Soft snowflakes

Touch every blade of grass

Transforming the Helderbergs

— Haiku by Daniel Driscoll,

handwritten on the title page of Melissa Hale-Spencer’s Helderberg Escarpment Planning Guide
 

Any rational human being can see now is the time to move to renewable energy before it is too late, before climate change destroys life on the Earth as we know it.

We’ve advocated for decades on this page for the need to move away from fossil fuels and toward wind and solar energy. So, yes, we support the New York State Energy Plan of achieving all of the state’s energy needs from renewable sources by 2040.

But the latest proposal from Governor Andrew Cuomo has given us pause. He is amending his budget proposal to set up a separate state office — Office of Renewable Energy Permitting within Empire State Development — to speed the permit process for large solar and wind farms.

The proposal says, “Municipalities will have an opportunity to advise the Office on compliance with local laws and the Permitting Office will consider and may apply local laws in light of the State’s clean energy and environmental goals … .”

New York is a home-rule state. It is essential for towns and counties to identify the resources they want to protect and to adopt legislation that will do so.

It is naive to think that no views will change with the advent of more renewable energy sources in our midst. When electric lines and telephone lines were first strung from pole to pole across the United States, many considered them ugly. Now, the utility poles just seem part of the landscape, hardly noticed.

But there are places that most residents in a particular town or county can agree should not be marred with large wind turbines or commercial solar arrays.

This is different than the not-in-my-backyard mentality that would prohibit renewable energy from going anywhere. Rather, it is a matter of protecting places that are seen as essential for the common good.

We need look no further than the Helderberg escarpment for an example. The escarpment — the birthplace of modern geology — is known worldwide. The towns the Enterprise covers are either in the Helderbergs — Berne, Knox, Rensselaerville, and Westerlo — or in its shadow: Guilderland and New Scotland.

Two decades ago, the late Daniel Driscoll of Knox who spearheaded the drafting of the Helderberg Escarpment Planning Guide, said the group drew the boundary for the considered area to match the Enterprise coverage area.

The interaction that played out on our pages over those years in which representatives of the different municipalities worked to catalogue the area’s resources was essential for a community-wide understanding of its worth.

The guide looks at geology, soils, hydrology, plants, animals, agriculture, aesthetics, recreation, historic and cultural resources, and land-use controls. This in-depth exploration of “the county’s signature landform” was meant to offer guidance as local communities developed comprehensive plans and zoning ordinances. 

The guide was not meant to frustrate growth but rather to ensure that growth was designed in a way to respect the uniqueness of the escarpment. Unfortunately, few municipalities followed through with being caretakers of the escarpment.

Because of its beauty and its history, the Helderberg is an economic driver for the area, attracting visitors as well as residents. But unless protections are codified into law, local law, that beauty, that worth may be chipped away and ultimately undermined.

We have covered recently the public outcry against a proposal for a large solar farm along Dunnsville Road, leading to the village of Altamont, that would mar the view of the Helderbergs. The owners of a golf course and event venue on Dunnsville Road may yet be able to save the view by selling a similarly-sized parcel of land, in a less visible spot, to the man who plans to have the solar farm.

Meanwhile a group of citizens, led by Laura Shore, launched a “Save Our View” campaign to which the town of Guilderland had the right reaction.

The town has drafted a law that we wholeheartedly endorse. The bill states the importance of solar energy as “an abundant and renewable energy resource” while at the same time acknowledging the need to protect “scenic and environmental resources by minimizing the impact of major solar energy facilities on parklands, trails, wetlands, wildlife, scenery, flood plains, historical and cultural sites, and recreational activities.”

It cites the Helderberg Escarpment Planning Guide along with policy developed by the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation.

“An ever expanding body of research has demonstrated that environmental aesthetic values are shared among the general population,” says the DEC policy. “This research finds that such values are not idiosyncratic, random, or arbitrary. For example, millions of people visit Niagara Falls for our shared appreciation of its beauty

“Many places have been recognized for their beauty and designated through Federal or State democratic political processes, reinforcing the notion that environmental aesthetic values are shared. Recognition of aesthetic resources also occurs at local levels through zoning, planning or other public means. That these special places are formally recognized is a matter of public record.”

The Helderberg Escarpment Planning Guide was written, in part, to help local municipalities incorporate protections into their zoning. Few have.

We recently published a two-part series by Albany County Legislator Jeff Perlee on the value of the Helderbergs. In the past, we have urged individual municipalities to protect the Helderbergs with their zoning and planning processes. We now urge the county to take up that banner.

Because we are a capitalist society, the development of renewable energy, like most everything else, is being driven by companies looking to make profits. We, as citizens of a particular place, need to protect what, as a community, we value.

The Guilderland solar bill, for example, is wise to have a section on decommissioning and removal, so that a major solar energy system that fails to generate and transmit electricity at a rate of more than 10 percent of its capacity over 12 months is deemed to be abandoned and is to be removed and the grounds restored.

Just as a company would have no incentive to clean up an abandoned site, it also has no incentive to site arrays or to landscape around them in ways that minimize the impact.

That is precisely why these matters need to be codified in law. And that is why the Guilderland solar law must be clear on the matter of preserving the Helderberg viewshed. We urge the Guilderland Town Board, as it prepares to adopt the bill, to heed the 1,300 petitioners who want to protect that view.

While the Guilderland solar project is not large enough to come under the speeded-up process the governor has proposed, the more rural towns in our area  — with larger open spaces — may well attract developers that would.

We, as a community, need to work together to see that we develop the essential renewable-energy resources we need while at the same time protecting what we most value.