After six years of fighting wind development, I‘m looking at the absentee voter numbers and results for the Cape Vincent elections. I wonder if it will ever dawn on the wind proponents and former wind-conflicted town officials who became wind developer pawns and casualties as to what wind actually brought to them. It angered a community so deeply, locals and seasonals, that decades of entrenched town government was overturned.
To wind proponents, here is the gift wind brought you sealed in the belly of the Trojan horse you let through the gates: a longtime supervisor overturned, the Planning Board chairman and three Planning Board members gone, three councilmen removed or resigned, a long-time town justice removed, a local wind-conflicted state senator removed, and worst, a town socially torn apart. All brought to you courtesy of your clean, green wind energy. Make sure you send BP and Acciona a thank-you card.
When Cape wind proponents drank the Kool-Aid, they opened the gates wide for the real monster. They never grasped the frightening reality of who the real enemy was. Wind developers always stay above the fray. And like Teflon, they let all the public dirt and social upheaval that rips apart wind towns slide right off onto their real victims — the leaseholders and conflicted town officials. They engineered the destruction of a long-established town government.