Greece board: No to offshore wind

The Greece Town Board voted 5-0 Tuesday evening to oppose the New York Power Authority’s offshore wind project. The board becomes the first elected body in Monroe County, to my knowledge, to go on the record in opposition to the plan.

The resolution states that the board opposes the project “as currently proposed” because the authority hasn’t provided enough information about it, including possible locations and potential economic and other benefits.

A Monroe County legislator from Greece, Rick Antelli, is circulating a resolution opposing the project among his colleagues. Lawmakers in Wayne, Oswego, Jefferson and Chautauqua counties have voted to oppose the authority plan; their counterparts in Niagara County have endorsed it, though some are lobbying for a reversal of that endorsement.

The power authority, based in Westchester County, broached the idea of an offshore wind farm in the New York waters of Lake Ontario or Lake Erie more than a year ago. It solicited formal proposals from wind developers and reportedly received five of them on June 1. Since then, a cone of silence has descended over the authority, and officials there will say nothing about the proposals.

The Democrat and Chronicle filed a request for the proposals under the state Freedom of Information law in early June. The authority eventually denied the request, saying disclosure of any information about the proposals would impair the agency’s ability to award a contract. The newspaper filed an administrative appeal with the authority but has received no response.

Authority chief executive Richard Kessel has said in the past that the authority wouldn’t promote construction of a wind farm off the shoreline of any community that didn’t want them. But it’s not clear if he deems expressions of opinion such as that voiced by the Greece Town Board sufficient cause to site the turbines elsewhere.

One interesting sidelight: Like many Lake Ontario municipalities, the town of Greece has a Local Waterfront Revitalization Plan, prepared in conjunction with federal and state coastal management programs. Unlike some others I’ve read, Greece’s plan places great emphasis on preserving the lake ”viewshed.” A survey of residents by the town consultant led to the conclusion that the characteristic they valued most about the waterfront was “a very serene natural setting.”

A lawyer once casually suggested to me that a municipality whose waterfront revitalization plan placed a high value on the viewshed could argue that offshore wind turbines didn’t comply with the plan, and thus the municipality might have standing to intervene in the siting process.

Whether any municipality tries this, and whether it succeeds, remains to be seen.