The Cantankerous Crusading Crew of Cayuga County

It's just the nature of the beast.

For example, in June, I told you all about how climate cult Dems in New Jersey were panicking when they realized their multiple years of failed experiments with a green energy transition were going to bite NJ rate payers good and hard this summer. They'd already had to factor in a rate hike to cover rising overhead, and, in a moment of blind desperation, verminous Governor Phil Murphy announced a delay in it until the fall. This is also conveniently timed for after the elections.

The Board of Public Utilities hopped into action to give everyone in the state a total $60 deferral on those summer electrical bills to help soften the blow...and maybe not be so pissed at state Democrats for doing this to them that they boot every last incumbent and elect a GOP governor in November.

The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities on Wednesday approved a raft of affordability measures meant to blunt the impact of a surge in electricity prices that took effect at the start of June.

In unanimous votes, the utility regulator backed orders that would defer a total of $60 from summer electricity bills, extend $175 in bill credits to low-income ratepayers, waive reconnection fees, and extend winter shutoff protections through July, August, and September.

Yellow Fang had his own chipper advice to add for his state's residents on how to survive the summer.

KEEP IT HOT AND PREPARE FOR BLACKOUTS, PEEPS!

Phil Murphy blocked the opening of 2 natural gas plants and delayed one more. He is shutting down our last remaining nuclear plant and also closed 2 coal power plants.

He even held a ceremony celbrating it!

Now he's asking us to set our thermostats at 78 degrees. pic.twitter.com/8BI7cLSHlZ

— Joe Colangelo (@Itsjoeco) June 24, 2025

'Twas all for naught, and that big $60 deferred until the fall? 

'Tis to laugh.

Average New Jersey electrical bills have as much as tripled, seemingly overnight.

When my friend Rebecca in Highland Park, NJ, opened her PSE&G gas and electric bill last month, she almost fell out of her seat: It had tripled. 

It’s now costing her more than $1,000 a month to keep her modest home running.

“It’s been creeping up for months, in spite of the fact that nothing about our house has changed,” she told me. “In years past, it was averaging about $300 a month.”

“I don’t know how we’re expected to absorb these new bills,” she posted on Facebook.

WELCOME TO AFFORDABLE RENEWABLE ENERGY

You're welcome ~ signed, New Jersey Democrats

For the record, about Murphy's offshore wind farms and one of their promises about not being intrusive? That is also being proven to be a bald-faced lie. 

The Vineyard Wind development off of Nantucket, the very one where the blade delaminated and shut down beaches last summer, now has a vast number of its massive turbines operating. Residents there were also assured the farm wouldn't interfere with their island life and serene ocean views, much as shore residents up and down the East Coast have been by developers and the Biden administration.

This is what they now have in the night sky.

Check out that horizon. What an environmental and economic nightmare. VINEYARD WIND continues to mislead. ADLS is never going to answer the harm being inflicted to the ocean and to coastal communities. ⁦@njcoast_protect⁩ ⁦@saveLBIorg⁩ ⁦@CleanOcean⁩ pic.twitter.com/vmWad39GXh

— ACK4whales (@ack4whales) August 9, 2025

Again, those are big projects scaled to provide power for large swaths of coastal residents.

Lost in the sauce are the smaller, onshore communities fighting against turbines being planned for their backyards without any input from them, either as private property owners or on a local government level.

One place currently in the middle of a big battle that isn't making the slightest blip on anyone's radar is in the pristine Finger Lakes area of New York State. 

It's called Cayuga County, population 76,000 and change, and sits in the middle of the waterlogged region.

...Cayuga County is located in the west central part of the state, in the Finger Lakes region. Owasco Lake is in the center of the county, and Cayuga Lake forms part of the western boundary. Lake Ontario is on the northern border, and Skaneateles Lake and Cross Lake form part of the eastern border. Cayuga County has more waterfront land than any other county in the state not adjacent to the Atlantic Ocean.

A year ago, the state of New York, under the auspices of Green Goblin Governor Kathy Hochul, gave the green light for a wind farm to be built on some 20,000 acres between two small Cayuga County towns - Scipio in the north and Venice just to the south of it. They overrode all local government opposition using the state 's expedited renewable approval regulations.

Convenient, no?

These turbines are designed to be absolute monsters - 650 feet tall, and the company building the project out - Liberty Renewables - wants to construct 24 of them across the property.

The planned Agricola wind farm in Cayuga County will have 17-22 turbines 650 feet tall—twice the height of the leviathans pictured here in Madison County, and six stories higher than 44-story Corning Tower in Albany, tallest building in upstate. https://t.co/a0TvwpGjWO pic.twitter.com/3tLUkMJQOV

— E.J. McMahon (@EjmEj) March 9, 2024

The people in the county are apoplectic with anger. 

A proposed wind turbine project in Cayuga County has sparked significant opposition from local residents, who gathered in Auburn to express their concerns. The Agricola Wind Project, spearheaded by Liberty Renewables, plans to erect 24 wind turbines, each 650 feet tall, in the towns of Scipio and Venice. Construction could begin as early as next year, with the turbines expected to be operational by 2027.

Liberty Renewables is also behind a similar project in Fenner, Madison County, which has faced considerable resistance from local leaders and residents. At a public hearing held by the New York State Department of Public Service, many residents voiced their disapproval of the Cayuga County project.

Jonathan Ryan, a resident of Venice, expressed frustration over the lack of public input.

"At no point during this whole process have we residents had any opportunity to vote. There's been no referendum. We have no say in this whole issue. So to me it's basically taxation without representation. We fought a war over that one time," he said.

When the state board finally held a public meeting the other night, hundreds of residents came from miles around to speak their minds and vocalize their frustrations.

A single resident spoke in favor of the project.

The developer, Liberty Renewables, is already known for riding roughshod over little towns with their wind and solar farms and for doing so all with the full backing of the State of New York.

...Officials in Madison County are concerned about proposed green energy projects from energy companies coming to their land in the Town of Fenner, but they may not be able to do much about it.

Those companies are Liberty Renewables, and Cypress Creek Renewables. Liberty Renewables is seeking to install windmills and Cypress Creek Renewables is looking to build a solar array. Liberty Renewals seeking to start construction sometime between 2026 and 2027. Liberty Renewables said it will immediately begin to monitor the site for wildlife compliance after construction is complete.

But officials are frustrated. Town of Fenner Supervisor Dave Jones said he was concerned over the farmland. The windmill project and the solar array would take over 20% of the town's landmass.

Fenner, a town of 1,700 people, already has windmills. Supervisor Jones said the town's current wind farm was the largest one east of the Mississippi River when it was first erected in 2000.

But Jones said the move to add more windmills, and even solar arrays, would shift the small town from an agricultural community to a power producer but without benefit. According to Jones, the power generated from the windmills would be sent somewhere else. He also noted that the construction would cut 140 acres of trees.

The new energy source would increase energy bill rates too, Jones said. He told CNY Central that Fenner's town and county taxes have risen and his electricity bill has doubled since 2000.

Regardless of complaints, the Town of Fenner may not have the option to stop the project due to a New York State Law.

Amazing how those 'cheap renewables' have electrical bills doubling, isn't it?

And why doesn't Hochul ever drop these mostrosities in, say, Westchester County? Surely the wind blows there, too.

No, it's always easier to drop it in some out-of-the-way little farming burg and destroy it.

(For the record, as of April last year, Liberty Renewables is no longer an American company, either. It was purchased by Danish investment firm CIP specifically for its New York State portfolio of wind and solar contracts.)

This is what Liberty Renewables and the state have done to Fenner and are now looking to do to Cayuga County as a whole.

Most residents are fiercely opposed but fatalistic as far as their chances of fighting the state and the company go. It's a stacked deck.

As one of the opposition leaders mentions in an interview in the video above, their hope is now with the Trump Interior Department and EPA, as Liberty hasn't submitted any of the three federal applications for the farm they will need yet. If they're lucky - and if Trump doesn't need to squeeze Hochul for more gas pipeline cooperation - maybe Burgum will squelch it at his end.

There is another iron heating in the fire, and that is once again the economics of wind, which cannot stand on its own in the retail marketplace.

Further evidence of this emerged two days ago, when a management firm took over American turbine blade manufacturer TPI Composites as part of its Chapter 11 bankruptcy restructuring.

TPI was a big player in a struggling industry, delivering blade components to the biggest names in the business.

...It’s the latest blow to the wind industry after years of economic and political hurdles in recent years. Inflation and supply-chain hiccups prompted project delays and cancellations even before US President Donald Trump returned to office. Now, the industry is grappling with several White House moves to arrest the growth of renewable power.

In recent weeks, the Trump Administration has issued a number of orders that could halt wind and solar developments on public and private lands. It comes after the passage of Trump’s massive tax-and-spending law that calls for the early phase out of tax incentives for wind manufacturing and the end of federal subsidies for wind and solar farms.

BloombergNEF cut its onshore wind forecast by 51% after the passage of Trump’s domestic bill at the beginning of July.

...“Years of oscillating US policy have challenged domestic wind suppliers, but the pressure has ratcheted up under President Trump,” said Atin Jain, an analyst for BloombergNEF. “TPI’s decline is tied to a combination of other factors including persistent financial loses, intense pressure from the turbine manufacturers to cut costs and growing competition from the Chinese blade suppliers and internal operational inefficiencies.”

If Burgum can't or won't save Cayuga from this towering menace, maybe the tottering state of wind itself will.

All I can say to the folks up there - and in Fenner, too - is don't stop kicking and screaming as loud as you can to whomever you can.

Don't give up for nuthin'.  Raise hell to the bitter end and then some.