A Comment From Cape Vincent Citizen John Richardson

The post below came to my blog as a comment from John Richardson.  It has a lot of relevant  points so I decided to publish it as a post. 

But first let me put some of this in context. 

The following comment was left recently on the Pandora’s Box of Rocks blog under the post about the final letter to the NYPSC regarding Art 10, and BP. Currently it is (or was) the top post on her blog.  But that could change since she seems to have been rearranging her posts lately.

“Anonymous said...

The movie "Promised Land" was about an energy fracking co. coming into a town to sign up drilling leases for natural gas.
The company secretly hired a supposed environmentalist who pretended to oppose the project but was later found to be actually working for the company who was trying to get the fracking leases approved by the town.
Could Art possibly have been such a person?”

Currently, as of 12:30 EDT  4/23/14, this comment and others attacking me are not posted.   For some reason K has occasionally removed them along with other comments on her blog. Don’t know why.   I reacted to this comment in my own post on my blog a few days ago under the title:

“ Pundt Disagrees with Hirschey…” which is several posts back on my blog. It might also help to read it to put this all in context.

After reading my post Mr. Richarson sent me his comment.  I don’t know if he was able to see the original comment on the Pandy blog.

Below is John Richardson’s comment verbatim as he sent it to me:

"Wow, I haven’t been on the blogs for a while and after reading Art’s blog tonight I went to Pandy to see what all of the fuss was about. 

I would like to set the record straight from my point of view on a couple of points.  First, Art wasn’t really ever out of the loop, he has plenty of contacts including me at times to keep him informed.  The fact that Art and I often disagree doesn’t mean we weren’t honest with each other about the facts of the wind fight. 

Secondly, and this is directed at Art.  The Hirschey board did exactly what they needed to do.  I told you on numerous occasions the local town board, in the end, wouldn’t be able to stop wind if the broader world market supported the technology.  However, they could block and delay it in hopes that the world financial markets would turn against the technology.  In the end, the town board’s strategy was exactly right.  Was it a risk or different than what you would have supported?  Certainly it was, but there was no way the town was going to defeat wind regardless of whose strategy they followed if the global market decided to adopt wind on a grand scale.  You and others can debate this until the cows come home, but the undisputed fact is world financial markets trump local town desires each and every time.  That is just the world we live in. 

Lastly, at least for now and probably for a long time, if not forever, the fight over wind in the Cape is over.  So, for people to continue to attack Art’s intentions and his devotion to protect the Cape, or his love of the Cape is ludicrous.  And for Art to continue to speculate on Urban’s motives, beliefs, reasons for acquiring land or other issues is nothing more than a defensive move to rationalize the attacks he has been under for years.  In the end, both are complete bullshit. 

I have known Art and Urban for almost exactly the same amount of time, and while they are entirely different people, they are both well intentioned, regardless of how they go about trying to solve the same problem.  In the end, they were on the same team, even if it wasn’t apparent to those that stood on the sidelines during game time.  For me, I respect them both because they played the game live with everything they had, and were not Monday morning quarterbacks. 

It is truly time for all of this to end and for the good people of the Cape regardless of which side they supported to move on as unified community. "

John Richardson