SUNY police were called to the site of a wind forum Thursday to stop Schoharie Valley Watch members from handing out a single-sheet Wind Energy Quiz and their business card.
Told by forum organizers that they couldn’t distribute the information inside Bouck Hall, SVW members Kathleen Johnson and Don Airey instead moved outside the back door, where they continued to hand out the sheet—and waited for campus police to arrive.
“They told us we weren’t welcome,” said Ms. Johnson. “They kicked us out.”
The forum, sponsored by the Citizens Campaign for the Envirnoment, was billed as “an honest dialogue about wind energy with plenty of good information,” by spokesman Emmett Pepper, who along with Reunion Power’s Sandy Gordon, moved to stop them, Mr. Airey said.
Mr. Gordon waited outside for SUNY Police Officer Angel Reyes to arrive, but after speaking briefly with the SVW members, Officer Reyes told the small group that SVW wasn’t doing anything wrong and would be allowed to continue.
Arriving after the incident, Assemblyman Pete Lopez, who offered brief opening remarks, said he, too, though the effort to stop SVW was inappropriate.
“It’s a public discussion,” Assemblyman Lopez said. “There’s no reason why they shouldn’t be welcomed for respectful discussion.”
Seated with Mr. Gordon inside the Bouck Hall auditorium, David Huse, on whole’s property Reunion’s meteorological testing tower is sited, told Assemblyman Lopez he didn’t want SVW “shouting people down like they always do,” during the question and answer session.
In his remarks to the crowd of about 85 people, Assemblyman Lopez stressed the need for respectful discussion; in the end, questions were forwarded to Mr. Pepper and other panelists on index cards.
“We are all agents of change,” Assemblyman Lopez said. “What choices we make will decide the future of our communities…As a society, we have to keep moving forward. Finding a way to sustain our economy…energy…is key.”
Speaking in front of green “Yes to Clean Energy” pro-wind signs, Mr. Pepper listed as “myths”, turbines’ noise, reliability, and impact on both property value and wildlife.
Mr. Pepper also said there’s no proof that shadow flicker—light patterns caused by rotating turbine blades at certain times of the year and something believed to trigger seizures or migraines in some people—even exists.
Instead he suggested it was a myth spawned “by that Pokeman cartoon a few years ago” that triggered seizures in hundreds of Japanese children in December 1997.
Benefits to industrial wind turbines, he said, include taxes of payments in lieu of taxes, job creation, tourism, and the environmental and public health benefits.
Valerie Strauss of The Alliance for Clean Energy New York echoed many of those same thoughts, calling wind power “a proven technology.”
Like Mr. Pepper, she downplayed turbines’ impact on bats and birds, saying cats, building, and global warming are having a much bigger impact of the species.
Matt Brower of New York State Ag and Markets offered what to many was the most valuable portion of the forum as he went through some of the things like soil compaction, changes in drainage, and damage to cropland the state and local governments need to keep in mind.
That there’s a push for increased setback distances from buildings and property lines, Mr. Brower pointed out that that often means the turbines can’t be placed along hedge-rows, but instead in the middle of farm fields, where they eat up more land.