Dear Ms. Trischler:
Please share this with the members of the Town Board, and please confirm receipt of this email.
My husband and I are in escrow for the purchase of 5100 Sunnyside Rd in Italy. We also have owned, for 15 years, 110 acres of wild land on Lent Hill in Cohocton. We dearly love the Finger Lakes region, and hope some day to retire there. At present, due to jobs, we must live elsewhere, and so cannot attend the September 19 meeting in person to express our concerns about the wind projects proposed for Italy township.
My husband works for an environmental consulting company that is world-renowned (see www.esri.com). We are both very eager to support sustainable, renewable resource management and energy production. We were initially supportive of the wind project planned for Cohocton, but as we researched it, and got more informed about it, we became very concerned that it would turn out to be a disaster--both for the town and also for us personally.
It is turning out to be exactly that. The turbines are badly engineered and break down constantly. The crews ruined the roads putting them in, and the town has had a terrible job and has generated a lot of pollution rebuilding them. The town inhabitants have divided along pro and con lines and many don't speak to each other any more. The people who live within earshot of the turbines hate them with a passion, and that includes many people who were very supportive at first. The wind isn't consistently, and the turbines are usually not producing at "capacity" although they are still very noisy. I could go on and on.
We have a small cabin and we spend many weeks there each year, contributing to wildlife management and also to the local economy with our groceries and other purchases. We also pay taxes! So even though we don't live there year-round, we are not just absentee vacationers who don't care about the community.
The turbines often keep us awake at night. The blades make the sound of a jet engine, and the gears and machinery (that turns the turbine into the wind) are very loud, making loud crashing booms and creaking and grinding noises. You can't just learn to tune the noise out, because it changes all the time. The red night lights and the flicker caused by the sun through the blades are annoying, but the noise is just torture.
Ecogen does not care about the citizens or the quality of life in Italy. They are just using you, counting on your naïveté and ignorance. PLEASE don't make the same mistake that Cohocton made!
Sincerely,
Carolyn Morehouse
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