Despite the fast-tracking of an industrial wind turbine facility that would allow noise levels in the quiet countryside of Orangeville to become intolerable (as quoted from state Department of Environmental Conservation guidelines on noise), and the questionable methods used by the Town Board of Orangeville in passing zoning laws that allowed industrial wind turbines to be placed at unsafe distances from Orangeville taxpayers' homes, a Buffalo judge dismissed the Article 78 (lawsuit) brought by the concerned citizens rural preservation group Clear Skies Over Orangeville against the Town Board of Orangeville. The suit was brought against the Town Board not the corporation Invenergy.
When politicians in authority disregard the health, safety and welfare of the people who live and pay taxes in Orangeville, the people who they swore to protect, the only recourse is to address this issue in a court of law.
At the Supreme Court hearing held in Buffalo on March 31, Judge (Patrick) NeMoyer stated, that he believes that all these Orangeville town officials made mistakes, and did not deliberately mislead the people of Orangeville. This statement made in regard to Town Council members signing contracts with wind corporations that would benefit them personally as they would make more money, the more turbines they sited in Orangeville. This corporation depended on their help in facilitating the zoning laws to maximize profit for both the company and individual town municipal officials, at the expense of the neighbors who would have to live in a noisy industrial turbine power complex. These mistakes in signing the contracts began in 2007 and were kept under wraps until recently, apparently by mistake.
One councilman signed a contract with Invenergy, one with Invenergy Sheldon, another sold their real estate to Noble Wind for a switchyard that would hook up to the Invenergy project, and one who swore in an affidavit that he has no financial interest in his Orangeville Planning Board father's dairy farm. The town councilman (who swore no financial interest in the family farm) and his brother work for their father's dairy farm and the brother who lives with the father, recently bought a farm formerly leased by them with a turbine contract on it. A farm check was presented to the judge with both brothers' and parents' names on it, used to do business from the farm account. The Invenergy code of conduct which they signed with the Sate Attorney General includes siblings as conflicts of interest if living at home and this was failed to be disclosed. The municipal code of ethics also states that town officials should avoid any semblance of impropriety.
Town Supervisor Susan May stated in a Batavia Daily News article, "Orangeville lawsuit dismissed" (April 22) that "NeMoyer (the Buffalo Judge) found the Town Board acted responsibly and justly in passing the zoning ordinance, and rejected the assertion any of the voting town councilmen had conflicts of interest." She went on to say that she was "very confident that the legal process would prove that we acted properly and ethically."
Ms. May also stated that this lawsuit was "frivolous" and a waste of the taxpayers' money. Wait a minute ... are the 194 people of Orangeville who were mentioned in Invenergy's Draft Environmental Statement as may be negatively impacted (Invenergy's own words) by noise and shadow flicker taxpayers?
Don't they have the right to stand up and defend their health, safety, welfare and quality of life? Since this proposed high-voltage industrial wind power facility may harm our health, safety and financial investments in our homes and negatively impact (as admitted to in the DEIS by the wind corporation) the peaceful environment, wildlife, streams, forests and wetlands of Orangeville, don't we have the right to stand up and defend this also? Do we not also have a right to stand up for what is right, spending our own money again after paying taxes also to try to fix a flawed legal system? What would you do if this was your home?
To help make Clear Skies Over Orangeville's point about the lobbyist corporations getting involved in local government, Invenergy showed up in court, brought their corporate lawyers along, who joined the suit as an interested party. Invenergy is also paying the bill for the "so-called" independent engineering firm Wendel Duchscherer, and also the environmental lawyer the Town Board brought in. Before being accepted as a party in the lawsuit, Invenergy lawyers even signed the town's legal papers! Invenergy also employed this same "independent" engineering firm to create a study for Sheldon's DEIS three years ago. By the way, on closer examination, the Sheldon DEIS and the Orangeville DEIS (three years later) appear to many agencies as well as to many of us Orangeville residents to be a carbon copy study, cut and pasted, almost an identical twin. The problem? Sheldon is not Orangeville's twin, and companies doing environmental studies should be independent and not picked by town officials with financial ties to corporations who are hiring and paying these same "independent engineers." Who are these town officials pledging their allegiance to?
Don't we as taxpaying Americans have the right anymore to stand up for a grave miscarriage of justice that directly harms us? If politicians are compensated, and defended by multimillion-dollar foreign investors, and our laws are allowed to be influenced by these big financial interests, aren't we standing by and letting socialism take over our government?
Has America been bought out by Big Wind? And isn't it time that American citizens say enough to corporate welfare at the expense of the ethics of our local, state and federal governments?
Cathi Orr
Orangeville
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