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Greetings Everyone!
Its been an all-encompassing but extremely fruitful week since Kathy Evans broke the news that there is an industrial wind turbine installation being proposed and lobbied by APEX Clean Energy Corp. Since then we've achieved the following:
1). Got the word out to folks we personally knew. Those folks got the word out to a much larger group of impacted town residents.
2). We started the process of gathering information:
a. Who is APEX and who are the players? (Wind Turbine Energy Company. Town Boards of Yates and Somerset and Governor Cuomo-via Article 10 requirements)
b. Where the project will be located? (Yates and Somerset)
c. Why Yates and Somerset? (Somerset Powerplant now has transmission line capacity that could be used by APEX)
d. Who is APEX is targeting and when? (Large Landowners contacted in September 2013, per APEX project plan which was published 13 months later in October 2014. Town Boards were communicated with in October 2014 and caught off guard by APEX.)
e. Review of as many documents as we could find and disseminate information:
APEX Information
Newspaper publications
APEX Submissions
NYS Documents
Each of the documents reviewed show APEX is aggressively approaching this project with the landowners, Town Boards of Somerset and Yates and State Regulators.
3). WE ORGANIZED!!
a. Contacted Cathi Orr of Save Ontario Shores (Town of Somerset resident who is organizing.)
b. Cathi put us in contact with a number of folks that she worked with during the Wyoming County Industrial Wind Turbine Installation fight. Those groups have agreed to support us in our fight.
c. An initial organizing group met on Sunday, December 21st in order to discuss the issue, determine next steps and agree that there needs to be a presence at every Town Board, Zoning and Planning Board meetings moving forward.
d. The organizing group and volunteers agreed to the following:
Document an Introductory Flier - Dick Pucher - Complete
Development of E:mail Contact List (closing in on 100 contacts) - Shelley Reid Salmons - Complete
Development of web site: Paul & Shelley Salmons - LakeOntarioTurbines.com - Ongoing
Document an E:mail Petition - Donna Riggi - Complete
Legal Advice - Roger Barth - Agreed to assist
Niagara County Resident Outreach - Cathi Orr - Ongoing
e. Meeting on Monday, January 5th at Donna and John's house at 10640 Lakeshore Rd. in Lyndonville. This meeting is a strategy and tactics planning meeting in preparation for the January 8th Yates Town Board meeting.
New information:
Landowners:
There are initial and informal indicators that some landowners have indicated that they may not be willing to sign leases at this point. We need to ensure those landowners understand that we are in support of their view and will assist them as required.
Article 10
Have reviewed Article 10. The basic upshot of Article 10 (in my opinion), is that if we are successful in getting the town board to vote against, Governor Cuomo can tell us all to go to hell and approve it anyway.
I've copied Roger Barth on this e:mail to get his opinion on this issue. Roger has been extremely important in assisting our group with legal advice.
APEX PIP and Communications with Regulators:
Dick Pucher has been an invaluable researcher on this issue. He found the rejection of APEX's PIP application to the NYS for Lighthouse Wind. It is interesting to note that Dan Fitzgerald of APEX indicated that a PIP had not been filed with NYS as yet. Dick's research has found that APEX has already filed a PIP. It was rejected by the State and sent back for remediation and rewrite. The State was unhappy with the lack of specifics on project siting and outreach...OUTREACH!!!!!!!!!! I believe that Mr. Fitzgerald had not been transparent in his communication and cannot be trusted (no surprise).
I've attached the NYS response to APEX as well as a letter filed on another project by a group (DWEA) that will line up against us in the long run. We need to begin strategizing against this group also. In order to assist in your information research, I have included the link to the NYS Board on Electric Generation Siting and the Environment
( http://www.dps.ny.gov/SitingBoard/ ). This site is a wealth of information and has important leads and clues as to how to interact with this Board.
Just a thought, thinking that our group needs to begin a campaign of over-communicating with the State Board on APEX's lack of transparency with the Taxpayers of the Town of Yates. Comments?
I know that I've missed some things. To have included everything would have made the update very, very long as there has been so much work done by so many people in such a short span of time.
In closing, this past week has proven extremely fruitful and gratifying. We are a group of spitting mad, capable and motivated citizens that are going to accomplish our goal of stopping this intrusion on our lives by APEX Clean Energy Corporation.
Please send in comments and don't forget the Monday, January 5th planning meeting and the Thursday, January 8th Yates Town Board meeting.
This fight will not end until we win...
Best Regards,
John Riggi
Response to Lakewinds LLC Application
DWEA's Comments to NYS Public Service Commission
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