Solar Deceptions

I recently did an interview on TV7 News regarding my opposition to the proposed massive industrial solar projects being proposed in Jefferson County. I first want to thank TV7 for reaching out and including my comments for this news story. Unfortunately, many of my comments as well as some very important information was excluded from the aired piece. Currently in just the Towns of Brownville, Clayton and Orleans we have 3 large projects being proposed, the Gunns Corners project, the Tracey Road and the Thousand Islands projects. Combined these three projects will take up over 6000 acres. These projects as well as the necessary upgrades to the electrical distribution system will absolutely be the biggest change to our beautiful landscape since the area was settled. They will eliminate large swaths of agricultural land and bird and wildlife habitat that will very likely never be restored. My understanding is that the decommissioning and remediation requirements for these projects are simply ground level, allowing the developer to leave behind structural cement, support posts and miles of underground wires. We are allowing our land to be raped and destroyed for pie in the sky political ideology. This is New York State not Arizona, we simply aren’t suited to generate large amounts of electricity from the sun.

I believe that we need to do better in our use and generation of electricity. Having said that, human existence and life itself, in many ways, depends on having a reliable supply of electricity. The very idea that we can simply turn off the fossil fuel powered electric plants in New York State and replace them with windmills and solar panels is ludicrous on its face. Am I the only one that can do the math here? It just does not add up. Currently (and these are round numbers) approximately 44% of our electricity generation comes from natural gas fueled plants, 26% from Nuclear and less than 6% from wind and solar. So, again what is the plan here? The Governors plan demands that we produce 70% of our power from “renewable sources” by 2030. Renewable is essentially wind, solar and hydro. Wind and solar generation is up about 3% year over year while hydro is down about 18%, how is this going to work?

As is usually the case, no one is talking about the pesky details, but we MUST do that NOW. Do you want your loved one in a hospital that depends on solar panels to power their life saving machines? Do you want to see rolling black outs in your neighborhood like they have in California? The difference is that if the power goes out in California people sweat, if the power goes out here people freeze to death. I urge everyone to study this situation and start paying attention before it’s too late.