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 In the News This Week -- Sept. 1, 2006 |
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By JIM KEVLIN COOPERSTOWN Advocates say wind turbines create "clean energy," heating hundreds of thousands of homes that then don't need to use fossil fuels for heat and light. Opponents say wind turbines are obtrusive nuisances, ruining neighborhoods and marring scenery, and that building them in pristine areas creates the same the negative impacts any major construction project would. Both those advocates and opponents would call themselves environmentalists. Differences over windpower is splitting the environmental movement, not just around Otesgo Lake but throughout New York State, where Gov. George Pataki's administration put generous tax credits in place, seeking to provide 20 percent of the state's energy needs from renewable sources by 2020. In this context, the Natural Resources Defense Council – its board members include such prominent environmentalists as Robert Redford and Laurance Rockefeller – has invited representatives of a range state environmental groups to New York City "in the next couple of weeks," said Ashok Gupta, director of the NRDC's Air and Energy Programs. The goal, he said, is to develop a unified position that fulfills the needs of both factions. "Even people opposing certain wind projects," Gupta said, "aren't opposed to wind." His comments exemplified the positive face the NRDC is seeking to put on a seeming what seemed like a win-win proposition that's become increasingly controversial at several sites around the state. In all, 50 wind projects have been proposed in New York State, 3,200 turbines in all. "I wouldn't say any are particularly controversial – or not controversial," said Jenny Powers, the NRDC spokesperson. News reports suggest otherwise, showing environmentalists pitted against environmentalists from Johnsburg, where 10 turbines are planned near the Adirondack Park, to a project on Wolfe Island in the St. Lawrence River, which has divided the community of Cape Vincent. The towns of Ellenburg and Clinton, near Plattsburgh, are being sued by concerned citizens determine to halt windmill proposals. The Long Island Power Authority, concerned about the uproar caused by a proposed 177-turbine wind farm in Nantucket Sound, off Cape Cod, scaled back its plans to 33 smaller turbines, but even that has met opposition. That caused Republican gubernatorial candidate John Faso to tell Newsday the need for renewable energy and siting concerns must be balanced. The Democrat, Elliot Spitzer, has yet to raise concerns about wind power. A report in the technology section of the New York Times stated, as long ago as 2003, that "the new generation of wind turbines are bigger, a fact provoking controversy almost everywhere utilities have proposed to put them up." As of Wednesday, Aug. 30, details about the prospective meeting were few. Gupta and Powers said they weren't sure when or where the meeting would be, or who would be invited. Gupta thought the participants would be below the level of the NRDC's president, Frances Beinecke, and her equivalents in the other organizations. They said Katherine "Kit" Powers, an attorney who is the Northeast regional director of the NRDC's Energy Project, is the point person, but she declined to talk about her plans, hanging up the phone. Martha Frey, executive director of Otsego 2000, which is concerned about the impacts the Jordanville project will have on the famous views in the Glimmerglass National Historic District, said she had not been contacted by the NRDC concerning any prospective meeting. The NRDC is a $60 million operation with a staff of 300 and offices in New York, Washington D.C., Los Angeles and San Francisco and a 35-year record of environmental activism. Locally, the division in the environmental community was brought into focus this summer in a series of e-mails between Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, an environmental organization in Poughkeepsie, and environmental activist and author Robert H. Boyle, a former Clearwater member now living in the Town of Springfield near Community Energy's proposed 75-turbine Jordanville Wind Project. Responding to an e-mail from Brian Hugick, a science teacher at Owen D. Young High School, Van Hornesville, Clearwater's Education Director Manna Jo Green e-mailed her membership, urging them to send e-mails supporting the wind project. She was unaware that Hugick family members stand to benefit financially from hosting a windmill. That prompted Boyle, who co-wrote "Dead Heat: The Race Against the Greenhouse Effect," with Michael Oppenheimer, to demand the Clearwater board of director repudiated Green's action. In his reply, Gregg Swanzey, Clearwater's executive director, declined to do so, asking Boyle instead: "Can we be more proactive in identifying viable wind sites and be united in our support for their development?"  COOPERSTOWN When Terry and Scott Bliss, a father and son team from Cooperstown, met in Minneapolis in early August and embarked on a 10-day camping trip through the Wild West, they had numerous "must see" items on their itinerary: Old Faithful, Mount Rushmore, Little Big Horn. They planned to attend minor league baseball games in four towns served by the Pioneer League – Idaho Falls; Casper, Wy.; Ogden, Utah, and Great Falls, Mont. – and they did. Among all those highlights, however, one stop stirred up the most anticipation: Cooperstown, N.D. "Scott and I agreed: We had to go see it," said dad Terry, who is director of the Otsego County Planning Department. So the first day out of Minneapolis in their rented Subaru Impreza, a ways past Fargo, the Blisses turned off Interstate 94 and headed north. Some 35 miles directly north of Sanborn, there it was. "Instead of being welcomed by a big sign," said Scott, "we were greeted by grain-elevator equipment and farm equipment." The first indication they had arrived was a sign declaring, "Cooperstown Country Club." "Scott and I agreed: We had to go see it," said Terry. "It was a county seat. They have all the modern things that we have –- water treatment plant, post office, fire department, a county courthouse downtown. A cute little commercial district." As it happens, there are a dozen or so Cooperstowns nationwide, from Logan County, Ky., to Sandusky County, Ohio, to Robertson County, Tenn., to Manitowoc County, Wisc. Here are some vital statistics: North Dakota's Cooperstown had 1,053 people living there; New York's had 2,032, according to the 2000 Census. At the time, the Census Bureau was reporting that Cooperstown would lose 100 people, 10 percent of its population. The bureau reported this Cooperstown would lose about 100, or 5 percent, (although it's unlikely that happened.) The median age there was 48.2 in 2000; here, it was 44.7. There, the median household income was $28,750; here, it was $36,992. The median value of a house there in 2000 was $45,000. Here, is was $148,000, and it's only gone up since then. Both are county seats, Griggs and Otsego counties respectively. "Not much was open at 5 o'clock on a Saturday," the senior Bliss said. "The lights were on at The Oasis and it was nearly 100 degrees, so we went in for a 'cold beverage,' and rubbed shoulders with the locals for half an hour." "People are the same – very friendly," said Scott, who is finishing his last semester at Virginia Tech and is already driving back and forth to a technology company headquartered in northern Virginia, where he has been offered a full-time job on graduation in December. Terry had taken along a few copies of The Freeman's Journal to leave at the fire department. In exchange, the volunteers there gave him a stack of decals. He plans to distributed them to his fellow volunteers back home, and to mail local ones back to their North Dakota counterparts. Looking at a road map, everything "looked like a screen," said Scott: All the road criss-crossed at right angles. "We asked for directions," he continued, "and everybody said: Go south on this road, west on that road. Which made sense to them because all the roads are north, south, east or west." From Cooperstown, the father and son team, camping 13 nights out of 14, went on to a memorable time. They visited the famous national parks – Glacier, Grand Teton, Yellowstone, the Badlands, and the Teddy Roosevelt National Grasslands. They stopped at state historic sites, like abandoned mining towns in Wyoming. (Terry had a couple of recommendations. One, a $65 "National Parks Pass" will get you into all the parks and is well worth it. Two, stop by the Triple A office on Chestnut Street to help with the planning. "We couldn't do it without them," Terry said.) At Glacier National Park, someone yelled "hey, Scott." It was an old roommate from college who was working with the National Park Service over the summer. At the ballgame in Idaho Falls, they began chatting with a Mormon family who invited them to their commercial potato farm the following day. "We spent half the day with them on four-wheelers going across acres of their property," said Terry. Handpicked potatoes "taste really good." Still, the Cooperstown interlude will have a special place in their memories, as attested by the photos Scott posted on his site, www.tepom.com. MILFORD It was a smokey fire on Cliff Street in Oneonta the afternoon of March 3, 1992. "I saw the color of the smoke change," said Richard J. Devlin Jr., then a patrolman on the Oneonta city force, now a candidate for Otesgo County sheriff. "I knew something was going to happen." A three-firefighter team searching the house was alerted: Get out of the building. A "flashover" followed, filling the room the firemen were searching with flames. Firefighter Jim Sawyer fell in the doorway on his way out and was engulfed in fire. "Devlin reacted instantaneously and ran to rescue the downed fireman," the citation the officer later received reported. "With complete disregard for his own safety, (he) reached under the outflowing flames and grabbed Sawyer." With another fireman helping, "we got Jimmy by the arms," said Devlin, "and pulled him out." The threatened firefighter was safe, although parts of his face suffered third-degree burns. For his actions that day, Devlin, 44, received the Oneonta Police Department's Life Saving Award and the Federation of Police Officers' similar award. But those are just two of many awards that pepper his resume, from Eagle Scout, to Army marksmanship citations, to commendations from the state police and Oneonta police, and, most recently, for outstanding DWI enforcement efforts while with the sheriff's department. Devlin, third in command at The Meadows' headquarters, was endorsed by the Republican County Committee in May to replace Sheriff Donald R. Mundy. The undersheriff, Bruce Carroll, also announced he's retiring. Devlin was challenged for the nomination by Kenneth W. "Skip" Beijen, a retired state trooper from Oneonta. The two men face off in a primary Tuesday, Sept. 12. Born in Englewood, N.J., on April 22, 1962, young Rich moved to Milford with his family. His father, Richard Sr., who had been accidentally shot by a fellow officer and lost an arm, founded Fargo Overland Protective Services Inc., still run by the family today. The son graduated from Cooperstown High School in 1980, then graduated with honors from the Otsego Area Occupational Center in Agricultural Mechanics before joining the MPs. The training included 6-8 weeks of bootcamp, followed by 12 weeks of MP school, where recruits learned all the basics: Self-defense, how to make arrests, how to use a handgun and so on. He was assigned to the 61st Military Police Company in Hanau, West Germany, where he was involved in security operations around NATO facilities. It was there he met his wife, Laurie, who was also an MP. The couple has been married fro 22 years and have three children, Richard, 21, Kimberly, 18 and Ros, 16. Honorably discharged, he joined the family business as director of operations, but always felt drawn to police work. "When I was young -- cops are a tight-knit group," he recalled in a recent interview. "Officers were always stopping by the house." When he was 7 or 8, his sister had a seizure, and he was impressed by the officers' professional conduct while spiriting her to a nearby hospital. During the '80s, he started taking Civil Service tests for Cooperstown and SUNY Oneonta, and accepted the offer from Oneonta police. Action soon followed, with a husband holding his wife and child hostage on Union Street. "We made the decision: We had to go in," said Devlin, "and get those people out." The man with the gun ended up shooting himself, but the episode -- as would the Cliff Street fire rescue -- emphasized for him the importance of training: often, officers have "only a second" to decide on life-and-death situations. Because of training, "you won't see a police officer or a firefighter not running to the aid of anyone." Oneonta had a 20-year retirement plan, which Devlin found attractive, but he never had a weekend off, which -- as a young father of three -- bothered him. So when he had the chance to join the sheriff's department in 1992 -- the rotating schedule gave deputies three weekends off in a row -- he jumped at it. In Oneonta, Devlin had worked patrol. In the sheriff's department, he was soon involved in corrections -- there are 35 guards in the department overseeing a maximum of 75 inmates -- and civil law, such as pistol permits and evictions, as well as road patrol. The sheriff brought him along, Devlin said, promoting him to sergeant in 2000. Mundy knew what he wanted, the deputy said, "but the sheriff's the kind of sheriff who will listen to you." The candidate has seen local crime evolve over the course of his career. There used to be one "domestic" a weekend; now there's one a night. Youthful mischief is up. And drugs are heavier: Marijuana used to be it; now, there's cocaine in the county, an occasional crystal meth lab is busted, and there's "a little bit of heroin coming back." Looking ahead, the candidate wants the department to be more "community oriented." Right now, there are no patrols between 2 and 6 a.m. Devlin wants to fill that gap. If a situation is serious enough for a member of the public to call and ask for help, "they deserve to have a police officer respond," he said; sometimes, the dispatchers have to say everyone's busy. Right now, computers are being installed in all the department's cruisers, to allow officers to process paperwork in the field. Why should Republican voters select him over his opponent? First, he said, he knows the department, and has been endorsed by both unions -- the unit representing the deputies, and the one representing the guards -- and by Mundy and the undersheriff. "The fact that I've been here 15 years" should be in his favor, he said, adding, "for the most part, I'm doing the job now. I have the respect and backing of employees here... "I'm a down-to-earth guy. I do my job. I'd like to be the next sheriff and I think I'll do a fine job." ONEONTA In the mid '70s, State Trooper Kenneth W. "Skip" Beijen was on night patrol near the Soccer Hall of Fame, when they happened upon a car stopped at a green traffic light. They drove past, turned around, and pulled up behind the car. The light turned green again. The car didn't move. When the light turned red again, Beijen approached the car. "Who's car is this?" he asked. "Mine" both young men inside -- from Rome, it turned out -- answered simultaneously. Get out of the car, they were told. The officers ordered the men to open the trunk, and found it filled with stolen goods from a J.C. Penney. One of the men suddenly yelled "now," and jumped the officers. In the ensuing struggle, the other officer's gun went off and the bullet hit Beijen "right in the heart." Beijen, now a candidate for the Republican nomination for Otsego County sheriff in the Tuesday, Sept. 12, primary, said everything seemed in slow motion: "I saw the bullet coming from the gun." As it happened, Beijen was one of the few officers in those days who wore a bullet-proof vest, the only one in Troop C. He had read about the vests and, with a young wife, Peggy, and two young children, Jeffrey and Kendra, cashed in a couple of savings bonds to raise the $75. It turned out to be the best investment. He was taken to a hospital, but was discharged eight hours later, albeit with a very bruised chest. He became the first officer who survived a bullet from a .357 Magnum, and the 36th officer nationwide saved by a bullet proof vest. In the years that followed, Beijen testified before the state Senate and the Assembly on the utility of the vests. Today, every officer in New York State is required to wear one, and the vests are credited with saving the lives of 900 officers. Beijen retired in 1994 after 22 1/2 years, and since has worked as vice president and director of police at the Susquehanna & Western Railroad, as investigator for the Delaware County D.A. and, currently, as an investigator for Progressive Insurance Co. A couple of years ago, he said, he was approached by prominent Republicans who asked him to run when county Sheriff Donald R. Mundy Jr. retired, as he plans to at the end of this year. At the Republican County Committee session in May, however, "they sat on their hands" and the endorsement went to Richard J. Devlin Jr., a 15-year sheriff's department employee who Mundy endorsed as his successor. "Now, I picture myself as the people's candidate, not the party's candidate," he said, "and that's how it should be." He said he expects to win Sept. 12, but if he doesn't he still plans to run in the general election in October as an independent. Beijen, 59, was born in Oswego. He is a Vietnam-era veteran, on active duty from 1966 to 1968 and in the Reserves from 1964 to 1970. A Sea Scout when he was a boy on Lake Ontario, he also attended the New York State Maritime Academy. In 1970, he was married, raising a family, going to college, working, when he took the state police exam. That year, however, Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller imposed a 2 1/2-year austerity program. Of the 95 candidates who took the test with him and passed, none was hired until the middle of 1972. Beijen said he took to the state police: "It was like being in the service again." He was assigned to Troop C, Sidney, and ended up spending his whole career there, living in Oneonta. In 1978, he was promoted to sergeant and entered the state police Bureau of Criminal Investigation the same day. In the years that followed, he investigated a wide range of serious crimes. A family of four was murdered in Ithaca, by accident, it turned out. (The gunman was looking for the former owner of the family's house.) In Trout Creek, a woman was shot to force her boss to open a safe; then he was shot, too. In those days, troopers didn't get overtime. They got "premium pay," and the department could work them as hard as it liked, often 16 to 18 hours a day when an investigation was hot. He often was picked to accompany dignitaries when they visited Otsego County, escorting Rockefeller and three of his successors, Malcolm Wilson, Hugh Carey and Mario Cuomo, when they visited locally. (He liked Rocky best.) While working, he obtained a B.S. in psychology from SUNY Oneonta, and did graduate work in counseling. He has gone through numerous training programs, has been a member of 14 professional associations; he's lectured and taught, and been involved in civic life in the Oneonta area. He's a past commander of American Legion Post 259, Oneonta, and has served as county commander. He was a director of the county Chamber of Commerce. Gov. George Pataki appointed him to the state Fraud Prevention Board. "I still think I can do some good," he said when asked why he's running for office. "I like being a policeman." His focus as sheriff would be to launch more road patrols and ensure a better response to emergency calls. He said some people, callling the dispatchers, are told, "We don't have anyone to send; getting police to the people is an important responsibility." When it was pointed out his opponent has the support of the two deputies' unions, he didn't see it as an obstacle if he is elected. "I know most of the people in the department," he said. 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