Big wind project in N.Y. splits town and families

LOWVILLE, N.Y. — John Yancey leans against his truck in a field outside his home, his face contorted in anger and pain.

"Listen," he says.

The rhythmic whoosh, whoosh, whoosh of wind turbines echoes through the air. Sleek and white, their long propeller blades rotate in formation, like some otherworldly dance of spindly armed aliens swaying across the land.

Yancey knows the towers are pumping clean electricity into the grid, knows they have been largely embraced by his community

But Yancey hates them.

He hates the sight and he hates the sound. He can't stand the gigantic flickering shadows the blades cast at certain points in the day.

But what this brawny 48-year-old farmer's son hates most about the windmills is that his father signed a deal with the wind company to allow seven turbines on Yancey land.

Yancey lives with his wife and children on Yancey Road, on the edge of the Tug Hill plateau, half a mile from the old white farmhouse in which he and his seven siblings were raised.

Horses graze in a lower field. Amish buggies clatter down a nearby road. From the back porch are sweeping views of the distant Adirondacks.

But the view changed dramatically in 2006. Now Yancey Road is surrounded by windmills.

Yancey and some of his brothers begged Ed Yancey to leave the family land untouched. But the elder Yancey pointed to the money — a minimum of $6,600 a year for every turbine. This is your legacy, he told them.

John Yancey doesn't care.

"I just want to be able to get a good night's sleep and to live in my home without these monstrosities hovering over me," he says.

For a long time he didn't speak to his father. He thought about leaving Yancey Road for good.

The Tug Hill plateau sits high above this village of about 4,000, a remote wilderness where steady winds whip down from Lake Ontario and winter snowfalls are the heaviest in the state.

For decades dairy farmers have wrested a living from the Tug — accepting lives of windswept hardship with little

prospect of much change.