Readers’ Turn to Write: The negative environmental impact of industrial-scale wind projects

By GARY ABRAHAM January 30, 2026

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has issued a statement about
the 99-mile Constitution Pipeline, which would carry natural gas to New York City. The state’s
grid operator is projecting blackouts, including later this year, because the city doesn’t have
enough power. NYSDEC says it will vigorously scrutinize the environmental impacts of the
proposal: “New York will continue to take the reins to ensure the full protection of public health
and our state’s natural resources.”
I want to know why the state is casting a blind eye on the environmental destruction caused by
large-scale wind and solar projects.

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To its credit, the DEC put on a valiant e”ort to save endangered bald eagles, the upland
sandpiper and the nearly extinct Northern long-eared bat, all of which have been found in the
Alle-Catt wind project area. But DEC’s arguments and even its regulations were set aside by the
state power plant Siting Board. Since then, the Siting Board has been replaced by the O#ce of
Renewable Energy Siting, which is much less environmentally minded.
Towns asked to host these projects have land-use laws in place, including zoning, to designate
where industrial projects could be sited and where they can’t. But ORES has waived such local
laws in every case and has refused to allow any town in New York to become a party to the siting
proceeding.
In the Alle-Catt case, the hearing o#cers who received testimony and evidence from DEC experts
and the experts brought by other state agencies, by local stakeholders who intervened, and by
Alle-Catt, concluded the environmental damage the project would cause is serious:

• “[B]etween 480 and 515 bird fatalities annually,” including six threatened or endangered
  species and at least 41 additional bald eagle fledglings will be killed by collision with wind
  turbine blades over 30 years.
• Between 26,000 and 39,500 bats will be killed over 30 years, including two threatened or
  endangered species (even the application acknowledges that local bat populations will not
  survive the wind turbines).
• The project would remove 1,550 acres of interior forest and would fragment about 1,686 acres
  of unbroken forest that would remain of the “approximately 5,900 acres of interior forest in the
  dfacility site.”
• “The presence of wind turbines may: displace grasslands birds from otherwise suitable habitat;
  decrease nesting success; and change foraging behavior,” particularly for the threatened upland
  sandpiper.
  These losses of birds, bats and insects have the potential to harm farming in the region, as these
  animals provide “ecosystem services,” chiefly pollination and the control of agricultural pests.
  This project, like most wind projects in New York, will cause a public health risk for those
  exposed to wind turbine noise. That was the testimony of the state Department of Health. The
  state siting board rejected that testimony, as well as NYSDEC’s, which would have forced turbines
  to be relocated to avoid those outcomes.
  Pipelines fail but it’s a very rare occurrence. For a 100-square-mile wind energy project, the
  killing of bats, birds and insects is a certainty. So is the loss of more than 4,000 tons of carbon
  dioxide each year for more than a century. That’s how long it will take to regrow forests in
  Yorkshire, Arcade, Freedom, Farmersville, Centerville and Rushford cleared by Alle-Catt.
  Additional environmental damage will be caused: 75-foot paths through the forest to
  interconnect 87 turbines require “174 stream crossings and an estimated total of 1,982 linear
  feet of permanent stream impacts.”
  There are dozens of wind projects like Alle-Catt across Upstate New York, approved or about to
  be approved (New York has never denied a permit for a wind project) in the vain hope that doing
  so will have an e”ect on global warming. Because they operate only about 25% of the time, two
  or three always-on, reliable nuclear power plants could replace them all with zero-emissions
  power generated on a site the size of a shopping mall.
  No alteration of drainage patterns, no killing of wildlife and no nuisance noise.
  Nuclear will be built out in the next decade in New York, revealing the folly of abandoning “the
  full protection of public health and our state’s natural resources” for a very costly technology (it’s Notice at collection Your Privacy Choices

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