APEX's Windy-Disinformation Campaign Continues

         APEX's Windy-Disinformation Campaign Continues

 

Have you seen the recent sales propaganda brochure APEX has distributed in Orleans and Niagra Counties? 

 

Much like APEX's website (which pictures APEX's staff in an idyllic countryside setting, with NO industrial wind turbines in sight!), the front cover of APEX's most recent windy-disinformation campaign pictures a farm - without a single industrial wind turbine in sight - absurdly titled: "Wind Energy: Good for Property Values."

 

How stupid does APEX think people are? Any HONEST Real Estate person will tell you that the most important consideration when buying a property is: "LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION!" 

 

Even worse is the shameless Wyoming County Supervisors who are quoted in APEX’s brochure - Eagle's Joe Kushner and Sheldon's John Knab (both of whom will NOT seek re-election this year, and at least one is reportedly leaving the area).

 

Both Kushner and Knab pimped their towns out to Big Wind for a few recycled taxpayer dollars, making themselves some of the wind industry’s favorite go-to-guys. Sheldon Supervisor, John Knab, has traveled as far as the state of Alabama (that we know of), speaking on behalf of the wind industry.  Knab and Kushner seem despicably intent on turning more New York State countrysides into bird-slaughtering, industrial wind factories by aiding and abetting Big Wind hucksters, like APEX, with their windy-disinformation campaigns.

 

The civil discord and environmental destruction Knab and Kushner orchestrated here in Wyoming County is reminiscent of when Native Americans sold Manhattan for a bunch of beads - their ignorance taken advantage of by those who could not care less about them.

 

APEX’s brochure also disingenuously lists two Orangeville properties as selling above assessed value, while failing to mention that both those properties had significant acreage – most important since farmland in Wyoming County has been going for $6,000 - $12,000 an acre (since the installation of the Batavia yogurt factory). 

 

For obvious reasons, APEX did NOT mention the fact that at least ten Orangeville properties have sold BELOW their assessed value since Invenergy’s wind factory went up, and many others haven’t sold at all. 

 

APEX’s brochure also neglected to mention the ongoing lawsuit in Orangeville, and the skyrocketing Wyoming County tax rate, which has risen yearly over the past 12 years (another 9.68% this year), in direct correlation with the installation of wind factories here.  

 

It’s no surprise that APEX didn’t include this report - which shows a 56% DECREASE in property values near APEX’s Illinois project:

http://edgarcountywatchdogs.com/2014/12/wind-farms-cause-property-value-to-tank-by-fifty-six-percent-in-vermilion-county-illinois/

 

The story is the same everywhere. Sprawling industrial wind factories negatively impact property values!

 

There’s also pesky little facts like New York State’s “skyrocketing” electricity rates that need to be considered.  According to NYSERDA, the average New York State residential electricity rate in 1999 was 13.3 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh).  The first New York wind factories went up in 2000 (Wethersfield & Madison).  20 wind factories later, and the average residential electricity rate in New York State as of February, 2015, is now 19.8 cents per kWh (according to the EIA, as cited by NYSERDA) – one of the highest rates in the nation, and nearly a 50% increase since NYS began mindlessly plastering countrysides with redundant generation of industrial wind factories. (Of further interest - only 2% of New York State's electricity comes from coal.)

 

Regarding industrial wind’s performance - New York State’s wind factories have been averaging a pathetic 24%.  Any other piece of equipment - be it a machine, person or animal, that operated only 24% of the time would have been dubbed a “LEMON” and put out to pasture a long time ago!  Which one of you would buy a vehicle that only operated 24% of the time?  You wouldn’t.  You couldn’t afford to.  It’s just that simple.  But when the state and federal government are in charge of spending our money, economic reality doesn’t seem to matter.

 

Physicist and Malone, NY Town Board member, Jack Sullivan, reported on the reality of wind’s failure to produce in his article:  “Some Lessons from New York.”

 

Sullivan explained, “Both Vesta and GE turbines have a manufacturer’s life expectancy rating of 20 years, yet no New York wind project is on track to sell enough electricity in 20 years to pay for itself.”

 

Mr. Sullivan used the wind industry’s 20-year life expectancy claim for his calculations. The inconvenient truth exposed in another report, however, says that “wind turbines last only half as long” as the wind industry has claimed - making the fact that they can never pay for themselves even more evident.

 

These things aren’t ‘wind farms,’ they’re tax farms - in the business of harvesting our taxpayer and ratepayer dollars, and transferring them into the pockets of rich, multi-national corporations.  All of this enabled because of cronyism in high places and short-sightedness, willful ignorance, and greed of those willing to suck on the teat of wind welfare at the rest of our expense.

Mary Kay Barton

Retired Health Educator, Silver Lake, Wyoming County