Tighter rules on Hartsville wind farm emerge

Hartsville, N.Y.

The draft revised wind law for Hartsville is out, but those planning to spend millions developing wind power in the town want a line-by-line review before they know if the project can move forward.

Hartsville town Supervisor Steve Dombert said the new law, presented to the public in written form for the first time at Wednesday night’s meeting, is in response to flaws in the old law that was pushed through with little to no outside support.

Not enough copies of the law were made for distribution for all attending the meeting, Dombert said, so copies were only distributed to town board members, E.ON officials and candidates for town offices in November. None were offered in paper form to local media outlets, but Dombert said an emailed copy would be made available shortly.

The two biggest changes, Dombert said, cover setbacks from property lines and the sound level at non-participating landowners’ homes.

The current law states the sound cannot be higher than 50 decibels at the nearest non-participating property line, but Dombert said complaints in Cohocton and other locations made the town look at adopting different standards.

Dombert said new standards from the American National Standards Institute will be used to measure background and ambient noise at the site, in addition to noise from the turbines themselves. The readings also will be taken from the nearest non-participating home, rather than a property line, Dombert said.

The draft law also increases the turbine site setback from 1,200 feet to 2,460 feet — almost half a mile — and measures from the nearest non-participating property line, not the nearest home as the current law reads.

The supervisor said there would be little impact on the project because of the setback rule change, but E.ON officials felt differently.

“If we work really hard, you will have two turbines in Hartsville,” said John Reynolds, a consultant working for E.ON on the project. Reynolds added he would send the new setback information to engineers to get a better idea exactly how many turbines may be affected.

Attorney Jackie Murray, who is representing E.ON during site planning, said she needs time to review the law to see what the impact might be.

“I would like to have a workshop where we go line-by-line through this,” she said.

Several residents echoed Murray’s request for more meetings, including Zena Andrus, an independent candidate for town supervisor in November.

“We should have another meeting,” she said.

Dombert said the town has been working on the legislation for nine months, and only now has E.ON sent an attorney to look at it. Dombert scheduled a meeting for 7 p.m. Oct. 21 at the town hall to discuss the law further.

Some residents were not pleased with the new legislation.

Larry McCormick said he feels the law benefits town board member James Perry personally.

“This has nothing to do with SCIDA,” McCormick said, adding his property is less than 2,460 feet away from Perry’s home. “Does that put me in a position where I need to negotiate with him to put a piece of machinery on my property?

“But if I lose income, I’m coming after you guys,” McCormick continued, adding he would sue the town board if the project failed to go forward for that reason.

Even though funding for the project is not addressed in the draft law, Dombert, Reynolds and others at the meeting brought the topic up several times.

The current project could be between 22 and 34 turbines, Reynolds and other E.ON officials said at the meeting, producing around 51 megawatts of power. The baseline Payment in Lieu of Taxes agreement figures — E.ON’s potential expected contribution so the turbines are not assessed at full market value and cost millions in taxes — call for $8,300 per megawatt, according to Dombert. Of that, about 13 percent will come to the town, Dombert said, because of the average property tax bill, the town taxes only take up 13 percent of the total.

Dombert said the current share of PILOT funds would be unacceptable for the town, but he said the only way to change the share is to ask the Canisteo-Greenwood and Alfred-Almond school boards for a reprieve. Town Attorney David Pullen is trying to jump-start negotiations with Canisteo-Greenwood officials, and a liaison from the Alfred-Almond school board has been named, but little negotiating has taken place.

Several times during the meeting Dombert said blocking wind development “is the one piece of leverage we potentially have” to negotiate with school districts, reasoning if the project does not happen, local schools will not get any financial assistance.