Screwed!!!

There has been a lot of debate since Clayton made its proposal to change its zoning to ban industrial wind development.  In an article in the WDT former Cape Vincent official John Byrne said the following about the law they drafted in 2012.

“In our mind, we wanted to allow development while protecting existing assets. We didn’t give the developer exactly what it wanted, but it left room in the zoning law to allow some development.”

Of course Byrne is pandering to the farmer vote since he is apparently going to try another run for NY assembly...voter beware!!!

Now, the people on the CV "write a wind law" side claim you write a "reasonable" zoning law, ( a term that has never been clearly defined ) and the state in the Art. 10 process will not preempt your restrictive law and uphold it as "reasonable."  In theory this is supposed to make it more difficult for the developer to develop, they will walk away, thus saving your town...in theory!!! To me this  theory is built on a house of cards on many levels but mainly because the state can just override your law rendering it impotent to stop anything industrial wind related.

Everyone on the former CV board that Byrne served on, and virtually all the other CV officials and  their supporters endorsed  this approach as the only viable approach to the exclusion of all others. 

And although the Hirschey supervised board that Byrne served on was touted by  supporters and even the media as being "anti wind", a contention I challenged vehemently many times,  now  it is abundantly clear that Byrne and the officials he severed with had absolutely no intention of being anti wind or even keeping wind out of our town. As Byrne said, they wanted to allow wind development.

It is why at least one past year I refused to vote in CV because I felt we had pro wind, who definitely wanted all the wind they could get...and the pro wind Hirschey board who was under the delusion they could somehow control massive industrial turbines, even though  the state could easily preempt their efforts. 

There was no real choice for the people who really wanted no wind in town in no uncertain terms, like some erroneously thought the Hirschey board would do.

If you were a supporter of that board with the belief they were "anti wind" you should be livid...since you basically got screwed and many stopped voting in their main communities to vote in CV for a fallacy!! 

If you examine Byrnes statement...both sides in the CV wind battle have been pro wind...just to different degrees.  Something I had said and took heat  for, for a long time. Many of you got the wool pulled right over your eyes.

And the really sad fact here is that Byrne and his colleagues in pandering to the state and taking a severe group think mentality have left the CV community and the 1000 Islands very vulnerable to industrial wind development.  That's quite a legacy!

It is also very disturbing that Byrne and his cronies decided that "protecting existing assets" actually meant in their minds shoving the turbine placement into the town's interior and thus making the negative impacts they feared someone else's big problem threatening their assets instead.  Brilliant!!!  And this alone is one reason the traditional zoning approach is an absurd failure!  Yet this is all the so called intelligent CV officials and their lawyers could come up with.

Yeah...that's great advice, shove your huge invasive turbine impacts back on your neighboring town residents and people in your own town's interior that don't want them either!

This technique is about as effective as rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic hoping this somehow solves the problem.

And this is what those CV officials left behind for our region and are now absurdly suggesting Clayton and other towns should follow.

 And yet to this day no one has been able to explain the logic that allowing industrial wind development in a town, somehow prevents wind development in a town?????????

It's irrational!