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“Cover the Mountains With Wind Turbines.”

http://modernsmile.com/wp-login.php?action=lostpassword One of the few views in lower New York State where you can't see a single thing made by human beings. But for how long?

buy accutane online pharmacy I went to the Town Board meeting last night, in part to congratulate the victors, but mostly because of the wind turbine issue I wrote about earlier.  Since first encountering this issue I’ve thought about it a lot, and asked the opinions of people I respect, and the more I thought about it the more I thought it was an idea that really needed to be opposed.  I’ll lay out that case briefly:

I know that we all consume electricity, and consequently the “not in my backyard” refusal to engage with energy production is a bit disingenuous.  It has to be produced somewhere.  But I still oppose fracking in the Catskills – despite the mountains sitting on top of an energy-rich shale formation – because of 1) the ecological effect of fracking and 2) the ecological importance and rarity of the Catskills in particular, one of the two large wild areas in all of New York State.

Ecologically, wind production is a thousand times better than fracking, which decreases the force of concern #1.  But concern #2 remains.  All sorts of land usages which are allowed outside the state park are not allowed inside it.  And I think it has to remain that way.

The plan for this wind turbine is to put an 18-story building which emits a constant source of noise inside the park on private land, despite it being against zoning law (the application is for a variance or exemption from zoning law).  There is a great deal of private land inside the park, and a large majority of it is well-suited for wind production: in essence, all the high ground is suitable terrain for wind production.  Wildcat Mountain, where I live, would be perfect; there’s even a vacant lot right next to my cabin which would do well.  Red Hill and Denman Mountain, right opposite me, have large areas of exposed high-elevation private land; the peak of Doubletop Mountain, the eighth-highest mountain in the Catskills, is in private hands and could be developed for this purpose as well.

I believe, with the early conservationists, that wildness is a value in itself, and all costs we have to preserve it.  I am certain that was the intention of the Roosevelts and Burroughs and Muirs who helped create the our country’s parks in the first place, and it was that inspiration that made them insist – and write into the State Constitution – that the Catskills would be land “forever wild.”  18-storey buildings on the mountaintops simply are not compatible with this principle.  Nor is the loss of one of the great consolations of wildness, which is silence.  Silence, and darkness, and all the things which are wild and godlike, need defenders.  They are so rare and precious in this world long since tamed and cowed.

That this particular issue also directly affects my neighbors and their lives affects me as well.  They came here for the wildness – which I think is a reasonable expectation – and do not wish their wild land to be merely a front-row seat for our society’s insatiable need to take more of everything.

So I went to the Town Board meeting, and the only two people there to speak up on this issue were Tiffany Gellman and myself.  Tiffany was satisfied with acquiring the Supervisor’s promise that this issue would go on the agenda at the next Town Board meeting, Tuesday November 12th (7 p.m.).  I pointed out the magnitude of this issue, noting that once one variance was granted it would be far more difficult to deny others.  As if on cue the whole room started shaking their heads, saying “No, no, that’s not the way it works, every case is on an individual basis.”  They then mentioned all the variables, and how every turbine would be different – size of turbine, distance from neighbors, electric production, etc.  Tiffany tried to point out the obvious – that future suits would use this variance as their starting point, saying, “Well, we need to put it x number of feet from neighbors, x number of feet tall, because that was already granted.”  But the entire town government refused to even entertain this idea, which obviously means that it is correct.  Everything we do is a precedent.  You don’t deny this without revealing some kind of dissemblance.  And it was obvious when I spoke with councilmembers afterwards.  Several of them had grave doubts about this project, because they felt it could come back to affect their own homes.  “I think this is paradise,” Kevin Smith said.  “To me you can’t put a price on peace and quiet.”  Paul Schoonmaker said, “I sure wouldn’t want to look at one.” But councilman Mike Dean had the pull quote of the night: “Personally, I’d like to see these mountains covered with wind turbines… you have to remember landowners have rights too… and I trust the Zoning Board of Appeals to do the right thing.”

That’s what happens when you set a precedent, precisely the thing they promised was not going to happen.

This is a terrible idea, and as of now, the lay of the political landscape indicates that it will happen without intervention coming from outside the town government, from citizens or from upper levels of government and NGOs.

The Town Board will meet on the 12th, before the Zoning Board of Appeals meets the next day.  This meeting does not yet appear on the Town Website’s Calendar, just as the minutes of the ZBA’s last meeting do not appear either.

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