More great ORES news! Hemlock Hollow Wind, a proposed 95MW wind complex for Cattaraugus County, New York, has announced that they have withdrawn their proposal for an ORES wind complex indefinitely. The complex would have been built by Liberty Renewables, whose parent company is the Danish holding company: Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP). As the Olean Star reported, "Area residents seemed most concerned over the possibility that noise and infrasound from the wind turbines would affect the health of people living nearby as well as the visual impact of the 650-foot high structures sitting atop mountain ridges." Keep the pressure on! Congratulations to everyone who would have been impacted by this wind complex. Photo below sourced from the Olean Star.

Why was the Shepherd's Run Solar ORES project denied by the executive director... the first solar project EVER to be denied by ORES before receiving its final permit? I went to the adjudicatory hearing in Copake, New York last month where we sat in on what was one of the most shocking things I'd ever witnessed publicly. It was clear the Department of Public Service (DPS) had called the meeting to order, specifically, for the public to see firsthand the misreporting (it was lying - but I will add an "allegedly" disclaimer here for legal purposes) that had gone on through Hecate Energy and its engineer. Those of us who have been following ORES solar/wind projects in our own towns know that this is commonplace for every ORES industrial complex. So why was Copake any different? That day, while I sat there in the Copake Town Hall, I watched the solar engineer struggle to answer questions about the project location within a FEMA Zone A Special Flood Hazard Area associated with the Taghkanic Creek, and project components were proposed within that flood-hazard area. Hecate’s own inundation modeling showed that a significant portion of the site could flood. Inverters, collection lines, and access roads were drawn in an area that could be under 2+ feet of water. Copake has a local flood-damage-prevention law, Chapter 135, adopted as part of the federal National Flood Insurance Program framework. This became extremely important because the Attorney Law Judges (ALJs) ultimately concluded that Chapter 135 was "not simply an ordinary local zoning law that ORES could override." They found it was part of an integrated federal-state-local flood protection program, and that the Town, not ORES, had the authority to administer it. This was unprecedented for the ALJs to depart from ORES in their recommended ruling like this. Is there a split within the department, perhaps a faction of the DPS that wants to pull away from ORES? What's even more significant is that Shepherd's Run Solar is not the only ORES project with FEMA Zone A flood zones. Flat Creek Solar was one (now relinquished). And so is Fort Edward Solar. Since ORES just denied a permit to Shepherd's Run Solar based on this floodplains issue, then the 4 remaining ORES projects with a similar issue should be relinquished and denied as well.