Updates

An article in Cooperstown's weekly newspaper, The Freeman's Journal, last week discusses ongoing local opposition to the Community Energy wind project proposed for Jordanville. Note the similarities between the their situation and ours, especially the timing:

As the Holy Trinity monks hold prayer services and mount a letter-writing campaign, Otsego 2000 is seeking out the most appropriate “petitioners” to file an Article 78 complaint against the 68-turbine Jordanville Wind Farm, a preliminary step to going to court to block the 400-foot-tall towers in view of James Fenimore Cooper’s Glimmerglass.

After a year working through the State Environmental Quality Review Act process, the towns of Warren and Stark, on June 20 and 21 respectively, accepted the Final Environmental Impact Statement on the project and approved special-use permits. That step started a 30-day clock running on the Article 78 proceeding.

The next step for Community Energy is to apply for a certificate of necessity from the state Public Service Commission, which would require a further public hearing before action could be taken. The towns must then issue building permits for each turbine and related building in their jurisdictions.

Meanwhile, the monks at Holy Trinity Monastery, the Russian Orthodox Church’s spiritual headquarters overseas, have begun a cycle of “molebin,” prayers of supplication somewhat like the Roman Catholic novena, and as many as a dozen people from the community have been attending. Father Luke Murianka, the deputy abbott, said all are welcome.

“Certainly, we feel that prayer is one of the best methods,” Father Luke said, but influential Russian Orthodox clerics are also weighing in, and their letters will be sent to Gov. Eliot Spitzer and others in state government.

Archbishop Hilarian Kapral of Australia, former abbot at Jordanville and metropolitan in Manhattan, had visited a wind farm in Tasmania and concluded “it would be terrible tragedy to have it here.”

The archbishop in Manhattan, Gabriel Chemodakov, has also written a letter decrying “the desecration of the landscape.”

The Cohocton Planning Board rubberstamped UPC Wind's FEIS last month and is set to review [approve without question?] the developer's application for special use permits at its meeting this coming Wednesday evening, July 11th. If and when this step is passed, assuming the same process applies here, UPC will then have to "apply for a certificate of necessity from the state Public Service Commission, which would require a further public hearing before action could be taken. The towns must then issue building permits for each turbine and related building in their jurisdictions." UPC and its local supporters will also be running a gauntlet of local prayer and, most likely, facing a similar Article 78 legal proceeding.

And remember, this year is an election year. As Yogi Berra once said, "It ain't over 'til it's over!"

Click here to read the entire article.

Labels: Legal Issues, New York, Process