Scrappy Advice for Fighting Wind Turbines in Your Back Yard

Calvin Luther Martin, PhD
Malone, New York

March 21, 2006

I will be blunt. Do pay close attention to everything I am saying; I'm seasoned at this stuff: I've been doing it full time for 1.5 years.

If you wish to talk to somebody experienced in fighting the wind companies, contact our campaign chief, Anne Britton, at (518) 483-9555 and visit her website.

Anne is founder and chairperson of We Oppose Windfarms (Brandon, NY). She is a brilliant strategist and mother lode of information on everything one cares to know about wind energy, wind companies, and the law. I ask you, however, to make a donation to WOW to help her with her considerable expenses and for her consultation. Anne does all of this (works full time at it) on a shoe-string budget. She spends hours talking by phone and e-mail with people like you. Do the arithmetic: she has little life left, like, to make a living.

That said, I advise the following:

Realize that this will be the biggest fight of your life. It will take over your life completely for the next year or two or more.

You need a strong group working with you. Everyone must realize that he/she will have to devote much time and energy and research and public speaking and public meeting attendance to get this juggernaut beaten.

If you folks think you can do this part-time, or casually while going about your normal life, you're deluding yourselves.

Swallow your shyness, all of you, and become aggressive at meetings, attend all town meetings, engage in debate with the windies, put on a Powerpoint presentation for your town board-do all that, and more.

Do mass mailings (Anne can help you design a pamphlet). Hold meetings of a few dozen people, while excluding those who have signed easement agreements (these people are no longer your pals; realize that now). This wind issue is tremendously divisive of communities: it rips them to shreds. Sorry to tell you that, but it's the truth. At your meetings, exclude the pro-wind people and definitely exclude the wind salesmen and their shills, 'cause you're never going to convince these people. The windies (wind company people) have a religious zeal about this crap. They are, you will discover, the biggest liars in modern history.

The problem will come from friends and neighbors in your community who sign so-called easement agreements. Yes, the irresistible lure of $$$. The wind companies cultivate these people, first, along with your town board members (some of whom will sign easement agreements with the wind company even while they continue to vote on the board-trust me, this will happen, or has happened in your community already). The wind salesmen will then use this corps of property-owners to lobby the town board for a pro-wind ordinance.

So, you need to educate people about the follies and horrors (yes, that is an apt word) of wind turbines next door. This means: newspaper ads, newspaper editorials (you will have to pay for these, as paid ads/editorials). Many letters to the editor. Mass mailings. Public meetings where you people present evidence, information. Attendance at all public meetings where wind is on the agenda, and there you must refute the lies and deceit of the windies.

Do not hire a lawyer; you don't need one. Waste of time and money. Do not waste your time with a petition; the wind salesmen will produce one of their own with 100 more signatures (reached through phony means) than yours.

Right now you need to buy time while you educate the public. Educating the public is maddeningly slow and time consuming. Again, right now, buy time. You do this by asking your town board for a year-long or 10 month or 6 month moratorium on all wind stuff. Slow everything down. The wind companies score their successes in places like Lowville, NY (Tug Hill mega-windplant) by moving quickly and stealthily.

So, get a moratorium on all wind permitting and any adoption of a wind ordinance. And in that breathing space, launch a tremendous education campaign. Why? Because everyone's initial reaction to wind energy is: Wow! Fabulous! Terrific! Well, the truth of wind energy is that it's horseshit and, by the way, wind energy has nothing to do with foreign oil imports. Zero. This will have to be a principle plank in your education platform: wind energy has no impact whatsoever on foreign oil imports (wind turbines turn on light bulbs, they don't run cars, right?). Oil = cars, wind turbines = lightbulbs. Let's get that straight.

This is your first task, then: moratorium, then massive and relentless education campaign.

If, at the end of all this, your town board passes a pro-wind ordinance, then, if you live in New York State, you shift into an Article 78 lawsuit against your town board. No, you do not need a lawyer for this. We can help walk you through an Article 78.

As part of your education campaign, you need to have your people go door to door, you need to distribute pamphlets and flyers, you need to distribute "No Wind Turbines" yellow lawn signs. You can get hundreds of these free from Save Upstate New York (www.saveupstateny.com) — that is, you can if they're in a good mood that day. If they're not, you have to buy them from an outfit in Wisconsin. Let me know; I can send you the contact information. You will need to turn your community into a forest of these yellow lawn signs. We did that here; it works.

The newspapers will most likely support the wind energy guys (remember: newspapers are corporations, like the windies). Your state representatives will definitely support the wind energy guys. Your county govt., ditto. Depressing, yes.

As soon as there is an election to your town board, run candidates who are anti-windplant. Very important! You need to personally educate your town board members and your supervisor. These are the people the windies try to corrupt right away.

The windies will run bus trips to Fenner, NY, to listen to the silence and watch the majesty of the wind turbines. It's bullshit; they turn off the generators at Fenner — I am convinced. No, I do not have hard evidence but I have circumstantial evidence. Instead, small groups of you folks need to go to Tug Hill, NY (Lowville & Martinsburg), on your own (not on the wind salesmen bus), and spend some hours there. Contact Pat Leviker at Tug Hill, (315) 376-6804, and, better yet, Gordon Yancey at Tug Hill, (315) 376-2332.

Do not put your confidence in Tom Golisano (founder of Save Upstate NY), for nothing will come of it.

Make sure you form a group that covers a number of towns, and you should all attend one another's town meetings.

Remember, the wind salesmen have a license in their wallet allowing them to lie and deceive and spin the truth with impunity: do not make the mistake of thinking these jackasses will say anything truthful. They are charlatans; they are confidence men right out of the 19th-century American frontier. Their wind turbines are merely Tax Shelter Generators.

What will save your group is the Internet, e-mail, and high speed Internet access. You definitely need high speed Internet access. Don't let anyone in your group announce smugly that they don't "do" e-mail and the Internet; you're sunk without it.

I have attached a few documents of interest. [ed. note - not included here]

There's a good start. I've been blunt, irreverent, opinionated, and grumpy.

Best anti-wind websites, besides WOW: www.aweo.org, www.glebemountaingroup.org/, www.wind-watch.org, kirbymtn.blogspot.com. You should also write to amk@clara.co.uk and cath@kingcon.com and get put on their mailing lists, which are indispensable.

Calvin Luther Martin, PhD
Associate Professor of History (retired)
Rutgers University