The Springwater Preservation Committee

Springwater Preservation Committee

Malone Bans Large Scale Wind Projects
Copied from WNBZ AM1240 (http://www.wnbz.com) from their October 12th, 2005 edition

The Malone Town Council is proposing a new local law that would effectively prevent a large-scale wind project from locating in the town.

As a group of wind farm-opponents picketed outside, the council held a closed-door meeting Tuesday with planning board members and Buffalo attorney Dan Spitzer regarding possible zoning ordinances regulating wind farms. There have been no formal applications to the town for a wind farm but Noble Environmental Power has expressed an interest in building more than 130 wind turbines in Malone and neighboring Brandon. Each tower would be some 400 feet tall.

After an executive session, the meeting was opened to the public and the protesters filed in.

Malone Supervisor Howard Maneely announced a series of proposed zoning ordinances that would essentially prohibit wind towers from being built in the town.

Specifically, the proposals would not allow the construction of any tower over 65 feet tall on parcels of land between one and five acres. The construction of towers 80 feet in height would not be permitted on land greater than 5 acres.

After the meeting, Maneely said the proposals should hopefully put the issue to bed. “The Town Board has been criticized for not doing our job, but we have been doing our job for the last year,” he said. “We did a lot research and a lot of work on this and I think we came out with a local law that protects the people and the town of Malone.”

Maneely said the town would have received 19 percent of a $400,000 payment in lieu of taxes, which he felt was not enough to offset the impact of the project. “It’s not even worth talking about that,” he said.

The decision was also based in part on a visit to the wind farm under construction along in Tug Hill Plateau in Lewis County. “That’s not for Malone,” he said. “We’re a hometown community and it’s not our way of life here.”

The Lewis County project involves 120 turbines with another 75 slated to be built in 2006. Another company has plans to build a wind farm in the Central Adirondacks. Adirondack Wind Partners has been talking with the APA about building 10 wind turbines on property just north of Gore Mountain.

The sudden surge of wind farm proposals is partly in response to Governor George Pataki’s proposal in 2003 to have New York get 25 percent of its electricity from renewable resources over the next ten years.

Return to the Home Page