Roger Caiazza
I am convinced that implementation of the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) net-zero mandates will do more harm than good if the future electric system relies only on wind, solar, and energy storage because of reliability challenges, affordability risks, and unacceptable environmental impacts. While I have written numerous articles here about my reliability and affordability concerns, this is my second post describing New York’s horrible wind and solar permitting process.
New York Renewable Generation Permitting
New York’s renewable siting framework has shifted through three major regimes in just over a decade, each one stripping away more local control and speeding approvals for utility‑scale wind, solar, and transmission lines. Under Article 10 of the Public Service Law (2011–2020), large electric generating facilities were reviewed case‑by‑case by a Siting Board in what was nominally a quasi‑judicial process, with intervenor funding, evidentiary hearings, and some room for host communities and expert witnesses to test developer claims on issues like noise, visual impacts, and wildlife mortality. In 2020, the Legislature and Cuomo Administration declared that Article 10 was too slow for Climate Act timelines and replaced it for most renewables with the Office of Renewable Energy Siting (ORES) under Executive Law 94‑c, creating a streamlined, highly prescriptive permit system that pre‑empted most local laws, compressed schedules, and shifted the burden to communities to show why a project should not be approved. Most recently, the Hochul Administration and Legislature doubled down with the 2024 RAPID Act, folding siting of generation and major transmission into an even more centralized “one‑stop” process explicitly designed to accelerate Climate Act build‑out, further marginalizing traditional environmental review norms and local land‑use authority in favor of hitting megawatt and mile targets on paper.
Invenergy’s Alle-Catt Wind Energy Center is a 340-megawatt wind power generation facility in Allegany, Cattaraugus, and Wyoming Counties, New York. It is a scandalous example of the environmental impacts I am concerned about. In the rush to permit the project New York agencies have created a monster. It creates significant adverse environmental impacts and delivers meager climate benefits. The agencies allowed the developer to construct most of the 83 4 MW wind turbines. However, it cannot be legally commissioned or operated until it proves compliance with a 40 dBA nighttime noise limit at all non‑participating homes. The rest of the article summarizes the issues. Readers interested in the details should check out my post on my blog.
How the permit got broken
Under Article 10, Condition 68(d)(vi) required Alle‑Catt to submit a Pre‑Construction Noise Impact Assessment (PNIA) at least 60 days before “Commencement of Full Construction,” proving that the final design would meet a 40 dBA annual nighttime sound level at all existing non‑participating residences.
Cattaraugus County Legislator Brenda Hanson notes in her June 24, 2026 letter that Alle‑Catt’s own December 3, 2025 PNIA predicts that noise at “most receptors” will exceed the 40 dBA Lnight (annual nighttime level) goal. The Coalition of Concerned Citizens’ attorney, Gary Abraham, points out that Alle‑Catt’s later, March 24, 2026 PNIA—filed in redacted form—also shows annual nighttime noise above 40 dBA at many non‑participating homes, even after the applicant’s modeling tricks.
Independent acoustician Robert Rand goes further. Using the methodology the Siting Board actually approved in prior wind cases, he reconstructs Alle‑Catt’s long‑term nighttime source power and propagation and concludes that restoring the project’s 2 dB “discount” from an improper ground absorption factor shows the 40 dBA Lnight goal cannot be met at 19 non‑participating residences and 36 non‑participating properties. In addition, there are hundreds of acoustic paths from turbines to residents with concave topography, where the receptor is in a line of sight to the turbine and little or no ground absorption occurs to dampen the noise. Alle-Catt acknowledged this problem in earlier PNIAs but avoided analyzing it in its latest one. In short, under valid assumptions, Alle‑Catt is not designed to meet the noise condition the developer accepted when it took the certificate.
Despite that clear condition, the Public Service Commission approved “full construction” in April 2026 before any compliant night‑noise PNIA was approved, allowing foundations and turbines to go up while the core protective condition remained unresolved. Later in April the Siting Board’s own order simultaneously states that Alle‑Catt “cannot commission or operate any wind turbines” until several conditions, including the 40 dBA PNIA, are approved, creating the current situation of erected but non‑operable turbines.
Environmental and health impacts
There are numerous environmental impacts. The Article 10 record anticipates 480–515 bird deaths per year, including six state‑listed threatened or endangered species, and at least 41 bald eagle fledglings killed or nest failures over 30 years, with most turbines located in “High Mortality Risk to Eagles” zones.
For bats, Alle‑Catt is expected to kill 26,000–39,500 individuals over 30 years, including two threatened or endangered species, and even the developer’s own Exhibit 22 admits that local bat populations will not survive the project’s mortality levels. The project will clear about 1,550 acres of interior forest and fragment another 1,686 acres out of approximately 5,900 acres of interior forest, degrading habitat for birds and bats through lost cover and disrupted movement, roosting, and nesting behavior.
However, since certification, Alle‑Catt reduced turbine count from 116 to 83 but kept total capacity at 340 MW by shifting to larger Vestas V150‑4.5 machines instead of the previously modeled GE 3.6‑137 units. The swept area of each V150‑4.5 rotor is about 17,671 m², roughly 20% larger than the 14,741 m² swept by the GE 3.6‑137, increasing blade area moving through air and thus collision risk as well as expanding the noise footprint. Low‑frequency “thump” from blade‑tower interaction becomes more pronounced with these larger machines, compounding concerns already raised by the State Department of Health about public‑health risks from turbine noise and shadow flicker.
Meager climate benefits
Even if you believe CO2 is the control knob for climate, New York GHG emissions are less than one half of one percent of global emissions and global emissions have been increasing on average by more than one half of one percent per year since 1990, so the numbers do not support that premise. On May 7, 2026 Coalition of Concerned Citizens’ attorney, Gary Abraham filed a letter that showed that Alle‑Catt’s claimed climate benefits are non-existent. The developer’s analysis reliesy on assumed downstate emissions reductions that, in turn, depend on transmission upgrades that do not exist and are not planned. The project is located in a grid region that is already largely low‑carbon, meaning its output will mostly displace other low‑carbon resources rather than fossil generation, and it cannot retire upstate fossil plants because those are needed to backstop intermittent wind. In effect, rural communities bear irreversible habitat loss and health risks for a project whose net emissions benefits are “meager” at best—hardly the transformative climate win touted in Climate Act rhetoric.
Cumulative Environmental Impacts
I have long held the position that the Hochul Administration has not properly accounted for cumulative environmental impacts. In my comments presented on the draft Energy Plan I noted that the last update of the cumulative environmental impact assessment of the transition to net zero was completed in 2020. Onshore wind projected capacity is 145% higher than previously analyzed, offshore wind is 62% higher, and solar is 241% higher than the maximum scenario expectation in the latest cumulative assessment. Last year’s State Energy Plan’s Net Zero scenario calls for about 15,700 MW of onshore wind, which translates to roughly 3,800 turbines similar to Alle‑Catt’s; if impacts scale proportionally, statewide wildlife and habitat impacts would be roughly 46 times those documented for Alle‑Catt’s 83 turbines.
Now What?
Cattaraugus County Legislator Brenda S. Hanson filed a letter on June 30, 2026 requesting information regarding the current permitting situation and lays out a layered enforcement framework that now hangs over Alle‑Catt.
- PSC has already ordered that Alle‑Catt cannot commission or operate any turbines until a compliant PNIA under 68(d)(vi) is approved.
- Certificate Condition 10 gives DPS staff authority to issue stop‑work or stop‑operation orders wherever construction or maintenance violates the certificate or a DPS order.
- The certificate spells out a non‑compliance remediation timeline: within 60 days of a non‑compliance finding, Alle‑Catt must file operational and physical minimization options; within 90 days, it must implement operational mitigation; within 150 days, physical mitigation—and if those are not timely implemented, the non‑compliant turbines “must not be operated” until compliance is shown.
- Certificate Condition 17 allows the Board to seek penalties not only against the certificate holder but its contractors, and 16 NYCRR 1000.16(e) preserves the Board’s jurisdiction to suspend or revoke the certificate at any point before the final compliance filing is approved. Finally, Public Service Law §168(5) requires DPS to “monitor, enforce and administer” compliance with certificate terms. Hanson asks DPS to confirm in writing that it will use these tools if Alle‑Catt attempts to operate without meeting the 40 dBA Lnight condition.
From a New York renewable permitting perspective, that enforcement puzzle is telling. Either DPS enforces its own orders and certificates, which may leave Alle‑Catt as a stranded, non‑operating monument to bad siting and unrealistic transmission assumptions, or it loosens protections and quietly tolerates non‑compliance to keep the project on the books as “renewable capacity” helping to meet goals. Neither path protects the environment, and tolerating non‑compliance is not protective of public health.
On July 23, 2026, Cattaraugus County and Abraham’s Coalition of five environmental groups filed petitions requesting that the Siting Board declare what Alle-Catt’s obligations are in light of the Board’s refusal to remove the night noise goal, and Alle-Catt’s inability to demonstrate it can comply. The petitions note that permission to proceed with operations must still be obtained. We will have to wait and see how the Board resolves this mess.
Conclusion
Alle‑Catt shows what Climate Act renewable energy implementation looks like when you strip away the aspirational language and press releases. A rural region loses interior forest, critical bird and bat habitat, and landscape integrity to hundreds of megawatts of industrial turbines. Neighbors face unacceptable nighttime noise and shadow flicker that the State Department of Health has already flagged as public‑health risks, while the developer cannot even demonstrate compliance with a noise limit under valid modeling assumptions.
Most importantly, advocates may argue that these impacts are acceptable, but the lack of a comprehensive cumulative environmental impact assessment prevents us from knowing the full impacts of the projected build‑out of wind and solar projects necessary to meet Climate Act goals.
Roger Caiazza blogs on New York energy and environmental issues at Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York. This represents his opinion and not the opinion of any of his previous employers or any other company with which he has been associated.
