Dear Sirs:
"THE FARMER"S WIFE" rocks!!! I have seen very few logical or practical arguments against windfarms anywhere, it's mostly emotional, old-school NIMBY sniveling. She trashes all that. Even the zoning guy wasn't convincing.... Enclosed is my post to those other guys, before I even visited your site. I wonder how many opposed to your windmills will actually come all this way to Fenner to check them out? If they do, they will have to deny what they see, if they are to maintain their anti-position back home. These windmills are unobtrusive, quiet, and most importantly to some of us, a sign of the future: that there's a small attempt, here, to do things differently and hopefully, better. [ Not Teddy Kennedy, tho, I guess?]
Anyway- here ya go. Keep up the fight.
JT Watkins, Hamilton, NY
[" no powerlines!"]
>>>Hey, WindWatch,
Have you guys come to Madison, NY to check out the windmills there? They are pretty cool, built on the Stone farm, I think, or right next to it. I think they got hayfield under the turbines now, the cows are across the road. There's a great view to the northwest -[where the wind comes from outa Canada]- from there, you can see the smaller, more numerous windmills of the Fenner windfarm. [ It's nice up there, too, little country roads & farmland...] We go up to Madison often, a "shortcut" on the way to shopping in Utica. The slight swishing sound of the blades rotating is very relaxing. [I'm a school teacher, I know noise.]
Sometimes the white of the windmills blend right in to the atmospheric background and you can hardly see 'em, [Teddy Kennedy wouldn't be able to see those proposed turbines, half of the time, from his Nantucket compound.] Other times they are a cool landmark. If you know where to look, on a good day you can just make them out, from 20 miles away from top of the hills west of New Berlin.
But sorry, we don't see any cadavers, or even any blood on the blades, of migrating birds. Of course, Griffis Air Force base in Rome has been closed for many years, so there's no radar to get cluttered by them... You really should check it out, it's not as bad as everybody makes it out to be. [If you come, check out the proposed NYRI Powerline route that is to put 165' DC high-voltage towers directly over the houses in all these small communities from Utica, south thru Clayville, Cassville, Waterville, Hubbardsville, Poolville, Earlville, Sherburne, etc, etc, on down the Delaware River National Scenic River etc etc...Things are tough all over, aren't they?]
Would your windfarm really look like the one in your banner, @ Tehachapi Pass in CA? No wonder you guys are upset; but NY isn't like that part of CA, that's the pass leaving the southern San Joaquin Valley, heading into the Mojave Desert, so there's not much else there, they got a lot of room, and need to power LA. Maybe Cohocton wouldn't be as bad as that?
I found your site thru some anti-NYRI links, thought you'd appreciate a local's point of view.
Thanks... JT Watkins, Hamilton, NY<<
"THE FARMER"S WIFE" rocks!!! I have seen very few logical or practical arguments against windfarms anywhere, it's mostly emotional, old-school NIMBY sniveling. She trashes all that. Even the zoning guy wasn't convincing.... Enclosed is my post to those other guys, before I even visited your site. I wonder how many opposed to your windmills will actually come all this way to Fenner to check them out? If they do, they will have to deny what they see, if they are to maintain their anti-position back home. These windmills are unobtrusive, quiet, and most importantly to some of us, a sign of the future: that there's a small attempt, here, to do things differently and hopefully, better. [ Not Teddy Kennedy, tho, I guess?]
Anyway- here ya go. Keep up the fight.
JT Watkins, Hamilton, NY
[" no powerlines!"]
>>>Hey, WindWatch,
Have you guys come to Madison, NY to check out the windmills there? They are pretty cool, built on the Stone farm, I think, or right next to it. I think they got hayfield under the turbines now, the cows are across the road. There's a great view to the northwest -[where the wind comes from outa Canada]- from there, you can see the smaller, more numerous windmills of the Fenner windfarm. [ It's nice up there, too, little country roads & farmland...] We go up to Madison often, a "shortcut" on the way to shopping in Utica. The slight swishing sound of the blades rotating is very relaxing. [I'm a school teacher, I know noise.]
Sometimes the white of the windmills blend right in to the atmospheric background and you can hardly see 'em, [Teddy Kennedy wouldn't be able to see those proposed turbines, half of the time, from his Nantucket compound.] Other times they are a cool landmark. If you know where to look, on a good day you can just make them out, from 20 miles away from top of the hills west of New Berlin.
But sorry, we don't see any cadavers, or even any blood on the blades, of migrating birds. Of course, Griffis Air Force base in Rome has been closed for many years, so there's no radar to get cluttered by them... You really should check it out, it's not as bad as everybody makes it out to be. [If you come, check out the proposed NYRI Powerline route that is to put 165' DC high-voltage towers directly over the houses in all these small communities from Utica, south thru Clayville, Cassville, Waterville, Hubbardsville, Poolville, Earlville, Sherburne, etc, etc, on down the Delaware River National Scenic River etc etc...Things are tough all over, aren't they?]
Would your windfarm really look like the one in your banner, @ Tehachapi Pass in CA? No wonder you guys are upset; but NY isn't like that part of CA, that's the pass leaving the southern San Joaquin Valley, heading into the Mojave Desert, so there's not much else there, they got a lot of room, and need to power LA. Maybe Cohocton wouldn't be as bad as that?
I found your site thru some anti-NYRI links, thought you'd appreciate a local's point of view.
Thanks... JT Watkins, Hamilton, NY<<
posted by Yes! Wind Power for Cohocton at
4:28 AM
6 Comments:
"They are pretty cool"
"...the slight swishing sound of the blades is very relaxing"
"Sometimes they blend in and you can hardly see them"
"
"I have seen very few logical arguments against windfarms anywhere"
Oh my. Another industrialization is cool and I don't live with them, they are "most importantly" a "sign" and "hopefully" better view. Keep hoping as you drive by them Mr. Watkins.
The real Jim Lince
Cohocton, NY
By
formosa, at 6:29 AM
So we got a few options one is alternative energies like wind which may or may not be annoying but is essentially harmless, ok it might kill a few birds. So maybe a couple of dead geese or...
There's business as usual, Coal, Oil, and nuclear. polution polution and possible disaster.
Wind enegery is not the solution, but it is a part of the solution.
visit http://artofthepossible.wordpress.com
for political debate in the southern finger lakes region
By
Kilgore Trout, at 2:37 PM
oh, Jim- how much other "industrialization" is in your life? one or two cars? computers? medicines? getting any tax breaks of your own? Or are you living off the land, milking your own cows and growing your own food, making your own clothes? [Have you lived out there 'in the sticks' all your life? I have- grew up on a dairy farm. Central NY is 'God's Country' too.]
Or do you, for example, support the Feds in supposedly"safely" shipping spent nuke plant fuel, crosscountry, by rail, to Yucca Mountain, NV [near Death Valley and Mammoth Hot Lakes, CA, where the North American continent is splitting apart,] and store it, "safely," for 100K years[???!!??] Have you been yammerin' all indignant about that, also? Or THAT kind of "industrialization" doesn't matter to you because its NIMBY?
HAVE you come here and experienced this windmill environment? Seen for yourself what the views here are like? Heard how loud- or quiet- these turbines are? Your comment to my posting is semantically null: no true rebuttal,just whining. I'd suggest a quiet evening with the homespun in the candlelight, and chill out. Peace. JT
By
Anonymous, at 5:46 PM
JT,
There's places for industrialization and there's places it shouldn't be. I say that rural environments, residential areas and the pristine country is not the place. Of course you don't have them in your back yard do you. You want these? Put them where they belong, in an industrial park/zone. I've been very consistent on this.
One trip to Tug Hill is all one needs to see what these things do to the environment. Wait until you get 3,000 of them and the coal and nuke plants just keep on churning, will you think they are "cool" then, when you can't look on the horizon without seeing one? Just remember JT - you need 150 of your "cool" turbines to offset 1 jumbo jet's CO2. That's 75 Fenners.
By
formosa, at 7:10 AM
Correction: 7.5 Fenners (not 75)
By
formosa, at 8:01 AM
Jim, it's a matter of degree of perception. I'm a farm boy thru and thru, I love just being outdoors, from here to god-knows-where all over the country; and I just don't get it. Those windmills are just kinda there,not bothering anything, and, to me, it's at least an attempt to step into the future, an attempt to try something different about a big problem we have. Yeah, tax subsidies, etc. well, unfortunately, it's the down side of capitalism? There's a lot of other crap goin down of a similar fashion that we all should be up at arms and indignant about, more than we are, that affects the general wellbeing in the the long term and short term. [Lord knows I try.] And it's not that you or I would want to go without the cars or computer, or the motorbikes, or the copper roof, etc. Those things are all part of our problem too. But unless you're stuck living under one of those turbines, you seem to be whining. we want the toys, tho, don't we? It just seems there's enuff different sources that refuted youse guys complaints- except for the aesthetic, viewshed issue. And that comes under art and design, psychology, etc. [an aside, one item I did find somewhere "was evaluation of viewshed by an in-house committee" of some kind of landscape architects, talking about stuff like 'visual horizontal planes' vs 'vertical profiles' of turbines,'proportions between the elements' of the landscape,etc. Nono. The viewsheds should somehow be evaluated by an impartial outside design firm. Would you accept an outside opinion?] Most of the scientific, data-based problems seem to addressed from all the sites- pro and con- that I have tried to find. [What does 50 dBA sound like, Doc?] But viewsheds are subjective, for whatever reasons. I get the impression, my opinion, that a lot of opponents are not neccessarily originally native to the area, maybe coming from somewhere else. Say people from a more urban area see this wind farm as something -'industrialization,'- they have tried to get away from. Got a lot of commuters to Rochester in your area? Hmmm. 'The farmer's wife', myself, and those like us see it in a different light- and we're lifers. It's not "pristine" by chance, there probably was some hand of man involved, and if you're liking it,there must be some kind of responsible stewardship of the land going on. And that's another reason to give a stronger legitimacy to the farmers' view!
We went to Lake Moraine this evening to go fishing, myself, Mom, 3 kids. As we pulled into the public boat launch on the causeway, the windmills were visible, behind a dairy farm nextdoor about a quarter mile away. According to my delorme atlas the Madison turbines were exactly 4 miles away as the crow flies.The silo of the farm appeared at least 5 times as large as the 3 turbines visible. Nobody fishing [about a dozen people]seemed to notice 'em [opinion]...
Tho you didn't answer about the two cars, your computer, Yucca Mtn, Tehchi pass, etc; and it wasn't a rhetorical question. So you DID go to Tug Hill? was it still under construction, or fully operating? landscaping, access rds etc established? Noisy? geez, Fenner looks like the Shire. The pics of Fenner and the farmer hayin' it is the real thing, no exaggeration. Come and see & hear. Do you really believe it's gonna someday look like California? And that's why the California pic? Please don't insult me. And yep, I don't live under those infernal contraptions [will you?],they're 8 miles away. But they are a part of the landscape now for 2-3-4? years and they don't hurt a thing.
But it's late, and I'm tired, and I got a powerline to "worry" about. You, son, are on your own.
JT
[oh, your second post was semantically null, also. Nice try with the 75, 7.5 Fenners. And how much CO2 is that? 100K pepsis? Enuff to raise the temperature of a volume the size of New york ?City .5 degrees? And 3000 windmills? where did THAT figure come from? When will that happen? Again, What does 50 dBA sound like?...]
By
Anonymous, at 10:31 PM
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