buy Pregabalin The Ulster County Planning Board has its meeting to review the wind turbine here in Denning on Wednesday the 4th. I expect to attend. The online petition opposing the turbine, to be built inside the “forever wild” Catskill State Park, is here. Emails for people on the UCPB are ddoy@co.ulster.ny.us, and rlei@co.ulster.ny.us. I wrote the letter below expressing my thoughts on the issue:
http://city-made.com/tag/t-shirts/ To the Ulster County Planning Board:
There is an request before the Zoning Board of Appeals of the Town of Denning to grant a variance from current zoning law for the construction of a 177’ tall wind turbine. The Ulster County Zoning Board has expressed a desire to examine this issue and advise the Denning ZBA before it makes its decision. I urge the Ulster County Zoning Board to advise against the project.
I write as a conservationist. I support the wind power industry, but I do not believe any wind-power project should be placed inside Catskill State Park. I especially believe that such projects cannot be allowed to be exempt from local zoning law, which would be a horrible precedent for the entire region. As John Judge, President of the Appalachian Mountain Club recently wrote, “Even renewable energy sources like wind can have negative environmental consequences. Inappropriately sited wind power projects, and the maintenance roads and other infrastructure that comes with them, threaten mountain ecosystems and compromise the wilderness experience.”
The Zoning Board should look at this case as but the first of many to come, which makes it all the more important to keep zoning law in place. The entire Catskills region offers a perfect staging-ground for wind energy production: remote ridgetops. Mr. Hirsch’s property, where the proposed turbine would be built, is but one of many such large ridgetop properties throughout the Town of Denning and the Catskills generally. The Zoning Board of Appeals in the Town of Denning is legally empowered to grant variances only when “the circumstances applying to the property are unique and do not generally apply to other properties in the district” (section 7.6.1). This is far from the case in this instance. Whatever is done here will become a precedent for the entire Catskills State Park.
Some may applaud the possibility of such development. One of the Councilmen in the Town of Denning, Mike Dean, a strong supporter of the project, said he would “like to see the mountains covered with wind turbines.” It would be a twenty-first century industry for an area which has few economic advantages. But it would also compromise the “forever wild” character of the park written into the State Constitution. Large mechanical structures on ridgetops – prominent locations visible by hikers – will change the wilderness and historical character of the area. Any 177-foot-tall structure would have to come with a guarantee that it would be one of only a few for the entire park (some would contend that cell towers are acceptable in this regard). But this is for the personal electric use of one property owner. All property owners in the Catskills have electrical needs, and in the name of fairness, if you grant one person the right to violate zoning law and build a 177-foot-tall tower for his own electrical needs, you should grant it to all. Such a situation would violate another Town of Denning Law regarding variances, that “the variance will not alter the essential character of the surrounding area.” And it would certainly violate the vision of the conservationists who created the Park as a wilderness area. As our society’s energy needs grow and grow and grow, there is going to be increasing pressure on using even our wildest areas for energy production. We should resist the pressure and keep the sanctity of the park boundary.
The engineer of the project, Mr. Chase, noted that there was no objection to a similar project in the town of Grahamsville. Of course not – the project was outside of Catskill State Park. I did not object to the wind turbine there and I do not object to more being placed on ridges and farms in New York State outside of state parks wherever they are allowed by zoning law. But I certainly object to their being placed inside state parks, particularly inside the second-largest wild area in the entire state, especially when there is zoning law against structures of such a height.
I wish to also briefly say a word about the particular area where this turbine is being placed. I visited it while campaigning as the Democratic Candidate for Town Council in Denning. Mr. Chase has provided data about the sound output of the proposed turbine. The number he offers is that the turbine produces 45 decibels of sound at 1,000 feet distance. I find this use of statistics somewhat misleading, first of all: 45 decibels of sound at 1,000 feet must mean that the actual sound production at the source is around 100 decibels – about the same as a lawnmower. Listening to neighbors’ lawnmowers is sometimes necessary, but to imagine a lawnmower going all day and all night is not pleasant. And 45 decibels was noted as being essentially equivalent to “background.” But the chair of Denning’s Zoning Board of Appeals had to admit that background noise at the end of Mountain Lane, by the proposed turbine, is not 45 decibels, but 30 decibels or even lower (his decibel meter would simply read 30 or “LO” at the site). This confirms what we who live in the mountains suspected: “sound travels here,” we say, which really just means there is so little competing noise to drown it out. And the alteration of the sonic profile of the area – the loss of that silence that many of us come here for – to be replaced by a continual mechanical drone, no matter how understated, is a serious loss. Town of Denning law specifically prohibits “noxious” uses of property, citing as one such reason “emission of noise.” But to me even if we were discussing a completely silent 177-foot-tall structure I would object to its being placed inside Catskill State Park.
Let us look at one more consideration: perhaps there are arguments against putting other types of tall structures up, but isn’t there a compelling ecological reason for wind energy? Doesn’t that perhaps trump other considerations? My answer: this project is not in the least ecologically sensitive or viable. You cannot “green” luxury. This is the construction of a 177-foot-tall structure priced at $360,000 – largely funded by taxpayers – for one property’s electric needs. Even if it miraculously ran for thirty years without any additional financial input or maintenance, the cost of the electricity produced over thirty years would be $1,000 per month. There will be no grid-tie: this will be for one property! The words for this are “extravagant,” and “wasteful,” not “green.” I see no compelling public benefit for such a vanity project.
In summation, I think the proposal should be rejected as 1) ill-advised and out of proportion to the Park and its proper uses 2) against the laws of the Town of Denning, even those governing the granting of variances and 3) without compelling public benefit or good cause. And as I say – this is not the last such case. The wind turbine built in Grahamsville was only recently built, and others will follow. We need to uphold local zoning laws on this issue now, and set only precedents which will be good for the character and purpose of Catskill State Park.
Sincerely, John Kuhner
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