once again with a lot more riding on it this time and Art. X leaving us twisting in the wind so BP can have more time to sell their project and stay within the Art. X process...is there something these men fail to grasp????

Want To See An Odd Blend Cape Vincent Politics??? Wonder What Was Going On Here???

 The documents  you see below are  portions of the Cape Vincent town board minutes from Dec. 2010.  As you read keep in mind that Art. X is not in the picture yet, there is no wind law, and wind development siting is still in hands of Edsall and his pro wind planning board. 

However, George Mingle and Andrew Binsley have quit the PB, so new people need to be appointed.  Hirschey and Bragdon were elected to the TB in fall 2009. Now they have to help select and vote for new PB appointments.

Note that after the executive session to discuss  potential selections to the PB, Mickey Orvis (pro wind) puts Dick Macsherry's name up for nomination.  And look who seconds it, Marty Mason (pro wind).  These two councilman have been staunchly pro wind, and one has wind contracts.  I wonder what they were thinking when they put Macsherry's name in play?  Think they did that without talking to their pro wind conflicted PB chairman Edsall????  Not likely.  So why are all these pro wind people lining up behind Macsherry?

Take a look at the vote.  Macsherry  is appointed unanimously with the votes of both pro wind Masons and Orvis.  If they thought Macsherry was going to go against their wind agenda they had the majority to block  him right then and there and Hirschey and Bragdon could not stop it.  I doubt the pro wind guys thought Macsherry was going to stand in their way in any significant manner or his name would not have been floated by them.

Now note what Brooks Bragdon says during the discussion on Macsherry.

" Brooks Bragdon said he thought Mr. Macsherry was a compromise candidate who was very qualified"

A compromise candidate?????  Hhhmmmm!

Essentially Hirschey is voting with pro wind.  He supports Macsherry who is nominated with apparently little concern by 3 very pro wind councilmen Orvis, Mason, and Mason, keeping in mind Macsherry ran as Dem. and friendly to Rienbeck and crew but wasn't elected. 

Then Hirschey votes for pro wind MacCarthy, even though his  Rep. colleague Bragdon apparently strongly opposes MacCarthy.  MacCarthy who is nominated by pro wind Orvis and seconded by pro wind Don Mason!

Hirschey... along with Bragdon in one case... has voted along to stack the critical planning board controlling the wind issue for pro wind, and with Macsherry as a compromiser at this point friendly enough  with pro wind to whiz right through his appointment vote!!!

Now I realize Hirschey and Bragdon had no real power then since they had no majority.  That hope was stripped away when Macsherry ran for TB and probably sucked up enough critical votes that could have gone to John Byrne and might have given Hirschey a majority. By why just go along?
Why not at least do a protest vote?

So what exactly is Hirschey's thinking  here? It boggles my mind! Does he think he can appease pro wind and "heal" the community?  Does he really think they will just roll over and compromise with him, and he has Macsherry ( who Bragdon says is a compromise candidate!) their to broker some type of  BS deal pro wind might be happy enough with???

Very odd allegiances!

 But keep in mind Hirschey has never run anti wind, but has instead made some comments over time that he is not against wind.

And there is another odd thing here.  Bragdon while objecting to MacCarthy says that candidate Bob Brown is "stratospherically'"qualified with his apparent long experience in zoning.

So how come he isn't nominating Brown and Hirschey seconding Brown.  Macsherry who has virtually NO zoning experience got appointed and not Brown?  Why was it apparently so important to get Macsherry on the PB over Brown?

Now fast forward a bit. Hirschey gets a majority after the 2011 elections. He still has a pro wind planning board.  Yet he still doesn't remove the pro wind players!!!  Rienbeck, Edsall, and MacCarthy in July of 2011 quit all on their own.  Macsherry gets quickly moved up to chairman.

And later when the planning board is finally filled in, Hirschey and the TB picks Roche Burns who has a wind lease, and leaves Bourcy with a wind conflict as an alternate and still technically under investigation by the NY AG's office, andalso appoints pro wind Bob Cardarelli
as an alternate.

And people accuse me of hurting the supposed "anti wind"  Hirschey cause?????

I'm glad I keep some of these records!!!

What?

Cape Vincent Town Supervisor Urban Hirschey's comments Jan. 2010 at his first town board meeting after being elected to the position for the first time in fall 2009.

"For those of you who elected me, I may not meet all of your expectations and for those of you who did not vote for me, your worst dreams will not be realized."

Well let's see.  The people who handed Mr. Hirschey his victory ("who elected me") came mostly from the "anti wind" side, or for significantly reduced wind development.  Sounds like he is setting them up for some disappointment...and make no mistake this message is about the wind issue!

The people Mr. Hirschey says ("who did not vote for me") are obviously mostly pro wind.

So what is the message here?  Compromise on a wind farm?????

Good Point Clif !

I finally got to look at the Weed video of the last Cape Vincent Town Board meeting.

 I thought Councilman Clif Schneider brought up a very good point regarding the recent grounding of a ship on a shoal just off Tibbetts Point.  He mentioned that this apparently was not the first time a ship had gone aground there and touched on the potential dangers.

His point also brings up some other  things to think about in this regard.

He also related this event  to a potential  an emergency if a ship went aground and released a substance like oil or a chemical just upstream of DANC’s regional water line.   As Schneider pointed out, this line supplies critical water not just for CV but for a lot of people in our region.  Schneider questioned whether the nav aid buoy might be left in longer on the shoal as the shipping season gets read to close for the winter to avoid further groundings that could turn into a real disaster.

We tend to think of ships drifting by as a  romantic scene giving our community an international seaport flavor.  But like any other technology they can have considerable dangers attached.

The relevance of Schneider’s point is reinforced by the recent release of a chemical in a river water supply in W. Virginia and the emergency that created for several hundred thousand people for many days.

Obviously not all shipping carries grain or other relative harmless cargo passing very close to our community.

If you have been around the 1000 Islands a while you might  remember the barge that went aground in 1976  fog near Alex. Bay down river and leaked a lot of crude oil.  I remember the mess and the cleanup.  I remember standing in front of the Edgewood Resort in A-Bay seeing the oil smeared all over the rocks.  Cape Vincent dodged a bullet that time!!!

Now during this discussion Supervisor Hirschey asked… “don’t ships have depth sounders?”

I' m sure they do have some depth monitoring equipment, however, if you think about it by the time a sounder on a ship tells you it is getting too shallow it’s probably way too late to stop or steer a massive ship out of danger. Don’t know if it is accurate but I have heard it takes almost a mile to fully stop one of these big ships.

Now ships have radar, but without the big metal buoy to reflect back a signal the shoal marker would not show up on radar.

I don’t know how this accident off Tibbetts happened.  But in this technology age of sophisticated satellite  Global Positioning Systems (GPS) and digital mapping I find it hard to believe a ship would not have that instrumentation on board. I teach wilderness navigation to all kinds of agencies including GPS. And in addition have used GPS and marine navigation in my own boating and sea kayaking.

Even if the buoy was not in the water a GPS and mapping chart plotter system  should show you exactly where you are within a few feet in relation to the shoal, and where you are headed, and it is all real time within a few seconds using satellite signals.

Not only that,  you can enter the shoal as a "danger" waypoint that shows on your chart to be avoided, and the GPS will show you if you are headed toward the shoal or too close.  If at anchor the GPS should also have an alarm to indicate you are drifting if your anchor does not hold, say in high wind for example.

So it will be interesting to see why this ship went aground.

This stuff is even available to the average boater.  Garmin Inc, the leader in GPS uses has very sophisticated marine chart plotters.  And some at reasonable cost  and others very expensive.

What these GPS systems do is show your location real time on a marine chart.  They tell you how fast you are moving, and the direction as well as other critical navigation information.  They can even record a track of where you have been so you can back track your exact route if you want to.

But you don’t have to spend  big bucks to have very sophisticated nav info at your fingertips.  That is why I can’t imagine a ship would not have this stuff to avoid dangers like shoals even though a buoy is not  there marking the danger.  And GPS is not effected by weather, fog  or darkness.

Of course, still a well trained, experienced and alert human has to be operating these instruments to make them work to avoid disaster.  In SAR we even teach cases where operators who should know how to use GPS and mapping, didn’t an caused serious accidents or delayed emergency response.

 I hope Cape Fire is reading.  I have taught GPS to a number of fire depts. as well who were not up to speed on GPS  as they should have been.  For example if you are going to be out on the water, maybe at night, helping rescue or search for someone, and other agencies like Coast Guard or Sheffif are involved, it could be critical to understand GPS and coordinates etc for example.

Also emergency service GM OnStar often uses coordinates to indicate where a driver may be.  And most new cell phones have GPS that will give a Latitude Longitude coordinate directly to a 911 center if you are in trouble and don't know exactly where you are on land or water. 

These coordinates could be given the Coast Guard and by boat or helicopter and their GPS they can respond directly to your location, police and fire should be able to do the same...that is assuming they know what to do with the coordinates and enter them in a GPS correctly.  My experience in SAR with other agencies says this is not always the case unfortunately and has caused some real dangerous issues in emergency response!

But look below and you will see a photo of an app I have on my smart phone and tablet. It costs about $20 dollars as I remember and I have charts for the St. Lawrence and all of Lake Ontario, so if you figure in the cost of that many charts, $20 is a screaming deal!!! It will track my location real time.
Of course if you are interested in this type of app make sure your phone or tablet has a GPS.

 

        Pictured above is a great marine charting and GPS app I use called "MX Mariner"  available for  download for Android smart phones and tablets.  I'm sure Apple will have similar stuff.

However any smart mariner will still have some paper maps and know how to navigate safely without any of this technology. 

But Schneider’s comment brings up some other important points.  For example what would you do if the regional water system was out of service in a disaster or emergency?  Since I am in emergency services here in AZ on a SAR team we respond to more than just lost people. 

We once had a 140 vehicle pile up on I – 40,  train derailments with toxic chemicals, tornados,huge snow events, etc and our biggy…forest fires.    Here in Flagstaff and when I am in CV I stock pile at least 10 to 15 gallons of water for emergency and have other emergency supplies ready. 

In many disasters you will see people who just didn’t believe it would happen to them, and don’t have any preparation or plan at all.  Hurricane Katrina is a prime example.  Emergency services can’t do everything in an emergency or disaster , and  consider that their systems may be severely crippled as well. 

We all have a responsibility for at least some ability to self rescue or basic survival if nothing else at least for a few days until emergency help might arrive.

CV has also been host to various emergencies, ice storms, micro bursts, etc  And on the risk scale these are considered low probability – high consequence events.  In other words they don’t happen often but when they do the consequences are probably going to be  high and dangerous. As a result we tend to forget on not make emergency planning a priority.

I have mentioned before to community leaders the Community Emergency Response Teams (CERT) program. The town should partner with the village and county and maybe other towns to look into this volunteer program to aid community’s in emergencies and other events.

And the fire dept. ho hopefully understands the ICS system since emergency personnel are encouraged or even required to know the Incident Command System (ICS)  our town leaders should also understand the basics.  Especially as I heard councilman Byrne indicate he and others were involved in declaring a state of emergency.

ICS is a system for managing emergencies or even other events, that are large but are not necessarily emergencies.  It was developed by California fire fighters, since wild land fires are huge events that can spin out of control if not managed effectively.

So good point Clif, … you touched on an important topic and think further down the road on the communities readiness for numerous other emergencies the area could face.

Everyone , including community leaders, should consider what you would do if cut off from the daily services we all take for granted. And what if your emergency services were damaged and could not respond immediately.  I have to do this on a regular basis, not only because of my SAR activities but  because my wife and I camp in very remote desert locations sometimes 10 days or more at a stretch with no services other than our truck, and sometimes long stretches with no cell service. It is an interesting exercise to prepare for this activity.  For example if you take medications, especially  if they are critical like diabetic medications other health issues. Do have enough to last you if the community is cut off in an emergency?

 It might helpful for community leaders and the public to engage in something we do in SAR called scenarios.  What if?????  For example what if an oil barge moored to the CV break wall exploded or caught fire and the floating oil fire was creeping  toward shore.  We often don’t like to consider these things, but it may be critical that we do.
 

And for anyone who wants to better understand the GPS system and its potential in emergency and other events system I am usually available in CV in the summer and early fall.

                         Below, amazing technology available to the average person...GPS!
                                  Actually a military system available to civilians.

Shown on  the left is an android smart phone with  GPS app which gives the exact location of the phone.  I  have blocked out the full coordinates for my house for obvious reasons.  On the right is a common Garmin handheld GPS set up to take me too a waypoint I have entered (follow the arrow) and other information.

As you can see, even without a buoy if a ship had had the basic GPS on the right and entered the Tibbetts shoal as a waypoint, and set up a "Goto" it would have shown the exact direction to the shoal, the exact distance, bearing, and the ship's speed and heading all updated every few seconds. This could all  be entered in the  data boxes.  And the arrow would show the exact direction to the shoal.  And as long as the GPS stays on, on a simple map it will show a line that is the ,exact track the ship has taken and depending on the software will show a line as to where the ship is headed.

Hard to say what cause this ship to run aground, but it would seem that very sophisticated information should have been available to them.

We use this GPS information in SAR all the time at night and in terrible weather.  If we find our victims and they need quick medical attention we  can give a helicopter or other ground teams our exact location and they can then enter it in their GPS and fly, drive or hike to our location.

GPS is not just a techy toy for us. It's a life saving technology.  If we find an injured subject in a remote location and we can't effectively tell others how to get to us and then evacuate  that person to  medical help, then all the fancy emergency room equipment isn't going to help them much!

 

 

Why Wind Energy Doesn't Work - This Video Shows In A Graphic Nutshell The Problem!

 

 

      The Palm Springs, CA. wind fiasco.  All the wind energy in California after all these years and   

      all the tax subsidies thrown at it and it still only provided 5% of CA's electric capacity...of course

       that would be when it is running. Look at the video below.

 

 I took this video in Palm Springs CA a couple weeks ago.  According to various websites this is one of California's 3 major  wind generating areas.  615 MW of "capacity".  And of course they will tell you 1000's and 1000's of homes can be power etc,etc,etc. 

 

Well not on this day!!!  A lot of capacity siting there doing NOTHING!!!

 

And that is over 3 times the capacity of the Wolfe Island Wind Farm!

 

And not on several days we were in the Palm Springs area while CA was under a huge high pressure weather system.

 

Look at the video!  See any of these turbines moving?  Nope!  Not one of all these turbines is generating.  In fact to keep certain systems operating they may be sucking energy from the grid.

 

This video in a nutshell nicely sums up wind energy's major problem they have yet to over come.  On this day CA's electric production was coming from the same reliable power sources that CA depends on and knows they can not shut down.  This video also shows a graphic example of your tax dollars being wasted!!!! 

 

And you should see the red lights at night!!!! 

 

 

A Book Recommendation

 

I came by the "Emerald Mile" by way of a X-mas gift from family.   Some  of my family on my wife’s side are Grand Canyon river runners and river guides, and my wife has run the Canyon twice.  Once for 14 days and once for 21 days.  Flagstaff is also one of the main outposts for Grand Canyon river guiding companies.

The ‘Emerald Mile” is a superb read.  But not only  from the adventure aspect of running the Colorado River though Grand Canyon as fast as possible and the dangers. 

There are aspects that to me relate directly to another river under threat of govt. energy policies run amok we are trying to save.   Saving the 1000 Islands of the St Lawrence River from rampant industrial wind development.

I actually know a couple of the people in this book.  Not the main characters, but one person in the book is on my search and rescue team and another Canyon expert mentioned has helped us on  a couple big Canyon searches. In both cases the victims were just swallowed up by the Canyon with almost no trace.  Gone forever and only the Canyon knows the secret of where they are and refuses to release it.

I hope Lee Wilbanks of Save the River and his members and other local environmental groups will read and learn some valuable lessons from some big environmental players of western environmentalism and misguided approach of compromise if you really want to save something. 

In the winter 1982/83 epic amounts of snow were deposited in the Rockies and the Colorado River basin due to a large Pacific El Nino event. I remember this spectacular weather event because I was part of a study of the avalanche hazard on the mountains behind Flagstaff.

   In the late spring the snow melted quickly.  This threaten to over fill Lake Powell backed up by the huge concrete monolith of Glen Canyon Dam on the S. Utah, N AZ border just above Grand Canyon Nat. Park.  Water was rushing in faster than the lake and dam could accommodate it.  It panicked the Bureau of Reclamation which had responsibility for the dam and they were  forced to release huge amounts of water to save the dam.  This created very serious damage to the dam spillways which were eating into the cliffs holding the dam in place.  It was a race against nature to see if the dam engineers or the Colorado would win.  It was a real scary close call.  If you see this dam it is hard to believe this monster could be breached!

                           Glen Canyon Dam releasing water during the 1983 flood

                                   desperately trying to save the dam from failure.

                                                Pictures are not from the book.

The breach of this dam would have set in motion a chain of disasters all the way to Mexico along the Colorado River and probably killed thousands and would have destroyed one of America’s prime breadbaskets in California that depends on the river’s water for irrigation.

However, these monster releases of water created floods down stream in the Canyon and 3 expert river runners decide to try to illegally ride the flood to see if they could set a time record for running the length of the Canyon.  And do it in a fragile 17 ft. wooden dory used for some Canyon expeditions.

They would even have to ride dangerous  and wild rapids at night to try to accomplish this feat.

Many river rafting trips were caught in this flood mayhem as the Colorado went wild like it hadn’t in decades because of the control of the dam. One rafter was killed in this epic flooding.

But the part that held much of my interest was about Glen Canyon Dam and the history of how it came to be.  And the history of man’s interaction with the Colorado.  Here in the West Glen Canyon Dam has,  from before it was built, been an iconic environmental controversy to this very day.  It is a huge dam like Hoover lower on the Colorado near Las Vegas and Lake Mead, and like Hoover it is wedged into a spectacular narrow canyon.  These dams control flooding, provide precious water, and electricity for cities in the west like Phoenix, Tucson, LA, and Las Vegas.  Without the Colorado and its dams the SW would be very different. However, unlike Hoover, Glen is anchored to weak crumbly Navajo sandstone.  My wife toured the dam once and was astonished how water was spurting out of places in the dam and sandstone where the dam is anchored to the sandstone.  But I guess the engineers have figured that in!

                                       Spectacular Glen Canyon Dam spanning across

                                   the Colorado River, and suspension bridge,  just above

                                                        Grand Canyon Nat. Park. 

                                    Believe me it is a spectacular walk across that bridge!!!!

 

                                                                            

 

The dam creates Lake Powell named after John Weslley Powell the first person to officially explorer

 the Canyon by running the Colorado all the way through, and recording and mapping the events

in 1869.  Lake Powell extends about 180 miles from N. AZ into the wild canyon country of Utah.

Because of all the twisting and turning canyons Powell has more shoreline than the west coast

of the US.

 

When the Colorado reaches Mexico today 100's of miles from the Rockies it is merely a trickle.  The water has all been used, some recycled and used again.

But Glen Canyon Dam was a real bad trade off compromise with environmentalists of the day like David Brower of the Sierra Club.  Thinking  they were preventing another precious resource from dam flooding, Dinosaur Nat. Monument,  and not knowing what a spectacular canyon was going to be flooded behind Glen Canyon Dam. A seeming good compromise blind sided them.

The US govt with the Bureau of Reclamation at this time was running amok wanting to dam every drop of water that moved,  for water, energy and of course $$$$$$   Sound familiar 1000 Islands lovers????

David Brower was then the head of the Sierra Club in those days in the 50’s and 60’s.  When he figured out his compromise was a disaster he attempted to stop Glen Canyon Dam, but it was way too late. And then the govt. even screwed him further with more proposals for dams right IN Grand Canyon.  Sound familiar 1000 Islands lovers????  

Now can you imagine wanting to destroy the Grand Canyon with dams with some insane energy scheme.  A place of planetary beauty and significance that is a treasured resource belonging to the American citizen? Sound familiar 1000 Islands lovers?

And today…can you imagine a run amok govt/corporate energy plan to cover the precious 1000 Islands area and eastern Lake Ontario with hundreds of bird and bat killing industrial wind monsters.  Yet here we are years later fighting another environmental disaster of a similar magnitude at the other end of the country… all over again.  And we ignore the lesson’s Brower learned, and here we are compromising again.

 

 

If you are in this battle I want you to understand the magnitude of what is happening to you and what you are involved in no matter which side you are on.  I want you to understand its place in history.  We already have a vivid example from years ago.  Even Barry Goldwater the famous conservative AZ Sen. at the end of his life said he regretted his vote to doom Glen Canyon to a watery grave with the dam. Even though our state has been a big benefactor of Glen. He concluded it just was not worth it. He dam and the lake even created a whole town, Page, AZ out of nothing but isolated desert in the middle of no where.

This is why when people piss and moan over their town’s individual wind laws and property values, they are badly missing the point of what is going on here and the scale.

And when the NYS govt comes along with an insidious scheme to remove our rights to perpetuate such an govt. corporate environmental disaster, and our town compromises with and appeases  it, when there is so much vivid historical evidence to show  how outrageous that approach is…I come unglued!

As I see it the real problem we have in CV is the supposed opposition (CV govt) is run mostly by businessmen, industrialists, and institutionalists, and compromisers, not true environmentalists who have looked at and learned from the big and terrible environment compromises of the past.

And the some of the groups that call themselves environmental are spineless.

 

 

In terms of the Grand Canyon and those dams the Sierra Club’s  David Brower along with a real outspoken gloves off fire brand and outdoor writer named Martin Lintton who was also an icon of Grand Canyon river running, were outraged and realized how they had been screwed by the Sierra Club and  the govt with horrible compromises.  ( Litton is a man after my own heart! Although I have never met him.) He is in his 90's now.

They took the gloves off and pulled out all the stops and ousted the Sierra Club compromisers and did a full on attack against on the Fed. govt.’s Grand Canyon dam scheme, and backed them down.  Apparently it was a nasty political fight, but Lintton and Brower were fed up….and they were relentless and won. 

Unfortunately people locally don’t seem to have the stomach for the fight like this today to save our region.  Instead we many have lined up behind people willing to compromise and appease a hideous govt scheme to steal our rights and create an environmental disaster.

 

 

This story really hits home for me.  Two powerful iconic rivers 1000s of mile apart, gingerly balanced on govt/corporate energy controversies and environmental disaster schemes, all knotted together over the span of decades.

 

 

I hope you will find time to read the “Emerald Mile”, for the adventure, and more importantly for the historic environmental lessons…and why we should not be compromisers and appeasers!!!

 

 

Art Pundt