Transcript of Richard Chandler's Q & A Session following BP's Intervenor Funding Workshop.

Last Wednesday BP held an Intervenor fund informational session   after which there was a Question and Answer session. Below is a transcript of the portion of the meeting where BP Project Director fielded questions. 

 I appreciate everyone coming out especially on a cold night to come and hear about the project and the Intervenor funding. John did an excellent job of providing that overview.  It seemed like there was good Q and A after that.  I want to spend a little bit of time after that to yah know, if there are any questions about the project I’m happy to field them now. I just want to open the floor to that.

 Chandler: Yes…

 Don Metzger: Mr. . . . Chandler for your preliminary scoping document, I would hope that you would have in there what you – – first of all , I appreciate what the town did yesterday presenting you with some of the items they wanted to see addressed in the preliminary scoping document , and one of the things they mentioned was stray voltage,  and ah—I want to re- emphasize that stray voltage  and sometimes dirty electricity is a very insidious menace towards humans and animals and I think that the  town and the citizens of the town and BP should be taking a zero tolerance towards stray voltage . I ,I just think that, that, that’s an intolerable thing and if it’s a well-run operation and all, theoretically there should be zero stray voltage but , if there is some stray voltage I think you need to address it in your preliminary scoping document as to how you intend to immediately address that and get back to zero stray voltage .

The other item is ah, before you were even born sir, I say this with respect, before you were even born we had AM reception here in the Cape, FM reception in the Cape and over the air reception in the Cape and it is a fact that when you put all the towers up as proposed and they’re 500 footers, the sweep area in the sky of each blade array will be over 2 acres.  I forget the exact math; I did it one time a few years ago.  I think it was something like 2.3 acres per sweep area, so we’ve literally got hundreds of acres of sky being swept, so our TV signal, our FM signal and our AM signal and our cars, homes, offices, schools and so on, will suffer some.  The signals will suffer some attenuation, some deflection, some degradation and I hope that you will have in your preliminary scoping document how that will be addressed because that will be an issue.  I, I can guarantee it.  When you have … We’ve seen it in other projects and this project will be even bigger than the ones that are to the west of us and to the south of us, as far as height in the sky and sweep area, and finally, sir ah, actually Mr. Harris covered it...

Thank you Mr. Harris.

Chandler: great appreciate the feedback, any other questions… yes…

Audience member #1: I just heard him say that the FM reception and TV reception is gonna be a problem. Is it gonna be a problem?

Chandler: were going to have an entire exhibit within the article 10 processes that'll look at telecommunication impacts so I'll have to take a closer look at that.

Audience member #1: You don't know from past projects?

Chandler: You have to take a closer look at what the technology that we’re using here and its layout here and inaudible the town. So that is something we study for the process.

Audience member #1: So what you're telling me is that you don't know what to expect.

Chandler: I'm telling you it needs to be studied.

Audience member #1: Okay

Chandler: Yes.

Audience member #2: The windmills they’re in Canada now, Wolf Island.  For years a lot of people come down on my street and tell me how the vibrations are screwing up their pacemakers, how they can hear these noises.  Is there any way you can set up a station on the river on the US side to measure the risk?   There is a distance, we know exactly how far these windmills are away.

Chandler: I don't think we’ve seen any credible scientific evidence for that being a real concern.

 Audience member #2: They're complaining about it, can we set up some kind of a measuring station to measure what's coming from Wolf Island?

Chandler: I don't think we'll be doing that as part of this project, no.

Audience member #2: You're making a mistake, people are complaining about it.

Chandler: I appreciate the feedback sir; I just don't think we see that as a genuine adverse environmental health impact for the project.

Chandler: Yes.

Jim Millington: Yesterday, I think you alluded to the fact that there's a possibility that the towers here would be 500 foot high. 

Chandler: Somewhere between ‘inaudible’ 4 and 500 feet.

Jim Millington: Do you have other wind farms that are using those tall towers now?

Chandler: We have other projects that have turbines between 4 and 500 feet tall, comparable in size.

Jim Millington: Are you gonna be able to present some—when I say pictures, I mean an idea of what those are gonna look like for the people in the community, when you look at the impacts and present the impacts of your project.

Chandler: Yeah, so we’ll have entire “inaudible” dedicated to visual impacts in the application.  They’re not dis-similar from turbines you see on Wolfe Island so, they’re not…

Jim Millington: To me it appears as though they’re rather huge looking.  I mean 500 feet is a long way up and I just wanted to point out, I think the people are owed a good representation of how they will look.

Chandler: I agree with that statement and we will have visual simulations that will give you a better feel for that.

Jim Millington: Good, thank you. 

Chandler: Sure.

Chandler: You have a question sir?

Ed Hludzenski: When you do your studies—they’re talking about the AM, FM and maybe even cell phones and your studies indicate there’s no problem – and if the project goes and all of a sudden there is a problem because there was a flaw in the study, something was over looked or for whatever reason, how do you mitigate that?

How do you solve it? I mean they're going to be there.

Chandler: We have…

Ed Hludzenski: Now we got a problem.

Chandler: It's hard to answer what we would do if something were to happen.

Ed Hludzenski: It's never happened?

Chandler: Not to my knowledge but… (Shaking head no)

Ed Hludzenski: Okay.

Audience member #4: It's in my contract if anything like that ever happens they will take care of. The people I know up Lowville had problems; they came in and took care of all the problems.

Chandler: That may be. Any other questions, feedback?

Chandler: Yes.

Audience member #5: It says, on the notice of availability of the funding, an ad will be published by the applicant and it says the notice issued by the presiding examiner.  How can they expect to see these notices?  Will they be in the legal notices in the paper? Will the municipalities be contacted, how will they find out?

Chandler: There is an- inaudible.

John Harris: I can ah, so um, a couple ways. One you could just um, we have an e-mail list sir, so you go on to the Cape Vincent wind farm website and sign up to get e-mail.  Essentially any public notice that may go out, um, that would be step one. Number two, we’re gonna publish the ad.  We’re required to publish an ad when we are filing the preliminary scoping statement, um, that will be an ad published similar to a, ah, town legal notice, public meeting notice.  The presiding examiner will also issue that, and the 30 day notice that I talked about before.  That 30 day notice will go to anyone who's registered on the DPS website. We will also make it known when, if, something like that goes out.  We’ll send it out on the e-mail lists that we have.  So I think those would be the…

Audience member #5: If you're not on the website though, how else would they be notified?

Harris: Um well, we’re gonna notify, we’ll notify the town, um, when we file the preliminary scoping statement we will notify, um, all the affected municipalities, we’ll notify state legislators, we have a…

Audience member #5: By sending a letter or something?

John Harris: Yes, so there will be ‘inaudible’ we’ll notify as many people as we can.  We’ll reach out to the local media and before you leave tonight just give us your information, we’ll make sure you get notice of it okay.

Chandler: If we have you listed as a contact you will receive such notice. – – Any other questions, comments, feedback?

Cliff Schneider: I got a question.  Yesterday I asked you whether BP was involved in any lawsuits with the town of Lyme and I asked you whether you were involved in lawsuits here with some bloggers here in Cape Vincent and I failed to get an answer and I was wondering, if maybe, after some time and consideration whether you have an answer to that question right now.  Have you been involved, has BP been involved and has Trieste Associates been involved also in the lawsuits in Lyme in Cape Vincent?

Chandler: I’ll turn that over to John; I think we did provide a response.

Cliff Schneider: I went back and I looked at the video.  It seems as though you didn't respond to that.

John Harris: We’re not gonna respond. I think couple things.  One, it's our understanding that neither BP nor Marion Trieste has been involved in any lawsuits or organizing lawsuits or supporting lawsuits, either in the town of Lyme or ‘inaudible’ locally.  You referred to another lawsuit yesterday.  I did ask the town's attorney if he could get me some information on what those lawsuits are and you know we'd be happy to revisit if there's some… if we’re missing something, you know, we’ll certainly get back to you.

Cliff Schneider: So, you're saying right now, unequivocally that you haven’t been involved in any way ---Trieste Associates and working through Voters for Wind. You haven’t been involved in any way.

 Marion Trieste: I can speak for myself too.  I have not had anything to do with any lawsuits in this vicinity.   

Cliff Schneider: You haven’t advised voters for wind?  I mean because it has been quite obvious that you have been, you…

Marion Trieste: That's all I have to say about this matter.  I’m gonna end it now. No.

Cliff Schneider: I think the other thing, as a community it's an important question and I appreciate the answer.

Chandler: Are there any other questions.

Audience member #6: This is more for John. Here the money coming in from the state there, is that a tax-exempt, grant type of thing?

John Harris: This is money that actually the applicant has to pay as part of an application, so when filing of the preliminary scoping statement BP will write a check for close to $100,000 and with the filing of the application again they're gonna submit the application with a check.

Audience member #6: So the intervenors have to be responsible for paying taxes on...

John Harris: um…

Audience member #6 : Because that's income.

Harris: I don't believe it's… I'm not gonna um… Chuckling, it's possible…

Chandler: Any other questions comments feedback… Okay, well again, appreciate your coming out thank you very much.

Trieste: Thank you everyone, it was really great...