- 18 hours ago
Wind power... It's green... It's good... Or is it? Windfall exposes the dark side of wind energy development when the residents of a rural upstate New York town consider going green.
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00:00:10I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
00:00:43Frank Batchelor, who's a town supervisor, said, you know, we're planning on putting wind turbines in Meredith.
00:00:49And I thought, oh, you know, wind turbines sounds good to me.
00:00:51We all need to do something for the environment.
00:00:54Any alternative energy is something we have to consider, we need to pursue.
00:00:59A couple of guys from Airtricity, a big wind developer, knocked on the door.
00:01:04I saw some turbines as I was driving on back roads, and I thought they were so beautiful, I just
00:01:11couldn't believe it.
00:01:12We signed a lease to have a turbine up on our hill, at least one turbine.
00:01:17So I learned all about turbines, and I was very, very excited.
00:01:22And I thought that this would be a really good idea.
00:01:25We'd be doing our part to end the country's oil dependency.
00:01:29Everything you pick up in the paper, or if you look at the TV, everything is about global warming.
00:01:34And one of my friends was saying, you've got to look at this, the wind turbines are coming in.
00:01:40And I'm like, wind turbines? What are you talking about? You know, that's good, that's a good thing.
00:01:45We had John and Mary Hamilton over for brunch, and John says, oh, by the way, I'm taking and putting
00:01:50a couple of windmills up on my property.
00:01:52We looked at him and said, oh, how nice.
00:01:56We've lived with the wind.
00:01:58This whole time I've been farming, we've had to fight with it at times.
00:02:01And I look at that wind as it's here.
00:02:05Why aren't we using it?
00:02:06Why aren't we generating power with it?
00:02:19I don't even have to tell you, you don't have to know.
00:02:26Problems always overwhelm me, feelin' it for me.
00:02:31Problems always overwhelm me, feelin' it for me.
00:02:40Problems always overwhelm me, feelin' it for me.
00:02:42Problems always overwhelm me, feelin' it for me.
00:02:44Our community has been a pretty cohesive town.
00:02:49I ran for supervisor of the town of Meredith in 1987, and I have served continuously since then.
00:02:56Actually being supervisor really was easy for me, but the issue of the wind development, I guess I was naive.
00:03:05I never thought it would be so contentious an issue, and that's what it's turned out to be.
00:03:10So it's really divided our community, and I didn't see it coming.
00:03:17I guess I should've.
00:03:22I moved up here in 1960, started with a dairy farm.
00:03:26We had a small herd when we started, 20, 26 cows, and I built up to a herd of 105
00:03:34milkers.
00:03:36I think everyone kind of convinced me that it was time to end the rigor of being there 24-7.
00:03:42And now we have a small beef herd of registered Black Angus cattle.
00:03:50I've actually been interested in wind energy development for a long time.
00:03:56We have a lot of, you know, land. We have a good hill.
00:03:59Airtricity was an Ireland-based company that had come out here and was interested in our farm, and offered me
00:04:09a contract.
00:04:22It was a freezing cold morning, and I was buying three young steers from my neighbor across the road, Frank
00:04:32Batchelor, who's the town supervisor.
00:04:33Ken had recently moved up here from New York. He's a retired doctor from Brooklyn, selling grass-fed beef in
00:04:39the city.
00:04:40So we went into his kitchen to have a cup of tea, and he got a call from a guy
00:04:45who was a supervisor in Madison County, and they were talking about wind development.
00:04:51The town of Fenner had, I think, 20 wind turbines, which had been put up a couple years ago, and
00:04:58I called him to get information.
00:04:59And he was saying, well, the guy said you might have some problem if you're thinking about signing a contract
00:05:04on your own land, because there might be a conflict of interest.
00:05:07And he kind of just sort of shrugged and gave me this impish smile.
00:05:12I guess that's where the trouble started.
00:05:14I didn't think too much of it, and then I sort of went home and I started reading about what
00:05:19it meant, what wind turbines were, what the risks were.
00:05:23And I got really concerned about it.
00:05:25Neighbors viewed me as town supervisor as having a conflict of interest.
00:05:30They had an attorney that contacted me and said, you know, let me know that I should make full disclosure.
00:05:37And I did. I hadn't taken any money from the company, and I hadn't signed any contract with them.
00:05:42And so that's where we left it.
00:05:46Basically, that was how the community found out about this through me, you know, having, warming up in Frank's kitchen.
00:06:00A windmill is one of these quaint little things characters in Cervantes' novel Don Quixote, right, were tilting at.
00:06:08I mean, they were, you know, what, 50 feet high? You could actually try to spear one of these things.
00:06:13My boyfriend at the time was an architect. I remember talking with him on the phone, and he said, how
00:06:18tall are they?
00:06:19And I said, 400 feet. And he said, 400 feet? That's not human scale.
00:06:29I just started hearing that there were going to be these 400-foot monstrosities, and they were just going up.
00:06:35There was no discussion. There was no research. There was no public outreach.
00:06:40You know, wind is sort of interesting because it has this sort of aura of greenness.
00:06:45They hear green energy, they think good. They see it on the TV and all the commercials.
00:06:49Now, if you notice, you see wind turbines, green this, green that. They're being bombarded with it.
00:06:53And it doesn't affect them directly, so they don't really take the time to learn.
00:06:58These are mechanical structures. They're 40 stories tall.
00:07:02There's going to be some problems with noise and oil leaks and sediment runoff.
00:07:07I mean, this is just the way it is.
00:07:24Now, you have an object that's 400 and something feet tall, spinning at 150 miles an hour.
00:07:29Try and think about that for a second.
00:07:37Holy mackerel. They're monstrous.
00:07:40The proposal would be to put wind turbines as close as 1,000 feet from people's residences.
00:07:45You don't have huge tracks where there are no people close by, so appropriate siting is the issue here.
00:07:52When they build these out in the desert in California, there's no problem with residences.
00:07:57They're putting them up on tracks that are 6,000 acres, right?
00:08:01We don't have anything like that here. We have homes here.
00:08:13Originally came to the town of Meredith because my father was born in East Meredith,
00:08:17and I came back to the family roots here in Delaware County, and I've never regretted it for a minute.
00:08:23Years ago, I ran for supervisor. I lost by three votes.
00:08:26The only elected thing I've ever been elected to is a fire commissioner down there in the fire department.
00:08:32You know, we're a fire department that does the chicken barbecue thing and the pancake supper and all that,
00:08:37and we were looking for a way to make more money.
00:08:40We got the idea of a dairy festival, and those cows advertised as sponsors.
00:08:50It turns out the cow signs are very popular and get stolen a lot.
00:08:57There was a broken, stolen cow that was recovered right on the front page of the Yoni on a Star.
00:09:03Well, we couldn't have paid for anything better than that.
00:09:07My wife and I talked with a wind developer, and it seemed like a good idea, so we pursued a
00:09:12little bit more.
00:09:13Next thing you know, we had a test tower up on the farm.
00:09:16I didn't know what the hell that was.
00:09:18Saw it outside of my kitchen window.
00:09:20Said to my wife, what's that?
00:09:21We didn't have a clue.
00:09:23We had no idea what was involved.
00:09:32I started going on the internet, and the more I did this research, the more alarmed I got.
00:09:38And pretty soon, my wife and I were very alarmed, and so was our neighbor, Rachel, who lives across the
00:09:44road,
00:09:44and who had been talking for several years about how nice it would be, you know, maybe have a couple
00:09:50of windmills.
00:09:56I kept meeting really interesting people, and a lot of them happened to live in East Meredith.
00:10:03I bought a couple of acres almost 20 years ago.
00:10:07Then I eventually was able to build this house.
00:10:11I moved in, and then three weeks later, the whole wind situation happened.
00:10:17The Hamiltons have been my neighbors for all of these years, and we've always had a very good working neighbor
00:10:24relationship.
00:10:25They, of course, had signed a contract, and their land is all around.
00:10:29Yeah, it would be a little inconvenience for us.
00:10:32We have to put up with the roads and the construction and all that.
00:10:38It isn't all gravy for the landowner, but it seemed like a small price to pay for what we thought
00:10:46was the public good.
00:10:48I decided that I wanted to have a meeting to let the people in the neighborhood know what was going
00:10:53on.
00:10:53I tried to give them as much information, unbiased, just that we had two wind companies in the town, who
00:11:00they were, what they wanted.
00:11:02And, you know, time goes by, and all of a sudden, we're the bad people.
00:11:06We are the bad people.
00:11:08Oh, my word.
00:11:09The neighbors are having meetings at their house.
00:11:12What to do about the Hamiltons?
00:11:14They are the bad people.
00:11:16We've got to stop them somehow.
00:11:17John and I and his wife Mary, we don't see eye to eye about a lot of things,
00:11:22but we communicated.
00:11:25You know, they were over at our house often.
00:11:29We haven't had brunch with them since then, and I regret it.
00:11:33I've been a picture framer for the last 19 years or so.
00:11:39I started my own business.
00:11:41I went out on my own almost three months ago.
00:11:44In the store where I used to work, we had a policy about not talking politics.
00:11:51Wind is a very contentious issue throughout the county, and people came in the store a lot and wanted to
00:11:59know what was happening.
00:12:02There's a big keep the peace thing around here, and I think that people saying that they're upset about something
00:12:09upsets other people.
00:12:14I'm part of a Main Street revitalization, but it is precarious.
00:12:20These are towns that are just starting to turn, hopefully in a good way, economically.
00:12:27I've been here since 1987, which is when I got engaged to my wife, but now I'm here more than
00:12:34she is.
00:12:35Most of my business activities can be conducted through the Internet.
00:12:40It used to be that you came up here, you know, you were really isolated.
00:12:44This is an area of New York State that didn't have electricity until after the Second World War in many
00:12:50cases.
00:13:06The heat from the fire goes up to fire tubes that are surrounded by water, just like the steam engine
00:13:14you see on the old movie.
00:13:16And then the heat goes up to children.
00:13:39We came here in 1971.
00:13:43The house had no doors or windows or heating or plumbing or electricity, but we walked inside and we looked
00:13:51around at the land and we knew this was it.
00:13:54I was working at the old Weekly Life magazine.
00:13:58I was the last director of photography there and had been a writer and editor.
00:14:02So I would go in the city and come here on the weekends.
00:14:05We had three children at that time and we were all just so happy here.
00:14:13Ron thought that we would all be going back to the East Village together in the fall, but I knew
00:14:19that we couldn't leave.
00:14:20Finding out that the Bailey's had signed a contract was upsetting because we were very close.
00:14:27I felt really good. I thought, well, if there's a blackout, if the grid goes down, at least those turbines
00:14:32will be churning away, putting electricity into the grid.
00:14:36And that we were helping the world. We wanted to help the world.
00:14:39The other reason we signed was the same reason everybody does. It's for money. We needed money.
00:14:45It was $5,000 and my wife was having dental work done that came to about that.
00:14:53Sue Bailey came over to see my dream house for the first time and it was really difficult.
00:15:01I think we were blinded by the money. I never thought, for example, what our neighbors across the road would
00:15:10think.
00:15:13The salesman put a piece of paper on the kitchen table. He brought maps and I love maps.
00:15:20And I said, may I copy those maps? And he said, no, but I'll send you some if you'll sign
00:15:25this piece of paper indicating that you're really interested.
00:15:28It said something like, I will not divulge the nature of our relationship to anyone.
00:15:39We found out that there were a lot of wind developers who were prospecting, right? They even call it prospecting.
00:15:47There'd be people driving up and down the road and I felt like our neighborhood was being stocked.
00:15:54There were salesmen from several companies sort of sneaking around all of Delaware County for two years.
00:16:16There's a lot of considerations when you're talking about building a wind farm.
00:16:19We have to look at land area because it's not really worth it to us to only put up a
00:16:24couple of turbines.
00:16:26Our job site is about a 15 mile to 30 mile span.
00:16:32We have a lot of managers to manage different areas.
00:16:36Right now we're at the Maple Ridge Wind Farm in upstate New York, just outside the little hamlet of Lowville.
00:16:42We're standing at the site of a tower that will be put in the air here very shortly.
00:16:48One wind turbine consists of many different parts.
00:16:51We have a base, a lower mid, upper mid and a top.
00:16:56I had sort of a feeling of foreboding when I first saw them from about three miles away.
00:17:03And I drove down among them and I turned off the engine, rolled the windows down and I really listened
00:17:09and I was horrified.
00:17:28And it's not even that they were so loud, you know, just a ch, ch, ch.
00:17:40But it was the idea that it was forever and that it would be that way for the next 25,
00:17:4828 years.
00:17:48It would be that way for the rest of my life.
00:17:53We got out of the lease.
00:17:55They hired a lawyer, as I understand it, got out of their contract with electricity, gave them money back that
00:17:59they had been given.
00:18:00He was going to divorce me if I wouldn't have shut up and I would not shut up.
00:18:04And three and a half weeks from now is our 50th wedding anniversary.
00:18:08That was a turning point because they had a stature in the community that made a whole lot of people
00:18:14pay attention.
00:18:15I started work on a letter to inform our neighbors when development might be taking place.
00:18:21And I included a map with each letter and people would show up on our kitchen porch watching this letter
00:18:28and map in their hands.
00:18:30And they were astounded that this was happening right under their noses and they hadn't known about it.
00:18:45When we came here, I was really looking forward to being involved with the community.
00:18:49But since wind has come, it's ironic because like I feel like I'm doing the right thing and I feel
00:18:56like I'm being protective of my community.
00:18:58But many people don't see it that way.
00:19:00They think that I'm being, I don't know, aggressive or nasty or a downstater.
00:19:04I mean, my thinking is I'm a taxpayer and I live here and this is where I've made my home.
00:19:09And I really want to help keep it that way.
00:19:12The views are breathtaking.
00:19:14It's quiet.
00:19:15We go up on top of the hill and check out the sunset pretty much on a daily basis.
00:19:21My husband's in charge of getting our self-sustaining farm going.
00:19:25We get the chickens and we have two pigs and a bunch of cats and a dog.
00:19:29The wind developer sent us a package and if we wanted to see the contract,
00:19:33we were going to have to sign a confidentiality agreement, which basically excluded me from speaking to anybody other than
00:19:40my attorney.
00:19:41It's a way that the companies can play one neighbor off against another.
00:19:45They can prevent the neighbors from cooperating and from getting together and trying to get the best deal for themselves.
00:19:53In Delaware County, we're targeted because we are one of the bottom five poorest counties in New York State.
00:20:01We have no zoning and it's all local government run.
00:20:05So we fit the check marks in a lot of different ways.
00:20:08Our town is an agricultural town that was agricultural.
00:20:13We've lost most of our farms.
00:20:14There's the understandable desire to have income from the turbines for the town government.
00:20:21Constantly having to buy new trucks and machinery to take care of the highways, that's the big cost.
00:20:27And there's also great empathy on the board with farmers.
00:20:31They think it's a way basically to save the dairy farms.
00:20:35We're living in a county which had maybe a thousand dairy farms.
00:20:38Virtually everybody who lived here was in the dairy farm business.
00:20:42Today there's less than ten.
00:21:10Unfortunately, we are one of the few remaining farms in the area shipping milk.
00:21:15It's just harder and harder to do business on the land.
00:21:18I mean, the thing that I really wanted to get involved with was to find a viable model for farming.
00:21:23And if you directly market to people who want natural grass feds, no chemicals, no hormones, you can actually make
00:21:31it work.
00:21:31The economy of the town is no longer dairy farming.
00:21:35There are many niche farms of little organic vegetable farms, grass fed beef farms.
00:21:43These are the new farms.
00:22:05People think it's not good.
00:22:20Social disasters.
00:22:20It's very interesting to try to find what you do to have a community like this grow
00:22:26and still maintain its integrity to save the parts that work and that are precious to people.
00:22:33My husband and I had started a publishing company in 1985,
00:22:39so we were in New York a lot.
00:22:41We were here certainly every weekend and more when we could be.
00:22:45I never did feel particularly foreign here.
00:22:47I'm not sure that I have a bone for feeling foreign anyway,
00:22:50but this place, this house, belonged to a cousin of mine
00:22:54who lost it in the Depression, and that was purely an accident.
00:22:59We had no idea when we were looking.
00:23:01I applied for the planning board.
00:23:03I've been the chair, I think, for five years.
00:23:07I think the first proposal mentioned 40 turbines,
00:23:10and it seemed to me to be a lot of something that big
00:23:14in a place that's rural and residential.
00:23:18We needed to develop a wind energy local law,
00:23:22and at that point, we left it up to the planning board
00:23:25to make recommendations to the town board.
00:23:28It took about a year.
00:23:29We could have done it in no time.
00:23:31But we really thought that we had to find out
00:23:33what might really change people's lives,
00:23:35what might really have a serious impact on them.
00:23:40The state doesn't have any laws surrounding us.
00:23:43They don't really regulate it.
00:23:44The federal government doesn't regulate it,
00:23:46you know, the siting issues.
00:23:47So it's left to the towns.
00:23:49We have a planning board, which is seven volunteers.
00:23:53I give them a lot of credit because in the last year plus,
00:23:56they have done countless hours of research and reading,
00:23:59and it's a thankless job.
00:24:01I would say, you know, 95% of these towns are not really equipped
00:24:05to really do the kind of research.
00:24:07A note from my past, I worked on encyclopedias for a long time.
00:24:12I've had people send me stuff from Europe.
00:24:15There are many, many professional journals.
00:24:17So I have a pretty good idea of what's solid information
00:24:21and what isn't.
00:24:40Wind turbines draw upon the force of moving air
00:24:44to generate electricity
00:24:45by rotating propeller-like blades around a rotor.
00:24:49The motion of the rotor turns the drive shaft,
00:24:53which turns an electric generator.
00:24:55The energy is there in the wind,
00:24:57and then the wind is turned into the mechanical energy
00:25:01of the rotating blades,
00:25:02and then that rotates an axle, like the axle on your car,
00:25:05and then that rotates something inside of the generator,
00:25:08and that's what feeds power onto the grid
00:25:10and eventually ends up in your home.
00:25:12Power providers see wind farms
00:25:15as an environmentally attractive way
00:25:17to generate clean power for their customers.
00:25:20So the number of wind farms in the U.S. today
00:25:22is rapidly increasing.
00:25:25I see wind as potentially a positive part
00:25:29of the kind of change
00:25:30that I'd like to see happen in Delaware County.
00:25:32I worked as a full-time employee
00:25:34of the Delaware County Electric Cooperative
00:25:36for a couple years.
00:25:37We looked at Meredith as a potential site
00:25:39where it might make sense
00:25:40for a developer to think about putting turbines in the future.
00:25:44The co-op had as its main engineer a good young man,
00:25:49very bright and attuned to the community.
00:25:52I think of it as a much more complex issue
00:25:54than how can we be more clean
00:25:57or how can we be more renewable.
00:25:59I'd like to be able to buy as much of my food
00:26:02and grow as much of my food very locally as I can.
00:26:05I'd like to have as much of my energy come from very local sources.
00:26:09He had suggested at one time
00:26:11that possibly there would be a way of doing a community project
00:26:15that would probably feed into the grid,
00:26:18but the money that comes from it could be in part community money.
00:26:22I spent a lot of time sitting in planning board meetings in Meredith
00:26:27for, I don't know, a year and a half.
00:26:29He's no longer on the project, but while he was,
00:26:31he was wonderful about answering questions,
00:26:33providing us with information,
00:26:35giving us the weights of the parts of the turbines,
00:26:38all kinds of technical things that are very, very useful.
00:26:42I mean, who would have imagined that one blade is seven tons?
00:26:46I suspect that what a developer would want to do
00:26:48is use the largest turbine they can.
00:26:50And for every dollar they invest in a turbine,
00:26:52they're going to get more energy out of the larger ones.
00:26:55You can find wind as you keep going up,
00:26:58and that's why these things keep getting larger and larger.
00:27:00Each of these turbines is an industrial facility.
00:27:04It's like having several factories come in.
00:27:07When you're talking about building a wind turbine,
00:27:09a lot of big pieces and big machinery involved.
00:27:14You want to make sure that the roads are strong enough
00:27:17to hold all this big equipment.
00:27:19They're very large ways.
00:27:20They're 130 feet long.
00:27:23Each foundation has about a 52 feet diameter and 9 feet deep.
00:27:29That's a lot of concrete.
00:27:32I mean, you're talking about 400 feet in the air.
00:27:34You want to make sure that it stands up correctly.
00:27:41In the last year plus, I've learned more about wind than I think anybody needs to know in a lifetime.
00:27:48And I still haven't even scratched the surface.
00:27:51There's just so many questions, so many unknowns.
00:27:54There was really very little about wind in the newspaper.
00:27:58And in the local papers, when you open up, there's, you know, the columns of each little town.
00:28:03And some of it's very quaint.
00:28:05I felt that there was a need for the town of Meredith, both to cover those lighthearted things,
00:28:10but also to try to educate and connect people.
00:28:15I'll get it easy when you do.
00:28:17I think it'll be nice.
00:28:17One of the things you're talking about is I don't want to take a couple of inches.
00:28:29I think it's a little bit hard.
00:28:29It's a little bit too.
00:28:46TURBINES HAVE SPECIFIC KINDS OF NOISE CHARACTERISTICS WHICH ARE UNUSUAL, YOU KNOW, ASIDE FROM THESE
00:28:52GEAR NOISES AND MACHINERY NOISES, IN PARTICULAR THESE LOW FREQUENCY SOUNDS.
00:28:57IT ISN'T JUST THE NOISE ACCORDING TO THIS FATHER OF TWO, IT'S THE VIBRATION.
00:29:01THAT RUMBLING FEELING THAT YOU WOULD GET OR SOMEBODY WITH A LOUD SPEAKER SYSTEM IN THEIR
00:29:06CAR DRIVES BY, YOU FEEL THAT IN YOUR BODY, THAT IS THE SENSATION THAT WE FEEL FROM THE TURBINE.
00:29:11YOU KNOW, IF YOU LOOK AT IT FROM A DISTANCE, IT SORT OF LOOKS RELATIVELY GRACEFUL OR SLOW, BUT
00:29:18ACTUALLY THE TIP OF THE BLADE COMPRESSES THE AIR AGAINST THE COLUMNS AND YOU GET THIS WHOMPING,
00:29:24WHOMPING SOUND.
00:29:31EACH BLADE WEIGHS 22,000 POUNDS.
00:29:34THE TIPS OF THOSE BLADES ARE MOVING AT 178 MILES AN HOUR.
00:29:38BUT MOST AMAZING IS THE SOUND.
00:29:44THERE HAVE BEEN SOME PEER REVIEWED ARTICLES, AND CLEARLY THE SOUND IS WAY WORSE AND WAY DIFFERENT
00:29:52THAN PREDICTED.
00:29:52AT NIGHT IN PARTICULAR, WHICH THEN HAS A WHOLE HOST OF CASCADING, CHOREOVASCULAR EFFECTS,
00:29:58MORE ABSENTEE AND FROM WORK, SCHOOL PERFORMANCE FOR KIDS.
00:30:01AND IF YOU LOOK AT WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION, THEY RECOMMEND THAT WHEN YOU'RE DEALING WITH
00:30:05A LOW FREQUENCY COMPONENT, YOU ACTUALLY HAVE STRICTER SOUND REGULATIONS.
00:30:08THE WIN DEVELOPERS ARE TENDING TO JUST BE COMPLETELY DISMISSIVE.
00:30:12VARIATIONS ON THE THEME IS IT'S NOT SO BAD OR YOU'LL GET USED TO IT.
00:30:15THEY DON'T WANT TO HAVE REGULATIONS WHICH PUT INTO PRINT WHAT ARE STANDARD PUBLIC HEALTH RECOMMENDATIONS,
00:30:21BECAUSE THEY CAN'T ACTUALLY PHYSICALLY DO THAT AND HAVE A WIND PROJECT IN A PLACE THIS CLOSE TO HUMAN BEINGS.
00:30:28WHEN I'M DRIVING UP THE COUNTY ROAD AND I SEE THAT MET TOWER AND I HOLD MY HAND OUT LIKE
00:30:34THIS,
00:30:35AND I SAY, OKAY, AS HIGH AS A WINDMILL IS, OKAY, YEP, RIGHT THERE, THAT'S HOW HIGH THE WINDMILL'S
00:30:45GOING TO BE ON THAT HILL, THAT HIGH, NOW THAT'S NOT MUCH.
00:30:49WHAT MAY BE IMPOSSIBLE TO COMPREHEND ON A TELEVISION SCREEN IS THE SHEER SIZE OF EACH TURBINE.
00:30:55I'M SIX FEET TALL, 42 OF ME WOULD GET YOU UP TO THE ROTOR, 65 OF ME, 391 FEET UP,
00:31:03IS THE TIP OF THE
00:31:04VERY TOP MOST BLADE.
00:31:08WHAT I HAD READ ABOUT THESE PROBLEMS WAS A LITTLE TROUBLING, BUT I THOUGHT YOU REALLY HAVE TO SEE IT
00:31:14FOR YOURSELF.
00:31:15THE SHADOW FLICKER ON THE ROADS WAS FAR WORSE THAN I COULD HAVE IMAGINED.
00:31:19THE SHADOWS WERE EXTRAORDINARILY DENSE, AND I'M A VERY STEADY DRIVER.
00:31:34THE SHADOW FLICKER ON THE ROADS
00:31:34WELL, LET'S CUT ALL THE TREES DOWN ALONGSIDE THE ROAD.
00:31:38BECAUSE AS YOU DRIVE DOWN THE ROAD, THE TREES HAVE A SHADOW FLICKER THAT HITS YOUR WINDSHIELD.
00:31:43THE STROBING EFFECT WHEN THE SUN GETS BEHIND A WIND TURBINE WHERE THE BLADES ARE TURNING.
00:31:49YOU KNOW, SOME PEOPLE ARE DRIVEN CRAZY BY IT.
00:31:56I FOUND IT EXTREMELY TROUBLING TO THINK OF SUBJECTING PEOPLE TO THAT.
00:32:02JUST PUTTING IT HERE AND HAVING PEOPLE DEAL WITH IT.
00:32:07THE STROBING EFFECT.
00:32:10THE STROBING EFFECT.
00:32:40THE STROBING EFFECT.
00:32:40THERE'S A WHOLE HOST OF THINGS THAT OCCUR WITH ANY INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT THAT YOU HAVE TO THINK ABOUT.
00:32:45THESE ARE ONE OF THOSE ENERGY TURBINES THAT YOU HAVE PROBABLY SEEN DRIVING DOWN THE FREEWAY.
00:32:49AND ONE IS ACTUALLY ON FIRE NEAR BIRDS LANDING.
00:32:52JOHN?
00:32:52WELL, THEY'RE REALLY NOT DOING ANYTHING TO FIGHT IT, DEARDREN.
00:32:55BECAUSE AS THIS THING BURNS UP, YOU KNOW, A LOT OF VERY HEAVY FLAMING PIECES KEEP FALLING DOWN TO THE
00:33:00GROUND THERE.
00:33:00SO IT'S ALMOST BETTER OFF TO STAY BACK AWAY FROM IT.
00:33:03LOOKS LIKE IT'S GOING TO JUST GO AHEAD AND BURN ALL THE COMPOSITES OFF OF THOSE WINGS.
00:33:07YEAH, YOU KNOW, AND IT'S INTERESTING, YOU DON'T EVEN GET A PERSPECTIVE OF JUST HOW LARGE THESE THINGS ARE UNTIL
00:33:12YOU'RE UP CLOSE LIKE THAT.
00:33:13I COULD LAND ON THAT MOTOR AND HAVE PLENTY OF ROOM TO SPARE.
00:33:16I WOULDN'T ADVISE THAT TODAY.
00:33:18NAH.
00:33:19YOUR EMERGENCY SQUAD GOES UP IN YOUR FIRE DEPARTMENT, AND THEY STAND AROUND AND HOPE NOTHING TERRIBLE HAPPENS.
00:33:25THE NASELL IS 280 FEET UP IN THE AIR. WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO? YOU CAN'T GET THERE.
00:33:30THEY'RE WORRIED ABOUT WAFTING CHUNKS OF ICE A MILE.
00:33:35AND WHEN THEY GET ICED UP, THEY SHUT OFF.
00:33:37THE RESEARCH THAT'S DONE FOR ICE THROWS IS VERY, VERY POOR.
00:33:43AND THE MECHANISMS FOR PREVENTING THEM, EVEN ACCORDING TO GE, ARE NOT VERY GOOD.
00:33:54THEY'LL TALK ABOUT ICE THROW. THEY'LL TALK ABOUT THE SHADOW FLICKER.
00:33:58BUT REALLY, I THINK THAT HAS TO DO WITH THE VISUALS. THEY DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM.
00:34:03THESE ARE REALLY COMPLICATED ISSUES, AND IF YOU'RE BACK FAR ENOUGH.
00:34:06SO IF THERE'S A MISTAKE, YOU'RE NOT IN TERRIBLE TROUBLE.
00:34:09I THINK THAT'S ALL TO THE GOOD.
00:34:11I THINK IT'S VERY SUBJECTIVE. I THINK, YOU KNOW, LOOKING AT WIND TURBINES,
00:34:14I THINK SOME PEOPLE HAVE LOOKED AT THEM AND SAID THEY'RE BEAUTIFUL.
00:34:17AND I THINK OTHERS SAY WE'LL GET USED TO THEM.
00:34:19IN THE BEGINNING, THIS IS THE ROOM WE HAD A MAJOR PROBLEM IN.
00:34:22GLEN WILDS IS STANDING IN WHAT USED TO BE HIS BEDROOM.
00:34:26YOU SEE, HIS FAMILY DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE.
00:34:29WIND TURBINES DROVE THEM OUT.
00:34:30WE WERE FEELING AWFUL ITCHY IN THE HOUSE, MAJOR HEADACHES.
00:34:34OUR HEARTS WERE REALLY POUNDING.
00:34:37I WAS GETTING SICKER AGAIN THIS YEAR.
00:34:39A BLOCK AWAY, SANDY MCLEAUD HAS THE EXACT DAY THEY TURNED THE TURBINES ON
00:34:44NEAR HER HOME, MARKED ON HER CALENDAR.
00:34:46NIGHT AFTER NIGHT AFTER NIGHT WITHOUT SLEEP, AND YOU GOT SO EXAUSTED.
00:34:50JUST AROUND THE CORNER, HELEN FORESTER RIMES OFF THE SYMPTOMS SHE AND HER NEIGHBORS HAVE BEEN EXPERIENCING FOR WELL OVER
00:34:56A YEAR NOW.
00:34:57I HAVE TINITIS AND PRESSURE IN MY EARS AND FATIGUE, HEART PALPITATIONS.
00:35:05YOU KNOW, THE COMPANIES THAT ARE DOING THIS AREN'T BUYING ANYBODY OUT.
00:35:10WHAT THEY'RE DOING IS LEASING THE LAND AND ARE ALL LLC'S, WHICH MEANS THEIR RESPONSIBILITIES ARE LIMITED.
00:35:17GLENN AND BRENDA WILD WORRY ABOUT THEIR SON AND HIS GROWING FAMILY, WHO ALSO LIVE AMONGST THE TURBINES, BUT CAN'T
00:35:24AFFORD TO MOVE.
00:35:25I DON'T KNOW HOW YOU WALK INTO A POPULATION OF PEOPLE AND SAY, YOU, YOU, YOU AND YOU, WE NO
00:35:34LONGER CARE WHAT HAPPENS TO YOU.
00:35:48THE PATTERN HAS BEEN THAT THE TOWN BOARD DOES WHAT THE PLANNING BOARD RECOMMENDS.
00:35:53THE PLANNING BOARD IS THEIR ADVISORY BOARD.
00:35:56LO AND BEHOLD, THE TOWN BOARD IS NOT FOLLOWING THE PLANNING BOARD'S RECOMMENDATIONS.
00:36:02IF THE PROPOSAL THAT'S BEEN ADVANCED THUS FAR BY THE PLANNING BOARD IS NOT ONE THAT THE TOWN BOARD IS
00:36:07PREPARED TO ENDORSE, WE HAVE TO WRITE SOMETHING ELSE.
00:36:10THERE WERE QUESTIONS FROM THE DEVELOPERS ABOUT THINGS THAT WOULD LIMIT THE NUMBERS OF TURBINES.
00:36:16SOME OF THE SETBACKS, ESPECIALLY SETBACKS FROM PROPERTY LINES, WERE VERY RESTRICTIVE.
00:36:23A SETBACK IS THE DISTANCE FROM A TURBINE TO A PROPERTY LINE OR A RESIDENCE.
00:36:31OUR SETBACKS ARE REALLY NOT VERY GOOD SETBACKS.
00:36:35IN OUR CASE, THEY WERE TRYING FOR 2,500 FEET FROM A RESIDENCE AND 1,600 FEET FROM A PROPERTY
00:36:41LINE.
00:36:42I'D FEEL PRETTY COMFORTABLE AT A MILE. I WOULD THINK THAT PRETTY FAIR.
00:36:48THE CHAIR OF THE PLANNING BOARD SAID THAT THE RECOMMENDATIONS THAT SHE WOULD LIKE TO FOLLOW WOULD MEAN EVEN LONGER
00:36:54SETBACKS.
00:36:55SO SHE ALREADY COMPROMISED.
00:36:56ALL OVER THE WORLD THEY'VE BEEN FINDING THAT THE TROUBLES THAT COME FROM WIND FARMS ARE VERY MUCH REDUCED
00:37:03IF YOU HAVE GOOD SETBACK.
00:37:05THE ONLY DIFFERENCE I SEE IS THAT WE WOULDN'T HAVE REGULATED SETBACKS. IS THAT TRUE OR AM I OFF BASE
00:37:11HERE?
00:37:12EXCEPT FOR A FALL ZONE.
00:37:14IN SOME OF THE EARLIER WIND PROJECTS, THEY WERE INSTITUTING SETBACKS OF ONE AND A HALF TIMES WIND TURBINE HEIGHT.
00:37:22SO IF YOU HAD A 400 FOOT WIND TURBINE, THAT SETBACK MIGHT BE 600 FEET.
00:37:26TO IN ESSENCE ACCOUNT FOR IF IT FELL OVER, WHICH THEY DO SOMETIMES.
00:37:30THE WHOLE TURBINE IS, YOU'RE TALKING 600,000 POUNDS.
00:37:34600,000 POUNDS DOESN'T LAND WITH A WIMPER.
00:37:37FOLKS IN ONE OKLOMATOWN FEELING THE GROUND ACTUALLY SHAKE THIS MORNING.
00:37:41THE TREMOR WAS NOT AN EARTHQUAKE, HOWEVER, RATHER A WIND TURBINE.
00:37:45I CAN'T BELIEVE SOMEONE PUT SOMETHING TOGETHER WRONG.
00:37:48THEY FORGOT TO TIGHTEN THE BOATS OR SOMETHING.
00:37:50ACTUALLY, A WORKER REPORTS THE TURBINE'S BRAKES BROKE, ALLOWING THE BLADES TO SPIN AT TWICE THEIR NORMAL RATE,
00:37:56CAUSING THE TOP TWO SECTIONS TO COME CRASHING TO THE GROUND.
00:37:59IT'S REALLY IMPORTANT THAT THE TURBINES BE SET BACK FAR ENOUGH FROM THE NEIGHBORS' PROPERTIES,
00:38:05AND THERE'S NO PLACE IN TOWN WHERE THEY CAN BE SET BACK FAR ENOUGH.
00:38:08IF WE HAD ACCEPT CART BLANCH, THE RECOMMENDATIONS THAT THE PLANNING BOARD HAD MADE,
00:38:14IT WOULD HAVE ESSENTIALLY BANNED ANYTHING IN THE TOWN OF MERRIDITH.
00:38:17SPENCER FROM COUNTY PLANNING HAD DONE MAPS FOR US.
00:38:21IT PRETTY WELL SHOWS WHAT THE SETBACKS DO ON SOME DIFFERENT PARCELS OF LAND IN THE TOWN OF MERRIDITH.
00:38:29I DON'T KNOW IF MERRIDITH MAKES SENSE TO THE WIND COMPANIES.
00:38:33THEY DON'T HAVE ENOUGH LAND OWNERS SIGNED.
00:38:35THEY HAVE A COUPLE OF PEOPLE.
00:38:36I THINK THEY'VE GOT ONE OVER HERE AND ONE OVER THERE.
00:38:38BUT THERE'S NO WAY TO ATTACH THEM.
00:38:40AND THAT'S THE KEY WHEN THEY SITE THESE.
00:38:41THEY NEED TO BE ABLE TO PUT A BUNCH OF THEM IN ONE AREA
00:38:44SO THEY CAN JUST KEEP PUTTING THEM BOOM BOOM BOOM RIGHT NEXT TO EACH OTHER.
00:38:47WOULD IT BE A PROBLEM IF I SAW A TURBINE THAT FROM HERE LOOKED LIKE AN INCH HIGH
00:38:52IF IT WAS ON THE HORIZON?
00:38:54WOULD YOU MIND LOOKING AT A 410 FOOT TURBINE 600 FEET FROM YOUR PROPERTY LINE?
00:38:58WOULD THAT REALLY BE OKAY?
00:39:00WOULD IT BE OKAY TO SEE FOUR OR SIX OR EIGHT OF THEM IN A ROW?
00:39:05WE'RE NOT AGAINST ALTERNATE SOURCES OF ENERGY.
00:39:08WE'RE AGAINST THESE MONSTROSITIES.
00:39:11WE WANT RENEWABLE ENERGY.
00:39:13WE'RE NOT OPPOSED TO A SMALL SCALE PROJECT HERE WHERE IT'S NOT TOWERING OVER OUR PROPERTY LINE
00:39:17AND IT'S NOT INTERFERING WITH OUR SLEEP AND IT'S NOT AFFECTING OUR PROPERTY VALUES AND SO ON.
00:39:25GIVEN WHAT WE'VE BEEN TRYING TO DO WITH PROTECTING PEOPLE, I DON'T KNOW HOW MANY TURBINES
00:39:29HAVE BEEN IN THERE.
00:39:30I DON'T KNOW WHERE THEY WOULD ALL GO.
00:39:32IF WE MAKE A STRICT ORDINANCE AND REGULATION, PEOPLE CAN OPT OUT OF THAT, WHAT THEY CALL GOOD NEIGHBOR
00:39:38CONTRACTS, WHERE YOU AGREE TO SIGN ON AS A GOOD NEIGHBOR AND NOT COMPLAIN, BUT YOU'RE COMPENSATED.
00:39:43IF IT TURNS OUT THAT THIS IS A PLACE WHERE YOU CAN'T PUT SOME IDEAL NUMBER OF TURBINES, THAT'S LIFE.
00:39:50I DON'T KNOW WHERE WE'RE GOING WITH THIS.
00:39:52I MEAN, I THINK WE OUGHT TO START TALKING ABOUT WHAT THIS TOWN REALLY WANTS TO DO.
00:39:57YOU KNOW, IF THERE'S A POSSIBILITY OF ANY KIND OF COMMUNITY PROJECT THAT'S SMALLER, WE SHOULD BE THINKING SERIOUSLY ABOUT
00:40:03IT.
00:40:04IT IS TIME TO DO SOMETHING.
00:40:06I DON'T THINK WE CAN JUST DIDDLE AROUND ANYMORE.
00:40:08YOU KNOW, THERE'S A LOT OF MONEY HERE.
00:40:09MY SENSE IS THAT IF YOU LOOK, TALKING TO PEOPLE ALL OVER THE STATE, THAT THE WIND DEVELOPERS HAD TARGETED
00:40:15THE DECISION MAKERS IN THE TOWN.
00:40:17TOWN BOARD MEMBERS, PLANNING BOARD MEMBERS.
00:40:19WHEN WE STILL HAD THE LEASE, I WAS ON THE TOWN PLANNING BOARD, HAD BEEN ON FOR ABOUT FIVE YEARS.
00:40:26AND I RESIGNED, SAYING THAT I WOULD HAVE A CONFLICT OF INTEREST BECAUSE I'D BEEN APPROACHED BY AIRTRICITY.
00:40:33BUT I FELT THAT NOT MANY OTHER PEOPLE WHO HAD CONFLICTS OF INTEREST OWNED UP TO THEM.
00:40:44BASICALLY, THERE'S A SEGMENT TO THIS COMMUNITY THAT HAS SHUNNED THEM.
00:40:47PEOPLE WHO THEY'VE KNOWN FOR 30 YEARS WON'T TALK TO THEM, WILL TURN THEIR BACK ON THEM.
00:40:51I MEAN, EVERYBODY'S DOING WHAT THEY THINK IS RIGHT.
00:40:56AND THAT MAKES FOR BIG, DEEP-FELT CONFLICTS.
00:41:06I'VE BEEN AN ENVIRONMENTALIST FOR, YOU KNOW, MY WHOLE ADULT LIFE.
00:41:10AND DIDN'T UNDERSTAND THE ISSUES ABOUT TURBINES, WHAT IT MEANS TO LIVE WITH THEM.
00:41:16YOU KNOW, IN THE BEGINNING, WE WERE LIKE THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE.
00:41:19AND, YES, IT WOULD BE IN MY BACKYARD.
00:41:22PEOPLE DID NOT LIKE WHAT WE WERE SAYING.
00:41:25THEY'RE A BUNCH OF WACKOS.
00:41:26THEY'RE NOT LOOKING TO THE FUTURE.
00:41:29THIS IS SOMETHING THAT WE NEED. WE SHOULD DO THIS.
00:41:31AND THE FACT THAT WE WOULD SAY ANYTHING AGAINST WIND, THAT'S LIKE A CRIME.
00:41:36I MEAN, WIND IS GREEN.
00:41:38RACHEL TOLD ME ABOUT THIS AND ASKED ME IF I WANT TO COME TO A MEETING AND EXPLAINED HER POINT
00:41:42OF
00:41:42VIEW ON WHAT WAS GOING ON.
00:41:44YOU KNOW, VERY QUICKLY, I SAW THAT THERE'S BIGGER ISSUES HERE THAN WHAT ARE BEING PRESENTED IN THE MEETING.
00:41:49THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA.
00:41:50IF YOU DON'T GET THAT INFORMATION ON YOUR OWN, YOU'RE GOING TO END UP BELIEVING WHAT YOU'RE BEING TOLD.
00:41:54I'M NOT A CONSPIRACY THEORIST.
00:41:56I THINK THE ISSUES HERE ARE DRIVEN BY MONEY.
00:42:01I MOVED HERE FIVE YEARS AGO TO BASICALLY RETIRE AND RUN MY SMALL BUSINESS.
00:42:07THE PLAN WAS TO PUT UP SOLAR AND POSSIBLY A SMALL WIND TURBINE TO PRODUCE MY OWN ELECTRICITY.
00:42:13AT ONE POINT A NEIGHBOR STOPPED BY AND SAID THAT WE'RE GOING TO HAVE INDUSTRIAL WIND TURBINES IN MERITIVE.
00:42:19BEING IN THE FINANCIAL BUSINESS FOR 25 YEARS, I STARTED TO DO SOME RESEARCH ON HOW THESE WIND TURBINE PROJECTS
00:42:27ARE PUT TOGETHER AND HOW THEY ARE FUNDED AND CAME UP WITH THE CONCLUSION THAT THIS IS NOT A GOOD
00:42:32IDEA.
00:42:33WHEN YOU TALK TO THE WIND COMPANIES, THEY PUT ALL THESE LITTLE THINGS ON IT.
00:42:36THE BOTTOM LINE IS THEY'RE MAKING A TON OF MONEY AND THAT'S WHY THEY'RE HERE.
00:42:39THIS IS NOT GREEN ENERGY IN THE SENSE OF RENEWABLE ENERGY.
00:42:43THIS IS GREEN ENERGY.
00:42:46THIS IS BIG MONEY.
00:42:47YOU KNOW, THE OLD FOLLOW THE MONEY THING IS APPROPRIATE HERE.
00:42:56THE WIND DEVELOPER IS GETTING MONEY FROM FEDERAL, STATE, AND PRIVATE INVESTORS.
00:43:01YOU DON'T MAKE MONEY IN BUSINESS TODAY WITHOUT TAKING SOME RISK AND WITHOUT HAVING MONEY.
00:43:07THE RISK IS VERY MUCH MINIMIZED BY THE FEDERAL TAX CREDITS THAT THEY'RE GETTING, WHICH COME FROM FEDERAL TAXES, WHICH
00:43:13ARE YOUR, MY, MONEY.
00:43:17STATE INCENTIVES AND ON MY ELECTRIC BILL, WHERE I PAY INTO THIS FUND THAT PAYS FOR RENEWABLE ENERGY.
00:43:24SO, AGAIN, I'M PAYING FOR IT.
00:43:26AND THEN, OF COURSE, YOU HAVE YOUR PRIVATE INVESTORS.
00:43:28WHOEVER'S ON WALL STREET THESE DAYS WHO HAS BEEN GLOMMED.
00:43:32WE ACTUALLY, AS TAXPAYERS, WILL WIND UP PAYING ON SOME OF THESE PROJECTS MORE IN TAX DOLLARS AND TAX BREAKS
00:43:39TO THE WIND COMPANIES THAN THE WIND COMPANIES WILL ACTUALLY INVEST.
00:43:42THE MORTEST WIND DEVELOPERS IN NEW YORK STATE ARE INVESTMENT BANKS.
00:43:46THEY BASICALLY GET TO DEPRECIATE THE TURBINE OVER A FIVE- OR SIX-YEAR PERIOD.
00:43:51IF THAT WIND PROJECT IS SOLD, THAT NEW WIND COMPANY CAN NOW START THE DEPRECIATION ALL OVER AGAIN AND GET
00:43:57ALL THE SAME TAX WRITE-OFFS THAT THE FIRST COMPANY GETS.
00:44:00AND THAT'S WHY THEY DO THE TRADE.
00:44:01WHAT SEEMS TO BE THE PATTERN FROM THE RESEARCH WE'VE DONE, THEY'LL SELL IT TO SOMEBODY ELSE, WHO
00:44:06WILL THEN GET HIS ACCELERATED DEPRECIATION, AND ON IT GOES.
00:44:09JP MORGAN CAN SELL IT TO GOLDMAN SACKS AND THEY CAN REDEPRECIATE IT OVER ANOTHER FIVE YEARS.
00:44:15IT'S QUITE MAGICAL.
00:44:16NEW YORK STATE HAS MADE A GOAL OF 25% OF ELECTRIC ENERGY FROM ALTERNATIVE SOURCES, SO THEY PUT INCENTIVES
00:44:25IN IT.
00:44:25NEW YORK STATE AND THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT SEEM TO THINK THAT IT MAKES ECONOMIC SENSE TO GIVE
00:44:32ALL OF THESE TAX INCENTIVES THAT ARE AVAILABLE ONLY, ONLY TO WEALTHY CORPORATIONS, HUGE CORPORATIONS.
00:44:41THE TOWN CAN OR CANNOT BENEFIT, DEPENDING UPON HOW WELL IT NEGOTIATES A DEAL.
00:44:46THE DEVELOPER WILL CRY POVERTY.
00:44:49SO THESE COMPANIES HAVE THE INCREDIBLE CHUTZPA TO COME INTO THESE LITTLE TOWNS, WHICH ARE MOSTLY POVERTY STRICTEN, AND ASK
00:44:58THEM FOR TAX BREAKS.
00:44:59THE BIG COMPANIES TAKE OUT 90-SOME PERCENT OF THE INCOME FROM A TURBINE.
00:45:06THEY GIVE A COUPLE PERCENT TO THE LAND OWNER AND A COUPLE PERCENT MAYBE TO THE TOWN.
00:45:13TO ME, THAT'S EXPLOITATION.
00:45:14IT DOESN'T GIVE YOU ENOUGH FOR A PICKUP TRUCK FOR THE HIGHWAY DEPARTMENT EVERY YEAR.
00:45:19IT'S NOT A LOT OF MONEY.
00:45:21MERIDITH IS NOT, YOU KNOW, A FANCY WELL-TO-DO TOWN.
00:45:24THERE ARE OTHER TOWNS IN DELAWARE COUNTY, LIKE ANDES AND BAVINA, WHERE THEY'VE BANNED INDUSTRIAL WIND DEVELOPMENT IN THEIR
00:45:30TOWNS OUTRIGHT.
00:45:31THEY HAVE THE MONEY AND THE POLITICAL MUSCLE TO DO THAT.
00:45:35I THINK FOR US, THIS IS WHAT IT'S ALL ABOUT.
00:45:37KIND OF TAKES YOUR BREATH AWAY, RIGHT?
00:45:40MAYBE PEOPLE IN MERIDITH ARE NICER THAN PEOPLE IN BAVINA.
00:45:43WE WEREN'T ASKING FOR REASONABLE SETBACKS.
00:45:47OUR WHOLE THING WAS WE DON'T WANT THEM, PERIOD.
00:45:50BUT WE HAD TO DIG OUR HEELS IN AND FIGHT.
00:45:53THIS WAS A FIGHT.
00:45:54THIS IS BIG MONEY, AND HOW COULD YOU EXPECT THAT WHEN A PROGRAM OF THIS MAGNITUDE,
00:46:00WHICH COULD BE $75 MILLION, $100 MILLION, THAT THEY'RE GOING TO COMPASSIONATELY FEEL BAD FOR ME OR FOR YOU.
00:46:07THEY'VE DONE THIS MANY TIMES.
00:46:08THEY HAVE AN AGENDA.
00:46:09THEY'RE VERY DELIBERATE.
00:46:10THEY'RE VERY SMART.
00:46:11THIS IS BIG MONEY, BIG COMPANIES, BIG POLITICS.
00:46:14I'VE REFERRED TO THEM AS MODERN-DAY CARPETBAGGERS, AND THAT'S WHAT THEY ARE.
00:46:18THEY'RE COMING IN AND TAKING THAT RIDGE, AND THEY'LL THROW OUT SOME MONEY ON THE TABLE FOR THE MUNICIPALITY,
00:46:23JUST FOR A QUICK FINANCIAL FIX, MAYBE BUY A NEW TRUCK OR SOMETHING.
00:46:26CAN YOU IMAGINE SUCH A THING?
00:46:30WE ALL KNOW THAT UPSTATE NEW YORK HAS SEEN BETTER TIMES.
00:46:34AND EVEN THOUGH THE TOWNSHIPS ARE GETTING AN INITIAL WINDFALL OF MONEY,
00:46:38DOWN THE ROAD THE NEGATIVE IMPACT WOULD BE SO SEVERE IN MY OPINION THAT IT MIGHT BE IRREVERSIBLE.
00:46:43AND I WILL TELL YOU, BEING IN REAL ESTATE FOR 37 YEARS NOW, THAT THE NUMBER ONE REASON PEOPLE ARE
00:46:49BUYING HERE
00:46:50IS BECAUSE OF ITS PRISTINE NATURE, THE RIDGELINES, THE VIEWS.
00:46:53WE HAVE SEVERAL HUNDRED THOUSAND ACRES OF HIKING TRAILS THAT PEOPLE GO INTO,
00:46:58TO JUST HAVE PEACE AND TRANQUILITY.
00:47:01AND PEOPLE COME UP FROM THE CITY AND SEE SHOOTING STARS AND CONSTELLATIONS WITH A CRYSTAL CLEAR SKY,
00:47:07BECAUSE WE DON'T HAVE INDUSTRY.
00:47:08SO I THINK THAT WE HAVE TO BE VERY CAREFUL, BEING STEWARDS OF THE LAND,
00:47:12TO MAKE SURE WE DON'T MAKE ONE ERROR IN JUDGMENT AFTER ANOTHER,
00:47:15AND SPOIL THE VERY AREAS THAT WE NEED MOST TO PROTECT.
00:47:20A LOT OF THE OTHER TOWNS WERE BANNING WIND.
00:47:23WE WERE TRYING TO WORK WITHIN THE PARAMETERS OF RECOGNIZING AND RESPECTING PROPERTY OWNERS' RIGHTS.
00:47:29IS THERE ANYONE HERE OPPOSED INDUSTRIAL WIND TURBINE, MERIDYTH?
00:47:33OPPOSED.
00:47:34OPPOSED, OKAY.
00:47:35HOW MANY OF YOU MIGHT SUPPORT A COMMUNITY ALTERNATIVE ENERGY PROJECT?
00:47:39I WAS HAPPY JUST TO COME TO MERIDYTH AND JUST TO BE ON MY LITTLE FARM
00:47:43AND MIND MY OWN BUSINESS AND NOT GET INVOLVED.
00:47:46I MEAN, IF YOU HAD ASKED ME IF I WOULD BE AN ACTIVIST, THAT WOULD HAVE NOT BEEN ON THE
00:47:50TOP 10 THINGS
00:47:51OF WHAT I WANTED TO BE WHEN I GREW UP.
00:47:53YOU KNOW, BALLERINA MIGHT HAVE BEEN ON THERE, BUT NOT ACTIVIST, AND CERTAINLY NOT WIND ACTIVIST.
00:47:58HOW MANY OF YOU HAVE STAYED UP LATE AT LEAST ONE NIGHT THINKING ABOUT THE MERIDYTH WIND ISSUE?
00:48:03OKAY.
00:48:04HOW MANY OF YOU HAVE ACTUALLY LOST SLEEP?
00:48:08OKAY.
00:48:0815 OF US GOT TOGETHER AND WE INCORPORATED IT AS A NOT-FOR-PROFIT.
00:48:13AS FOR THE ALLIANCE FOR MERIDYTH, AND WE ARE VOLVED.
00:48:16WE ARE VOLUNTEER-BASED, AND THIS MEETING SHOWS THAT WE ARE ALL WILLING TO WORK TOGETHER,
00:48:20DESPITE OUR DIFFERENCES.
00:48:22THE ALLIANCE FOR MERIDYTH WOULD LIKE TO SEE A TOWN OWN COMMUNITY WIND PROJECT, YOU KNOW, BUILT HERE.
00:48:30THERE HAS BEEN THIS MERIDYTH ALLIANCE FORMED.
00:48:33MAYBE YOU HAVE EVEN READ SOME OF THEIR PUBLICATIONS.
00:48:36I WON'T READ THEM, BUT EVERY NOW AND THEN MY WIFE MADE IT TO ME.
00:48:40I TRY NOT TO LISTEN.
00:48:41THE TOWN HAS ORGANIZED ITSELF, AND I KNOW THERE'S BEEN SOME RESENTMENT.
00:48:45I DON'T RESENT IT AT ALL.
00:48:46THEY WOULD BE FOOLISH NOT TO.
00:48:48YOU KNOW, IT'S LIKE ASKING SOME POOR MINOR TO NEGOTIATE A GOOD DEAL WITH BETHELHAM STEEL.
00:48:53WHO DO YOU WANT FOR A NEIGHBOR?
00:48:54WHO DO YOU PERSONALLY WANT FOR A NEIGHBOR?
00:48:56DO YOU WANT SOMEBODY FOR A NEIGHBOR THAT WHEN THE PAGER GOES OFF, HE'S THERE WITH THE AMBULANCE TO HELP
00:49:02YOU OUT?
00:49:03AND IF THE WINDMILL HELP THAT GUY BE THERE, ACCEPT IT.
00:49:07JUST PLAN, ACCEPT IT.
00:49:09PEOPLE I TALK TO, PEOPLE I SEE EVERY DAY, THE PEOPLE THAT LIVE AND WORK HERE, REALLY DON'T HAVE A
00:49:14PROBLEM WITH IT.
00:49:15THERE'S THIS MINORITY OF PEOPLE, I KNOW THEY HATE IT WHEN THEY SAY THAT,
00:49:19BUT IT'S A VERY, VERY VOCAL MINORITY THAT HAVE BEEN VERY AGGRESSIVE AND VERY GOOD AT WHAT THEY DO.
00:49:27WE THOUGHT WE WERE IN THE MINORITY.
00:49:29BUT AS WE WENT DOOR TO DOOR, TALKED TO OUR NEIGHBORS, WE WERE QUITE TAKEN ABACK.
00:49:35WE FELT THERE HAD TO BE A GROUP REPRESENTING THE INTERESTS OF THE RESIDENTS AND NOT THE INTERESTS OF THE
00:49:41WIND DEVELOPERS
00:49:42OR THE SMALL HANDFUL OF LARGE LAND OWNERS, RIGHT, WHO HAD SIGNED LEASES.
00:49:48TOWN BOARDS IN NEW YORK STATE SEEM TO TRADITIONALLY BE MADE UP OF PEOPLE WHO ARE LARGE LAND OWNERS,
00:49:57PARTIALLY BECAUSE NO ONE ELSE WANTED THE JOB.
00:50:01TOWN BOARD MEETINGS GENERALLY ARE ARDUOUS, BORING MEETINGS, AND THESE PEOPLE HAVE DONE THESE JOBS FOR YEARS AND YEARS.
00:50:12NOBODY EVER WENT TO THE MEETINGS.
00:50:16AND NOW ALL OF THE TOWN BOARDS ARE BEING OBSERVED, AND I THINK THAT THAT IS UPSETTING TO THE TOWN
00:50:23BOARD MEMBERS.
00:50:24THEY FEEL UNAPPRECIATED AND DISRESPECTED.
00:50:28WHAT HAPPENS IN ANY CONTENTIOUS ISSUE, PEOPLE YOU DON'T ORDINARILY SEE BEGIN TO TAKE AN INTEREST.
00:50:35YES, IT MAKES MEETINGS HARD, BUT I WELCOME IT.
00:50:38A PART OF THE TOWN BOARD THOUGHT IN SOME SENSE WE'D GONE OVER TO THE ENEMY.
00:50:42YOU KNOW, THESE ARE NOT SOME DISTANT STRANGERS. THESE ARE FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS.
00:50:53ROGER HAMILTON HAS AN OBVIOUS CONFLICT OF INTEREST.
00:50:56HIS FATHER SIGNED A WIND CONTRACT WITH AIRTRICITY.
00:51:00PAUL MENKE IS ALSO A BOARD MEMBER OF THE DELAWARE COUNTY ELECTRIC COOPERATIVE.
00:51:05AND HE HAS SAID THAT HE WOULD RECUSE HIMSELF.
00:51:08MARGE ROCKEFELLER, I KNOW THAT SHE THINKS THAT WE'RE BEING MEAN.
00:51:11OUR TOWN BOARD GENERALLY VOTES ACCORDING TO WHAT FRANK WANTS.
00:51:15FRANK, WHAT DO YOU THINK? OKAY, THEN WE'LL GO ALONG WITH FRANK.
00:51:18AND AS FOR FRANK, HE IS ONE OF THE BEST MEN I KNOW.
00:51:22AND HIS WIFE, GRETEL, IS A SAINT.
00:51:24I LIKE TO THINK THAT PEOPLE ARE GENERALLY GOOD PEOPLE AND THEY WANT TO DO THE RIGHT THING.
00:51:30I THINK HAVING MONEY WAVED IN FRONT OF YOUR FACE MAKES IT VERY HARD TO DO THAT.
00:51:34I CAN'T SEE HOW IT CANNOT BE CONFLICT OF INTEREST WHEN YOUR BOARD MEMBERS ARE GOING TO BENEFIT FROM A
00:51:39LAW THAT THEY'RE PASSING.
00:51:40WE'RE HERE TO KIND OF KEEP WORKING ON THE REGULATIONS.
00:51:45TOWN GOVERNMENT IS KIND OF INTERESTING. WE'RE A REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY.
00:51:49WE'RE ELECTED BY THE TOWN'S PEOPLE TO MAKE DECISIONS.
00:51:54AND SOMETIMES WE HAVE TO MAKE DECISIONS, YOU KNOW, VERY OFTEN BASED ON OUR OWN PERSONAL BELIEFS AND WHAT WE
00:52:01BELIEVE IS RIGHT FOR THE TOWN.
00:52:02THE ATTORNEY, ROSEMARY NICHOLS, BASICALLY REROTE THE LAW.
00:52:06SHE IS OUTSIDE OF HER ROLE, IN MY OPINION, AND MANY OTHERS.
00:52:09I PERCEIVED THE PLANNING BOARD'S STATEMENT OF BINDINGS AS BEING BASICALLY MAKING A MORAL OR AN ETHICAL JUDGMENT ABOUT THE
00:52:18APPROPRIATENESS OF WIND ENERGY.
00:52:20SO I OPERATED ON AN ASSUMPTION THAT, IN FACT, THERE WAS GOING TO BE COMMERCIAL WIND.
00:52:24AND THAT'S THE WAY I WROTE IT.
00:52:28SHE HAS BECOME, IN A SENSE, ONE OF OUR OFFICIALS, VERSUS AN ADVISOR TO OUR OFFICIALS.
00:52:34ROSEMARY?
00:52:34YES.
00:52:35I DIDN'T GET MINE UNTIL SATURDAY, SO I HAVEN'T HAD A CHANCE TO REVIEW IT.
00:52:40I DON'T KNOW ABOUT ANYBODY ELSE.
00:52:41SATURDAY.
00:52:42SATURDAY?
00:52:42TODAY.
00:52:43TODAY.
00:52:44THEY HAVEN'T EVEN GOTTEN THINGS A DAY IN ADVANCE TO READ.
00:52:46THE SENSE FROM THE TOWN BOARD WAS THAT WE SHOULD CREATE A SEPARATE BOARD.
00:52:50AND THE BOARD IS CALLED A WIND ENERGY REVIEW BOARD.
00:52:54THEY WANT TO APPOINT SEVEN CITIZENS TO A WIND BOARD.
00:52:58AND THEN THESE SEVEN CITIZENS BASICALLY HAVE COMPLETE CONTROL OVER WHERE WIND TURBINES GO.
00:53:04AND IT HAS ONE FUNCTION, WHICH IS REVIEWING WIND ENERGY APPLICATIONS.
00:53:08WHO APPOINTS THESE BOARD MEMBERS?
00:53:10THE TOWN BOARD.
00:53:11OH.
00:53:14NOW, WHO ARE THEY GOING TO APPOINT?
00:53:16THEY'RE GOING TO APPOINT PEOPLE THAT ARE, IN MY OPINION, ARE GOING TO BE FRIENDLY TOWARDS WHAT THEY WANT.
00:53:22I'VE BEEN APPALED BY THE FACT THAT THEY LET THE TOWN PLANNING BOARD WORK FOR NEARLY A YEAR,
00:53:28WORKING VERY HARD WITH NO PAY, AND THE TOWN BOARD IS THROWING THE WHOLE THING OUT WITH NO RESEARCH.
00:53:35I THINK THAT FRANK FEELS THAT HE IS DOING WHAT IS RIGHT.
00:53:42THE WIND COMPANIES ARE PRESENTING A VERY ONE-SIDED VIEW, AND I THINK THAT HE IS BELIEVING THAT.
00:53:48THE RESPONSE I GOT TO THINGS THAT THE TOWN DIDN'T LIKE MOSTLY WAS,
00:53:54I'VE TALKED IT OVER WITH THE DEVELOPERS, AND THEY SAY IT'S NOT TRUE.
00:53:58AND, I MEAN, IT'S JUST A SILLY RESPONSE.
00:54:02NO ICE THROW SHALL BE PERMITTED OFF THE SITE?
00:54:04YEAH.
00:54:05WELL, AS PART OF THE APPLICATION, THEY PROVIDE US WITH THE INFORMATION ABOUT HOW FAR THE ICE THROWS,
00:54:12AND AS PART OF THAT, THEY SHOW WHERE IT GOES.
00:54:16THE MEASUREMENTS THAT ARE DONE BEFOREHAND ARE NOT NECESSARILY THAT GOOD.
00:54:22WHEN THESE THINGS GO UP, AND THEY'VE COST A FEW MILLION DOLLARS TO GET UP, WHAT ARE YOU GOING
00:54:29TO DO?
00:54:29YOU HAVE AN INTERNATIONAL COMPANY WITH THIS CADRE OF LAWYERS AND, YOU KNOW, DEEP POCKETS, AND THEN YOU HAVE MERIDYTH.
00:54:37POINT OF INFORMATION? POINT OF INFORMATION?
00:54:40PERFORMATION STANDARDS?
00:54:41NO?
00:54:42NO, WE'RE NOT TAKING...
00:54:43IT'S JUST A POINT OF INFORMATION.
00:54:45SOMETHING THAT I HAD HOPED WE COULD KEEP AT BAY SEEMS TO BE HAPPENING,
00:54:50AND THAT IS THE TOWN HAS BECOME VERY DIVIDED.
00:54:53RECKLESS DESCRIBES THE ACTIONS OF FRANK BACHELOR, MERIDITH TOWN'S SUPERVISOR.
00:54:58BACHELOR IGNORED AND TOSSED AWAY LIKE TRASH MORE THAN A YEAR OF METICULOUS, CAREFULLY CRAFTED SENSIBLE RESEARCH FROM THE MERIDITH
00:55:05PLANNING BOARD.
00:55:06IN SEARCH OF A BUCK AT THE EXPENSE OF THE PUBLIC, BACHELOR ARBITRARILY REPLACED THE BOARD'S RECOMMENDATION WITH ONE BASED
00:55:13ON THE DEVELOPER'S WISHES.
00:55:15THEY MADE COPIES OF IT AND THEY PASSED, THEY HAD HUNDREDS OF THEM, AND SOME OF THE FOLKS THAT ARE
00:55:19THERE WERE FRIENDS AND RIPPED UP A WHOLE LOT OF THEM.
00:55:30DEAR EDITOR, I KNOW FRANK AS A FELLOW FARMER AND THE HUSBAND OF A MOST REMARKABLE WIFE WHO HAPPENED TO
00:55:36BE MY SIXTH GRADE TEACHER.
00:55:38I HAVE NEVER KNOWN HIM TO DO ANYTHING SOLELY FOR HIS OWN BENEFIT EVER.
00:55:42HE HAS ALWAYS BEEN THERE WHEN A NEIGHBOR WAS IN NEED OR WHEN AN ISSUE HAD TO BE RESOLVED.
00:55:47AND THIS TOWN BOARD DOES NOT WANT TO BAN IT, AND I THINK THAT'S THE MESSAGE WE'RE TRYING TO GET
00:55:52TO YOU.
00:55:53WHAT WE HEAR OVER AND OVER AGAIN IS, FRANK IS GOING TO SHOVE THESE TURBINES DOWN OUR THROATS, WHETHER WE
00:55:59WANT THEM OR NOT.
00:56:00I GUESS IT COMES DOWN AT ONE LEVEL TO A QUESTION OF WHETHER OR NOT YOU TRUST THE BOARD.
00:56:06WHETHER OR NOT YOU TRUST THE BOARD.
00:56:08THE BOARD.
00:56:12IT'S A DIFFICULT FOR MY FAMILY.
00:56:14MY WIFE HAS TAKEN THE DIVISIVENESS AND THE RANKOR AND THE ANGER.
00:56:19SHE'S TAKEN THAT TO HEART. IT'S HURT.
00:56:21AND I THINK, YOU KNOW, WE'LL BOTH BE GLAD WHEN IT'S OVER.
00:56:24WHAT THE WIND COMPANIES AND CORPORATIONS HAVE DONE OVER THE YEARS IS THE SPLIT.
00:56:29YOU SPLIT THE TOWN. YOU GET SO MANY PEOPLE FOR YOU.
00:56:32YOU KNOW YOU'RE GOING TO GET SO MANY PEOPLE AGAINST YOU.
00:56:34AND PEOPLE HAVE BEEN FRIENDS FOR YEARS.
00:56:36PEOPLE WHO HAVE GONE OVER TO PEOPLE'S HOUSES FOR PICNICS AND DINNERS.
00:56:41HELPED EACH OTHER OUT.
00:56:43NOW PEOPLE DON'T TALK TO EACH OTHER. PEOPLE HATE EACH OTHER.
00:56:45PEOPLE SAYING VILE THINGS ABOUT EACH OTHER.
00:56:47AND IT'S ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE.
00:57:13THANK YOU.
00:57:27Dear neighbor, after being silenced for months, the public will have a chance to speak concerning
00:57:32this proposed wind law.
00:57:34We're concerned about the dependence on foreign oil and the effects of global warming.
00:57:39Unfortunately, Meredith has a vocal group of relative newcomers.
00:57:42Our greatest natural resource is not wind or even solar power, but our relationships
00:57:48to each other.
00:57:49If you were in trouble, no matter what it was, your neighbors would come to your assistance.
00:57:54I've been disturbed to be told that I don't really have a voice because I haven't lived
00:57:58here 30 years.
00:58:00Now there's neighbors that won't speak to you because you're on the other side of the
00:58:03issue.
00:58:04The rudeness and unpleasantness in my town, it hurts.
00:58:10I was disappointed that there weren't more people there to speak in favor of the wind
00:58:16turbines.
00:58:16The penetrating low-frequency aspect of the noise, a thundering vibration, much like the
00:58:21throbbing bass of a neighboring disco.
00:58:23These turbines are going to be between us and the sun.
00:58:25Every single window I look at them, I will see shallow flickers.
00:58:28Frank, you've already said, if we go to the regs the way the planning board put them out,
00:58:32we will not be able to have wind turbines in the town of Merritt.
00:58:35Maybe that is the point.
00:58:37Where are the developers?
00:58:38How come they're not here making presentations to us, telling us what they'll do for us?
00:58:42As a reference librarian, I've done some research on the effects of industrial wind turbines
00:58:46on bird and bat populations.
00:58:47The same ridges used by raptors are also likely locations for possible wind turbine development.
00:58:52What about the farmers that I've been fighting for?
00:58:55Where are they?
00:58:55I cannot sit quietly knowing the risk of wind turbine and loving my children, sacrificing
00:59:01the things that I have to ensure their safety and well-being, and watch this town make a decision
00:59:06that's going to impact their lives.
00:59:08I listened to everyone.
00:59:09I heard them loud and clear.
00:59:11One of the speakers, David Hood, I can tell you exactly what he said.
00:59:18He said, I've known Frank for many years.
00:59:20I voted for him many times, and I voted for other people on this board.
00:59:24No one on the board stood for election based upon their position about industrial wind.
00:59:30So, by putting it off until the November election, I think it's a fair thing to do.
00:59:34I think it's a democratic thing to do.
00:59:36And I'll even go further and say I think it's an honorable thing to do.
00:59:39So, I kind of changed my position.
00:59:42The way I looked at it, why should I keep fighting?
00:59:45I think the thing that may have surprised the Alliance for Meredith was that they focused
00:59:49on me this whole time, and there's four other people on my town board.
00:59:53And they're the ones who made the decision in the end.
00:59:58Frank Bachelet voted against the wind ordinance.
01:00:02Mankey recused himself.
01:00:03The three other board members voted for it, so it was passed.
01:00:06They were going to do what they were going to do.
01:00:08And Rosemary Nichols was going to get her wind ordinance passed.
01:00:13And she really doesn't care what these people who live here think, feel,
01:00:17or how this is going to affect their lives.
01:00:19The only recourse we have, we have elections in November.
01:00:25And we will do whatever is necessary to try to defeat big turbines.
01:00:30The first act I intend to step forward with, when elected, is to fire the town attorney.
01:00:44Everyone in the town who wants to come and talk, we will listen.
01:00:49There will be no sessions in which, oh, we talk, you listen, and if you say anything, you're rude.
01:00:58I think the town will physically look different to me if we win the election.
01:01:02Instead of, like, this place which is under threat and anything could happen, I'll feel, you know, like it is
01:01:08what it is,
01:01:09which is this beautiful place which people really care about and are going to protect.
01:01:14We can move. We can take our pigs and chickens and our cats and dogs and off we go.
01:01:19There's other people on the other hand who are not going to have that luxury. They're stuck.
01:01:23In our own household, we spend an inordinate amount of time talking about turbines.
01:01:30And sometimes one of us has to say, stop for a while.
01:01:34People that are extremely fearful of it and extremely passionate about stopping it seem to feel that it's a change
01:01:44like no other that has ever happened to Delaware County.
01:01:47It is going to have catastrophic impacts, right?
01:01:49I think I will want to leave. All those years we, um, we raised four children here and our grandchildren
01:02:06come back.
01:02:07And, um, it's a really wonderful place for them to come back to.
01:02:13And if, if we have to leave, um, it won't be easy.
01:02:25You know, the way I looked at it was something for the farmers that would help supplement their income.
01:02:29We're losing the farms. That's really the story around here.
01:02:33In the beginning, I just thought, oh, our community will embrace this.
01:02:36I was very naive.
01:02:39I'm all for a small project that could benefit Meredith. I have no problem with it.
01:02:43But see, it won't end there. That's the problem.
01:02:45It's a lot of money to put in all the infrastructure.
01:02:47So once they have the infrastructure in, it's cheaper to add to an existing project
01:02:52than it is to go out and develop a new one.
01:02:54The fear is like what happened in Tug Hill.
01:02:57You know, it starts off as 20, and then it's 30, and then it's 80, and then it's 100.
01:03:03And it just, they just keep putting them up.
01:03:14I was born and raised here on Tug Hill. I've been here my whole life, and now this.
01:03:26Well, initially when they come in and they started selling the idea of wind power, it was supposed to be
01:03:3179.5 megawatts.
01:03:33So that would have been about 50 towers.
01:03:36But this project ballooned up to four times that amount, and it encompasses over 21,000 acres of land.
01:03:52From my vantage point, I can stand and count over 170 of the 195 turbines that are erected.
01:04:01I was only going to have one or two within 3,000 feet of my property, and I ended up
01:04:04with seven.
01:04:05I've put all my life investment into that house, and I live here, and I love it here. I'm born
01:04:10and raised here.
01:04:11One person that came in here described it as invasion of the pod people, and I kind of liked that
01:04:16analogy.
01:04:17What was scenic and beautiful and serene has now become an industrial area here.
01:04:23Would you consider retiring in my home at fair market value?
01:04:29Or if you had the money or the funding, would you consider not living near these things?
01:04:40The noise that these towers give off, the shadows that they give off, the medical effects living among these towers.
01:04:48They claim that there's nothing wrong, that everything is okay.
01:04:52Well, I don't believe that.
01:04:58I just started to get, like, dizzy spells, and, like, my ears always felt off.
01:05:04You know, I felt sick to my stomach from the time I got up in the morning to the time
01:05:08I went to bed.
01:05:09And the only thing that really had changed, I mean, I've lived here for eight years now, was the windmills
01:05:14started.
01:05:14This one across the road, as I've been told, is 1,050 feet from where we live.
01:05:20It's just too close.
01:05:21I mean, there are times, like, I lay in my bed, and it sounds like the noise is in the
01:05:25walls.
01:05:26Like, the walls are vibrating.
01:05:27And then I'll get up and look out the window, and you can hear it's the windmill.
01:05:32When there's a front coming in, they start turning faster.
01:05:35And then when moisture gets into it, the noise will compound.
01:05:55What comes to mind is your vacuum cleaner running inside your bed all night.
01:06:01It keeps you awake.
01:06:03In the spring, those ones way down there flicker inside of my house.
01:06:09And they're probably 6,000 or 8,000 feet away.
01:06:12My son's got a TV. He likes to play his Nintendo.
01:06:15You can't set that TV anywhere in those rooms if there's a window nearby
01:06:19because you can see windmills spinning in it, plus the lighting is going on and off.
01:06:24He can't concentrate.
01:06:25The wintertime, it's the worst, and I think it's because of the reflection of the snow.
01:06:29Those shadows will go through the windows. It looks like we have a disco ball.
01:06:32He actually takes blankets and puts over the drapes because the drapes don't quite drown at all out.
01:06:37Your local television stations, forget it. They're gone.
01:06:40Due to the windmills, the TV comes in and out.
01:06:43In out, in out, in out, in out.
01:06:45Oh, sure, you can go and complain all you want.
01:06:47We've been going to the town board meetings for a year and a half.
01:06:49They just tell us to sit down and shut up.
01:06:52People just have given up trying to fight these bastards.
01:06:55Traveling salesmen is what they are.
01:06:58They come into your town. They convince you, sell you a bill of goods,
01:07:02and then they're off and gone with no remorse or no concern of what they've done to your area
01:07:08or done to the environment, all in the name of green energy.
01:07:12It's not green energy. It's greed.
01:07:15They made the people feel like they were their best friends in the whole world.
01:07:19You can trust us. We'll tell you everything you need to know.
01:07:22Don't listen to anyone else. And the people trusted them.
01:07:25Generally, what happens with these companies, they'll come into the area.
01:07:29They find out who the supervisor is, who the town board members are,
01:07:33who the planning board members are.
01:07:35They'll look up what kind of holdings they have.
01:07:38They'll find out information about them.
01:07:40They have their big, big-boy tactics that they bring in and totally broadside small-town governments,
01:07:47and that's what they did here.
01:07:48I am not against renewable energy.
01:07:50I am against the way that they snuck around, the way that they played the town board, the planning board.
01:07:58Yes, the towns get a little bit of money, but the people aren't seeing that money.
01:08:02Oh, but wait, our town supervisor has them on his property.
01:08:06A couple of our town board member families have them on their property.
01:08:09I don't have a win contract, and I didn't ask for anything ridiculous back then.
01:08:14No, it's not going to be that way now. Now I know what they are.
01:08:18$500 for a neighbor agreement to live next to these? That's an insult. It's a joke. You know, it's humiliating.
01:08:25We basically call them gag orders because you can't speak out against them negatively.
01:08:31Anybody that gets one of these agreements and takes it to a good bona fide lawyer that is totally neutral
01:08:38says you've got to be insane to sign one of these agreements and to go along with this
01:08:43because you are absolutely signing your rights away.
01:08:46I mean, to me, what are they trying to hide? If this is a great thing, why can't you find
01:08:50out information on it?
01:08:52Why do you have to search so hard? Why is it so secretive?
01:08:55This world today, everybody's strapped. I can sympathize with anybody trying to get any money for their property and their
01:09:01taxes,
01:09:01but you really better stop and see what it's all worth.
01:09:04This is 24-7, 365 days a year. It doesn't go away.
01:09:09Ask questions. Do your homework.
01:09:14Because once you make a decision and you let these guys in, your world is going to change forever
01:09:19and there's not a thing that you're going to be able to do about it.
01:09:23Let's go.
01:09:24Let's go.
01:09:27Let's go.
01:09:38Let's go.
01:10:02Hello, this is Dan Birnbaum calling, candidate for town council, and we're calling everybody
01:10:08to remind them about Tuesday's election.
01:10:11For many years, I've participated in town elections in one way or another, and yet they have not
01:10:16had a lot of importance.
01:10:18But this time, there would be a real reason for people to vote.
01:10:22If we lose on this issue, I would say, well, I think the people are wrong, but it's their
01:10:28town.
01:10:28Right now, I feel that the town board wants to jam them down our throats.
01:10:33On election night, my wife was at the party, and she said that when the poll watcher walked
01:10:40through the door, everybody fell silent.
01:10:43Then he gave the numbers, and the place just erupted.
01:10:50We had not only won, but had won big.
01:10:58The way I'm reading it, you are banding community wind.
01:11:03If someone were to come in and propose something that was local, that was homegrown, and possibly
01:11:08doing a small project with the town with small wind, I think people would probably be receptive.
01:11:15But, you know, it's been a hard couple of years.
01:11:17I think everybody needs to catch his breath.
01:11:19This technology changes all the time.
01:11:21We will be working on all kinds of alternative energy for any of the citizens in the town
01:11:25to do it.
01:11:26I think if we were sure that these turbines were really going to solve the problem of
01:11:30global warming, and what happened in the town of Meredith would make a huge difference,
01:11:36then you're talking from a very different premise.
01:11:38But I don't think that this is doing what we would all hope it would do.
01:11:42That is solving a very serious problem.
01:11:44Wind is not going to solve the problem, yet it's being touted by the wind companies that
01:11:49it will.
01:11:50It can't.
01:11:51When you do the numbers, it cannot.
01:11:53They're never going to make more than a tiny little dent, an unmeasurable dent in greenhouse
01:11:57gas emissions.
01:11:58Wind is intermittent, so there will be times when a wind farm will be producing no electrical
01:12:03power.
01:12:04They talk about, you know, 3-megawatt turbine, you know, it's a 60-megawatt project.
01:12:09When you factor in the efficiency, it's producing 10 percent or 30 percent of that number.
01:12:15Since it's sporadic, they have to keep the conventional plants running.
01:12:18So the coal plants are still running.
01:12:20The gas plants are still running.
01:12:22There are very few oil plants, so that's not really an issue.
01:12:25When you model how much CO2 did I avoid releasing by making wind power, you have to make assumptions.
01:12:31And the most likely scenario is that it's going to be a natural gas plant that you're displacing.
01:12:35You could make wind farms look a lot better by saying, we're always going to replace coal.
01:12:39But the coal plants are more often sort of base production.
01:12:47What happens if the wind farm's producing gangbusters, and then five minutes later, it's off?
01:12:54They have plants that are being paid a little bit more to ramp up and down.
01:12:59And those are going to be natural gas plants, typically.
01:13:04And the more wind power you get online, right, the more backup power there has to be.
01:13:09The great American entrepreneur T. Boone Pickens knows a lot of things, but one is how to make money.
01:13:15And if he's interested in renewable energy, we all better start taking a look at it.
01:13:20There's no longer just gas and oil companies, there are energy companies.
01:13:24And they're in wind as well as in gas and oil.
01:13:27And the huge profits that they reap by maintaining the power and control does not, you know,
01:13:33we're going to trust the same companies that have brought us to this point to get us out of this,
01:13:39to give us the answer.
01:13:40You, I know, have been focusing on wind.
01:13:43What percentage of electricity in this country could be generated by sustainable energy?
01:13:49There's a DOE map right across the top. It says at 20%.
01:13:53I think you could do the 20% in less than 10 years.
01:13:56You have this kind of absurd technology, which is really going to be, like, at the best of Band-Aid.
01:14:03And you're throwing gazillions of dollars into this.
01:14:06Very few people understand that this is the one kind of electric power plant that draws its power from the
01:14:11grid.
01:14:12If you have a heating mechanism, so you don't have icing, you use a lot of electricity.
01:14:17These things are on standby, so they can be turned off remotely at any time.
01:14:22There's all kinds of stuff in the nacelle that has to keep turning, so it'll be ready to turn.
01:14:25There's a yaw mechanism that's all done electrically, and that's all coming off the grid.
01:14:32And where what comes off the grid squares with what goes back on the grid, I don't know.
01:14:39I haven't been able to find any real figures.
01:14:42Production of a 450-foot wind turbine and everything that goes involved with it is astronomical.
01:14:47The manufacture, the transportation, the installation, the cement, it's a tremendous amount of pollution, CO2,
01:14:53they're putting into the air to get them to produce electricity.
01:14:56But, you know, we're just going to go lockstep into this and basically put up tens of thousands,
01:15:01which is what we're talking about, tens of thousands of wind turbines in the most pristine and beautiful parts of
01:15:07this country.
01:15:08Clear cutting, fragile ridge tops, building roads, transporting immense amounts of concrete for each of these bases,
01:15:17which are often blasted 30 feet into the bedrock.
01:15:20You've got 610,000 pounds of concrete and rebar under each of these.
01:15:24It's just going to be one resource after another.
01:15:31Surprising numbers of bats are being killed at wind energy sites.
01:15:35Biologist Erin Baerwald and her colleagues spent nine weeks collecting freshly killed bats around wind turbines.
01:15:42More than 90 percent had lung hemorrhages consistent with the bends.
01:15:46Bat autopsies revealed that air pressure drops around turbine blades are fatal to small animals like bats.
01:16:09We have a responsibility to steward the land, and we've been letting corporate America take over our resources
01:16:17and make money at the detriment of people and the environment, and that really has to stop.
01:16:24To get to 20 percent, I think it makes quite clear you really need to focus on transmission.
01:16:28You're talking about a vast expansion in terms of the amount of capacity that we have in place today.
01:16:33Indeed, transmission has been one of the challenges associated with a variable resource like wind,
01:16:39because, as it turns out, where the wind is, is not often where the people are.
01:16:44The high-tension lines and the electrical companies and the wind farms, they're all related.
01:16:48They're all connected in one way or another.
01:16:50So people who feel that they're safe and not going to have wind turbines near their property
01:16:54may not have the wind turbines, but they may have high-tension lines running through to get that power out.
01:17:21They want the wind turbines, and that power right now has no place to go.
01:17:25When you look at the issues of the cost of construction and siting and access to corridors,
01:17:30is one of those a bigger burden that you see?
01:17:33The biggest hurdle, of course, is to get access to the corridors.
01:17:36And I think if you can open up those corridors for transmission and for renewables,
01:17:42I see the corridors as being for renewables.
01:17:45There's not going to be an area that's going to be safe.
01:17:48These things will probably be obsolete in less than 20 years.
01:17:51When the wind companies abandon these towers, what are we going to have here?
01:17:56They'll keep selling these out to different investors.
01:17:59They're going to just eventually, well, that's not feasible to fix that,
01:18:02shut that one down, and we'll run the ones that are still running.
01:18:04We're going to have a giant junkyard on Tug Hill, and it's going to be the same way across the
01:18:10state,
01:18:11the same way across America.
01:18:13So somebody's going to have to pick up the pieces, and it'll be the taxpayer.
01:18:16We've got corporations which are doing what corporations do, make money.
01:18:21The typical citizen, they'll send in their $5 to support wind power,
01:18:25and they feel like they've done their duty to stop global warming.
01:18:28The only way that we can solve the problem we're in is by reduction.
01:18:32We have to reduce what we're using.
01:18:34If we really put our minds to it, as a country and a community, we can make a difference.
01:18:40I think the answer is it needs to start here.
01:18:42I would like to see this town pull itself off the grid.
01:18:44The community can't afford it. How could the community possibly afford it?
01:18:48If we have ways of producing electricity, towns could produce electricity for themselves.
01:18:53The wind companies have financial backers.
01:18:56To put up one of those turbines, one turbine costs about $3 million.
01:18:59Remember, that $3 million, a million comes from the state,
01:19:03a million is coming from federal government, a million coming from private investors.
01:19:06If you took that $3 million and gave it to the town of Meredith,
01:19:11we could probably take most, if not all, of the town off the grid.
01:19:17We really have to think globally, but start locally.
01:19:21Oh, they won't come take it down. It'll stand there.
01:19:24And the landowner is going to have to pay the real estate taxes on it.
01:19:27I have baloney. I'm going to climb up to the top of it.
01:19:29I'm going to put a stick of dynamite in there.
01:19:31I'm going to blow the windmill off the top of it.
01:19:33I'm going to call it a silo, and it's going to be farm tax exempt,
01:19:37and I'm not going to pay any taxes on it.
01:19:38Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it.
01:19:43How can something so good, like the wind, an element,
01:19:49you know, be turned into something kind of bad?
01:19:53It's hard not to be really cynical about it.
01:19:57I got it. I got it. I got it. I got it.
01:20:06It's hard not to be. I got it. I got it.
01:20:15Everybody loves you. Don't grind it down.
01:20:43Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
01:20:53Oh, oh, oh, oh.
01:21:29Oh, oh, oh, oh.
01:21:31Oh, oh, oh, oh.
01:21:50When I'm in a room for, when I'm on the road, when I'm in a room for, when I'm on
01:22:04the road for your love.
01:22:30In a room for your love, when I'm in a room for you, when I'm on the road, when I'm
01:22:49on the road and I'm on the road, when I'm on the road.
01:22:50You
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