Updates

Last night the Cohocton Planning Board hosted its second public meeting to air community concerns about proposed turbine site placement, but this week their format was different. Held in the larger Hatch Fire Hall in Atlanta, comments were limited to 3 minutes per speaker, which caused a great deal of frustration on the part of effectively silenced neighboring landowners. In addition, leaseholders, who are obviously in total support of the project and had nothing new to add that the Planning Board had not already heard, were allowed to speak. The evening became contentious, but the Planning Board was able to wrap up their pro-forma deliberations in an hour, instead of the 2 hours that had been set aside for the meeting. This is apparently "public input" under UPC Wind's new Cohocton administration.

What became clear at this meeting is that leaseholders and their supporters don't care what their neighbors think or how they feel about the project: as Councilman Wayne Hunt explained, it's going full-speed ahead unless the Town Board receives a court injuction to stop it.

What became clear to me personally as a neighboring landowner is that UPC and its supporters are seriously planning to engage in corporate trespassing on an enormous scale. By siting their turbines within 1500 feet of non-project land they will be effectively spreading noise pollution over properties that people have purchased expressly for their peace and quiet. Similarly, by allowing the ill-conceived 1500-foot perimeter of Windmill Law #2 to overlap neighboring land, they are limiting the safe and undisturbed use that landowners in Cohocton should have guaranteed to them by proper zoning ordinances.

There are so many things wrong with the way this entire project is being handled that it should rightly be rejected on its demerits alone. Some day enough good people will come to their senses and recognize this, hopefully sooner rather than later.

Labels: Process