“Chasing After the Wind” A Net LOSER for Wyoming County, and ALL American Taxpayers & Ratepayers

8/25/13 Warsaw Penny Saver - Page 6/7:  

 http://www.warsawpennysaver.com/wps/wps8_25_13/main.swf

“Chasing After the Wind” A Net LOSER for Wyoming County,

and ALL American Taxpayers & Ratepayers

As we witness another Wyoming County Town (Orangeville) being turned into an industrial wind factory, the Wyoming County Board of Supervisors has informed us that "Wyoming Co. has 'little choice' but to waive NY's property tax cap." 

This confirms what NYS Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli pointed out in a May 2, 2012 news article:  Giving Multi-Billion dollar corporations Payment-In-Lieu-Of-Taxes agreements (PILOTs), "effectively shifts the burden of taxation onto local residents and small businesses." (See more at: http://tinyurl.com/d6t2aps)

Mr. DiNapoli was exactly right. Invenergy and their ilk are smiling all the way to the bank, while the rest of us get to pick up their share of the tab. 

If that wasn’t bad enough, NYS Comptroller DiNapoli also pointed out that these Millions of Dollars in “tax breaks have NOT been effective in creating jobs.”

No new jobs. Higher property taxes. No sense of community due to the “Hurray me – Tough luck for you” mentality evident in the wind debacle.  Is it any wonder many people are leaving New York State? 

When one of the Big Wind salesmen was overheard to say in a local restaurant in Wyoming County years ago, "We're going to get rich off of these hicks," they were right.  Big Wind is getting richer, while we are all getting poorer - thanks to the help they've received from elected officials at every level who are selling out our Towns and their residents from within.

Perhaps it’s time citizens demanded their local officials first pass a math and reading comprehension test before being allowed to run for office.  "Public servants" in charge of spending OUR money first need to know how to morally and competently run a successful business - which means knowing how to balance the books without having to sell the entire Town out for what amounts to a complete FRAUD! 

The REALITY of New York Wind

Consider the readily available information we've been sharing for years:

 

The actual output (Capacity Factor) of NY’s 16 wind factories in 2012 was 23.5%.  Any other piece of equipment that had such an abysmal performance record would have been dubbed a LEMON and relegated to the trash heap a long time ago.

Consider the fact that ONE single 450 MW gas-fired combined cycle generating unit located near New York City (where the power is needed in NYS), operating at only a 60% capacity factor, could have supplied more electricity than all of NYS's wind factories combined - at approximately 1/4 of the capital cost of the wind factories, and WITHOUT the added costs of transmission lines to NYC.
 

Furthermore, that ONE single 450 MW gas-fired combined cycle generating unit would have significantly reduced CO2 emissions and created far more permanent jobs in New York State –

WITHOUT all the civil discord, environmental degradation, negative human health impacts, massive bird and bat mortality, and the property value losses that sprawling wind factories create - both at the 'wind farm' sites, and due to all the added transmission lines that must be added to New York City.

Wind's unreliable, diffuse energy provides NO modern power - period.  As William Tucker explains in his essay, Understanding E = mc2:

 “Wind has less than 1/10th the energy density of wood, wood half the density of coal and coal half the density of octane. Altogether they differ by a factor of about 50.  Nuclear has 2 million times the energy density of gasoline.... Our energy future largely depends on grasping the significance of this differential."

(See more at:  http://tinyurl.com/lr4lprb , www.WiseEnergy.org/ , and www.EnergyPresentation.org/)

If our state and local “representatives” goal is to chase more people and businesses out of New York State by: 

1.) destroying the natural beauty and wildlife of rural New York State;
2.) ignoring the health, safety and welfare of area citizens;
3.) devaluing NYS citizens' most expensive life investments - their homes; and
4.) "skyrocketing" our tax and electricity rates.......

Pursuing the ‘green’ energy boondoggle of wind power is a sure means to that end.  

         Consider your mission accomplished. Such a senseless, crying shame!

As wise old Solomon told us in Ecclesiastes,

“Surely this also is vanity and chasing after the wind.”

Mary Kay Barton

Mary Kay is a life-long NYS resident, small business owner, retired Health Educator,  
Friend & Supporter of the citizens of ‘Clear Skies Over Orangeville’