Wednesday was the night of the monthly meeting of the Westfield Town Board. Ripley Hawk Watch and Chautauqua County Citizens for Responsible Wind Power (CCCRWP) made presentations. As part of their presentation, CCCRWP showed a video made by people from Meyersdale, PA in which they discussed the issues of industrial wind power production. The people of Meyersdale know first hand the effects of large wind turbines on a community since they live near a wind power development. These people described many of the issues, such as noise, flicker, television interference and the loss of use of property since long time hunting grounds could no longer be used because of the noise. They also described how a gun club was negatively affected by flickering from the turbines. It is worth noting that, over the last couple of years, the developers of the project here, Jasper Energy LLC as owners of Chautauqua Wind Power LLC have had many opportunities to talk to the board while the local citizens group, CCCRWP, had never had such an opportunity until this meeting.
After the presentation, several property owners who have recently constructed homes in the area spoke out to the board. They were upset about the way the whole issue of the installation of wind turbines is being handled. From the boards responses, they made it seem like a done deal and that they were more concerned with the developers than about the property owners. This inflamed the people even more and rightly so. The property owners were belittled by one board member for not having gotten involved sooner Well, they are involved now and their opinions should be taken seriously by the board. After all, this is the body that is supposed to represent property owners. During this whole exchange, another board member, referring to the CCCRWP which is composed primarily of the boards constituents, said "They've been bitching about this for two years now." They haven't been bitching, they've been trying to express their concerns. Finally, the town board simply stopped the meeting so they wouldn't have to hear the concerns of the citizens.
It seems to me that the town board of Westfield is willing to hear as much from the developers as they want to say but they don't care much about the people of their own community - the people who will be most affected by this, have to say. One important note here is that none of the board members lives in the area that would be affected by this project. Four of them live in the village and the other lives near the lake. The ridge has absolutely no representation on the board.
Well, thats enough for today. I will be back soon.
Steven