by
Brian Mann on January 4th, 2011
Big wind farms are controversial across the North Country, with many towns struggling over how to regulate the giant turbines. But in Lewis County, the pay-off from the (relatively) new industry are tangible.
This from the Watertown Daily Times.
Maple Ridge Wind Farm municipalities have received an $8.94 million payment from the wind farm, one year after getting only about one-quarter of the requested initial payment.
“This is really good news,” said Kenneth J. McAuliffe, district superintendent at Lowville Academy and Central School, the biggest beneficiary from the 15-year payment-in-lieu-of-taxes agreement with the wind farm.
“It definitely means a lot to the district’s good financial health.”
Read the full article here.
Tags: economy, energy
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Our family vacations up there at least twice in the summer and we always take a trip to see the windmills. To me they aren’t ugly but attractive and obviously brings in bucks and jobs to the north country. Bravo.
Yes, great news…..Too bad it took a law suite to get them to pay up. What will be truly telling is what will happen when the Empire Zone benefits expire as basically the owner of the wind farm receives the state benefits and simply turns around and pays that money back to the local taxing jurisdictions. In other words, state tax payers are paying the local property taxes for the company and the company pays nothing on a nearly $400 Million dollar operation.
As most probably know, when the wind farm lost its Empire Zone benefits it refused to pay its local property taxes, thus prompting the law suite by the county, towns, and school districts. I predict it will happen again once the Empire Zone program officially ends. This should be a lesson to every locality that creates a PILOT for wind farm development. Make sure the PILOT isn’t predicated on Empire Zone status/benefits.
I support Wind Farm development, but it needs to be done properly. There’s much to learn from the process that led to Maple Ridge being actually built and installed. Mistakes were certainly made, some of which have yet to be addressed. And for the record, I live in the Lowville district, and my wife’s family owns property within the current farm and have been approached to allow a right of way for the proposed 40 turbine addition (now on hold) located within the already existing Maple Ridge wind farm. I certainly benefit from the taxes paid by my fellow state tax payers as well as the money paid to local lease participants and from the jobs in the community. However, I think a better deal could have been negotiated. For the communities, the lease holders, and for local property owners who’ve not been properly compensated as a result of the loss of property value.
Finally, I think the time is long overdue for a discussion about more equitable ways to encourage alternative, renewable energy development. Feed in tariffs for instance. No one besides a very few even know of the concept, which is a shame. It’s time more people learned of this approach. I’m hoping for the day when Brian devotes a column or thread in this forum relating to this alternative approach.
The problem I think might be that we confuse the business of energy with the politics of alternative energy.
Wind farm corporations are no better or worse than oil companies or coal companies or any other energy producer. They are here to make money for their owners. If they can avoid paying taxes they will spend much time and money doing so just as they would work to reduce any cost of doing business. They do not exist to help the environment, they exist to make money. They should be treated like we would treat any other energy company. Now I think we should be encouraging business to locate here, including wind corporations and including oil and gas exploration corporations. But they should have to operate like any other business paying taxes and following our rules and we may have to kick them in the butt before they do those things.
My vote is for more atomic power.
The windmills would look much better if they were made to look like the windmills in Holland.
We have Frankenpine. Why not Holland windmills? Now that would be attractive.
Good idea Pete. Then we can all go tilting…