Power struggle
The Adirondack Park isn’t widely known for farming, but almost 104,000 of its 6 million acres are in agricultural districts. Much of that is in the Champlain Valley, where sunny fields spread out between dark mountains to the west and sparkling Lake Champlain waters to the east.
In that expanse, solar panels are fast becoming the trendy new cash crop. Because of their potential to change the region’s views, its wildlife habitat and its way of life, some in the communities and on the Adirondack Park Agency’s board are calling for comprehensive planning on their location.
George Pataki, the 53rd governor of New York, lives there in Essex, on Lake Champlain. He runs a farm, its fields producing mostly hay for cows. He is also an attorney for Norton Rose Fulbright, specializing in renewable energy and environmental law.
The Republican is a proponent of wind and solar power. It’s the future, he said, not just for the United States but for the world.
Its broad deployment in protected natural areas, however, is something he can’t support.
“It is utterly inappropriate in the Adirondack Park,” he said.
“Infuriated” by the topic, Pataki drove a reporter to a business with one large solar panel in a field nearby. He pointed to the panel’s underside, describing how ugly he thought it was. He grimaced at the thought of the whole field taken up by the panels and wires, something that is already happening in fields and near wetlands in the Adirondacks.
