Frank Chernega
Broome County, New York, Landowner

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Endicott resident Frank Chernega warns the Chenango County Board of Supervisors they should want no part of anything like the Broome County solar activity.

This is a letter I just sent to Board of Supervisors in my neighboring county:

My name is Frank G. Chernega and I am a resident of Broome County and reside on Payne Road in Endicott. I happened across a news article dated Feb. 8, 2019 in The Evening Sun titled “Chenango County Earns Clean Energy Designation.”  I felt compelled to bring to your attention a video I found recently on the internet that contained a one minute 59 second dialogue between Bill Gates of Microsoft and Arun Majumdar, co-director of Stanford University’s Precourt Institute for Energy.

Here is the YouTube video link:

Starting at 20 seconds into the video, Mr. Gates states the following:

As you may know, Governor Cuomo is going to have the Indian Point Nuclear plant decommissioned by April 30, 2021. What you may not know is that he is going to replace that 2 gigawatts of clean power with three state of the art natural gas plants. Here’s a paragraph from a Wall Street Journal article that indicates how Indian Point will be replaced:

Another point of interest in the growing debate about how to push NY state to 100% “clean energy” is what Governor Cuomo did a while back to supply power in Albany. The governor decided to implement a “micro – grid” at the Empire State Plaza as indicated by this link from the governor’s website. Here’s a paragraph from the link:

There have recently been news articles about how the governor’s obstruction of natural gas pipelines, like the Constitution Pipeline that would have supplied natural gas to Raymond Corp as well as Amphenol in Sydney, has made Con Edison declare a moratorium on any new gas hookups in Westchester County, according to this Feb 21, 2019 Wall Street Journal article. 

It would seem apparent that there are many questions that require asking with regard to Cuomo’s effort to push NY to all renewable energy.

• Why do Bill Gates and many others recognize the inherent unreliability of renewables, both wind and solar, but the governor does not?
• Why is the governor going to replace one quarter of NY City’s power needs (Indian Point) with three natural gas plants?
• Why is the governor building a natural gas micro-grid to power the Empire State Plaza?
• Why is the governor going to try and build all his solar and wind farms in upstate?
• Did his ban on high volume hydraulic fracturing have to do with a health review, that not a single state of the 30 that allow the process have stopped because of it, or is there another reason?
• Or, is his ban based on making sure upstate farmers and landowners remain impoverished and susceptible to the land men trying to get landowners to lease their land to wind and solar companies?
• Does the governor or any of his campaign supporters hold any financial interests in any renewable energy corporations?

A last question would be: what groups are most responsible for advocating renewable energy? That question is answered by a July 30, 2014 report by the U.S. Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works titled: “The Chain of Environmental Command: How a Club of Billionaires and Their Foundations Control the Environmental Movement and Obama’s EPA.” Here is a link from the U.S. Senate website containing the report in pdf format.

In closing, I would like you to know that in December, 2008 I had a whole – house photovoltaic array mounted on my roof (photo below). It has proven to be a financial mistake. According to my last NYSEG bill, which I’ve attached to this email, I have used 33,031 kwh from NYSEG and generated 38,105 kwh from the solar array since Dec. 2008. This results in me needing electricity from NYSEG 46% of the time thus exposing the intermittent nature of solar power.

Additionally, my June 2018 NYSEG bill showed that the over – generation credit that I received was 686 kwh at 2.7 cents / kwh resulting in a credit of $19.01 which can be seen in another attachment. Once I need a new roof, this array will not be reinstalled due to the added cost of dismantling and reinstallation. This was a poor financial decision on my part and I hope this email is helpful in providing you with information to guide your future decisions on unreliable and intermittent forms of energy.

Broome County also made the decision to go solar. Here is the WNBF radio news release and the Binghamton Press and Sun Bulletin story. Be advised from the Press article that it is estimated that Broome will save $140,000 per year. That is a savings of 72 cents per year per person based on a population of 193,639. It is interesting to note that this “farm” cost Broome taxpayers $4,000,000 dollars and was initially touted to save $250,000 per year according to this Press and Sun Bulletin article.   

Thus, the latest per year savings estimate of $140,000 per year divided into the installation cost of $4,000,000 = 28.57 years to break even! It is worth noting that approximately 25 acres of carbon dioxide – absorbing mature forest were cut sometime prior to the solar installation according my analysis of historic Google Earth photos of 399 and 375 Broome Corporate Parkway as shown on the following Google Earth satellite photos. Did Broome County figure in the loss of all these trees into their C02 emission reduction assessment?

My apologies for not sending this to all supervisors, but some do not have an email address associated with their names on your website. Please see that they are apprised of its contents.

Thank you for your time and attention.

Editor’s Note: I must also point out that while the Wall Street Journal correctly pointed out three natural gas plants are intended to replace Indian Point, Andrew Cuomo’s has been using his corrupted DEC to harass one of the projects, the CPV project, even though it’s up and running. His tactics are completely Machiavellian. He knows he needs the gas but it wants it ordered and pushed onto him so he can appease his fractivist supporters and their gentry class financiers for political purposes. The only thing green about Andrew Cuomo is his greed for campaign money and his envy for power. Of course, he also wants to separate himself from the work his “brother” Joe Percoco is convicted of doing to shake down CPV.