Pataki: No place for big solar on prime Adirondack farmlands
By George E. Pataki
When the Adirondack Park was created, it was easy to see who the “bad guys” were: garish signs, ugly motels, or intrusive cabins located right on the shore of environmentally important ponds or lakes. These are things the Adirondack Park Agency (APA) has rightly rejected. But we now face a new, more challenging, issue. As we become more aware of the challenge of climate change, renewable energy developers see the Adirondack Park and its open spaces as having major potential for the siting of renewable energy projects, whether solar or wind. While in my view these have an absolutely critical role to play in United States energy policy, I believe they constitute a very real danger to the continued existence of the park as we know it.
Let me make it clear that I am a proponent of these important energy sources. While I was in public office, I did all I could to encourage and incentivize their development. Now, in the private sector, I work for one of the leading firms representing green energy companies. Looking forward, they need to play an even more important role in our energy policy.
But as with all things, location and timing are critical. I just read where a sixth-generation dairy farm at the southern end of the Adirondack Park is being converted into a massive utility scale solar development. While, because of a poorly considered state law, the APA has no jurisdiction over that project, that is not the case with other large-scale solar and wind facilities within the park boundary. In the hamlet where I live, Essex, a 22-acre utility solar generating facility is proposed. I believe it is critically important that this development be rejected.
The Adirondack Park has very little farmland, most of it is in the Champlain Valley. It is certainly the case that agriculture in the park has declined in part because of the economics of farming in the era of industrial size farms and also since the climate in the Adirondacks is extremely challenging for agriculture. But there are those, particularly young families, who still desire to farm and help develop more local and healthy food sources on their own small farms. This is exactly a part of what the park should be meant to encourage.
Given the recognition that renewable energy must play a more important role, developers realize that the park, and particularly the Champlain Valley with both its active and inactive farm lands, are prime places for development. While there are literally millions of acres of other, more suitable sites across upstate New York, land within the park has become a “sitting duck” for developers. If this is permitted, I believe the entire concept of the park goes out the window. The brilliant recognition over a century ago that the park could serve future generations by preserving its unique wild nature becomes lost.
An example of this threat: the proposed 22- acre solar project in Essex would, of necessity, include over a mile of fencing 8–10 feet high, rendering that critical corridor inaccessible to wildlife. Within that land itself, the panels would make the natural habitat virtually cease to exist. In addition to the facility itself, there will need to be a connection to the grid, including transformers, transmission lines, and whatever else is required. The power plant will be visible as one takes the magnificent ride from the intersection of Middle Road down Route 22 to the hamlet with open spaces, Lake Champlain and the mountains of Vermont in the viewshed. It is for this reason that much of this area has been given the highest protected designation the Adirondack Park has for private land. This development should be rejected.
The park is at a crossroads. It is easy to protect nature by ruling against the so-called “bad guys.” But in this case, there are no bad guys. Open space and clean renewable energy are both “good guys.” That makes the APA’s job that much harder, but that much more important. To allow this utility scale development of renewable energy within the park will completely undermine more than 150 years of foresight from the leaders of New York state. It is the park agency’s job, I believe, to protect the wild and beautiful nature of the Adirondack Park for future generations, just as past generations have done for us. Ruling against other “good guys” is not an easy task, but if the park is to be protected and not see its character dramatically changed that action must be taken. I urge board chairman John Ernst and the rest of the APA board to reject this proposed development.
George Pataki served as the 53rd governor of New York from 1995 to 2006 and lives in Essex.
Photo at top: George Pataki in Lake Placid in 2006. Photo by Nancie Battaglia