Thursday, August 8, 2013

The Town of Clayton comments to the Public Service Commission ~ Concerning BP's CVWF


9 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a confusing,hypocritical letter from the Clayton Town board.

How do they expect the State to honor the Home Rule rights of Cape Vincent, when they won't even honor them themselves?

Supervisor Hirschey, and councilman Bragdon probably wish they had never asked Clayton for any support.

Anonymous said...

What a two-faced comment by a government body. To make a good argument for preserving Home Rule ,and then turn on a neighboring community and stab them directly in the back, by suggesting their law is inadequate.

This letter may have undone years of co-operative mutual interests between Cape Vincent and Clayton.

Anonymous said...

This not even close to the good letter we saw from Hammond a while back or even the letter sent from the government of Frontenac Islands (Wolfe Is, Simcoe Is and Howe Is.

Why do Clayton officials have such a hard time getting to the straightforward point: that large scale wind development in Cape Vincent would be significantly harmful to the quality of like in the Thousand Islands as a whole and particularly to the neighboring property owners Clayton?

Did this letter have to get cleared by Iberdrola before it was sent?

People of Clayton - you had better make some wise decisions in your next town election.

Pundt said...

The letter is just plain goofy.

There is NO home rule on this issue to consider...the state took it away two years ago.

Does Clayton think the State that took Home Rule away on this issue is suddenly going to give it back?

The big flaw in thinking which is implied in this letter and a lot of people believe to make themselves feel better is that if the Art.X upholds CV's law that will be Home Rule...NOPE... no matter what the decision is on the CV zoning it will be a State decision, and that is NOT home rule!

Our zoning law at this point is only a suggestion to the State how we would like to regulate industrial wind. After BP lobbies the State in the Art. X to preempt our suggestion, only then will the State let us know if they will take CV's suggestion on wind zoning.

But that is still not a home rule decision!!!

Anonymous said...

Thank you Clayton, NY. Are they still your favorite place on this planet like you preached months ago.

Anonymous said...


Speaking of goofy!

If a man is crazy enough he can always make himself right.

Anonymous said...

The discussion on home rule and Article 10 needs some clarification. Yes, at first sight Article 10 removes home rule by making it possible to set aside local laws. However, these same local laws remain in place and in force until an applicant makes the case these laws should be supplanted. It may seem like a minor, trivial point, but in the history of PSC siting under various articles, they have rarely if ever, overridden local laws if community leaders defended their laws. Cape Vincent has been clear that they will go to great extremes to defend their laws.

Anonymous said...

Yup!

Pundt said...

2:43

"...they have rarely if ever, overridden local laws if community leaders defended their laws."

Your analysis doesn't add up. At
1st sight through 10th sight Art. X removed home rule on the issue...end of story!

Under your scenario then there would be no need for the Art. X process to include preemption of local laws.

And the old Art. X which I assume is what you are referring to was last in existence in 2003 before the state entered into its current RPS renewable targets and rabid green energy push.

So what you are saying is all a town has to do is pass a very restrictive law and defend it and the State just walks away? Really it is that simple?

Seems the State would have a rather hard time placing its renewable projects and reaching its targets if that was the case. And gee I not sure that would make all the energy corps and environmental groups like ACENY real happy, that lobbied for this law and removal of home rule on the issue that was standing in the way of their goals .

Not only that, if this is all it took to defeat industrial wind was pass a law and have town leaders strongly defend it then why the hell didn't we just ban wind development and stand tough behind that? Under your theory that should have worked and it would have made it far simpler that playing this Art X game in fear!

Now if your answer to that is that a ban is too burdensome and the State might preempt it even if we went to extremes to defend it...then your theory falls apart. And if we can't have a ban in fear of the State, then how many turbines should we expect??? What is 'reasonable" in the eyes of the State?

And if a ban would be preempted, then what do you think the essence of the CV law is? Mr. Cullen on the zoning committee even referred to it at one point as a defacto ban. I believe they should just have cut to the chase and banned wind development, and stood strongly behind that and our right to do it, and by your theory if we fought hard we would not have our law preempted.

I doubt seriously the State is just going to walk away because we have a strict zoning law and are going to defend it. And as one of the first towns to go through Art. X I doubt they will set that precedent that all towns have to do to fight removal of home rule is strongly defend their laws.

That would be political suicide for Cuomo. What then would the point be of Art. X? There would be no point!