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Post-Standard, The (Syracuse, NY)

July 8, 2003
Section: Local
Edition: Madison
Page: B1

The senator from Brooklyn came to meet the windmills of Madison County Monday, and boy was he impressed.

After a picnic lunch at the Nichols Pond Park pavilion, U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., piled into a big white county van with board of supervisors chairman Rocco DiVeronica and other county officials and headed for the hills of Fenner. Schumer said he'd seen the windmills from afar - he'd flown over them and glimpsed them from the ground - but had never been up close to one. This was his fifth visit to Madison County.

The van, trailing a caravan of Schumer staffers, reporters, photographers and county employees in other vehicles, wound its way up. Every time the van rounded a curve or topped an incline and one or more windmills came into view, Schumer exclaimed:

"Look at that thing! It's huge!" or "Look at 'em! Look at 'em!" or "Look at that, with the cows in the field and everything; it's beautiful!"

In between enthusing about the windmills, Schumer commented on the beauty of the Madison County landscape; cows, recognizing both beef and dairy; low milk prices; the height of field corn; and Jet Blue.

"That's my baby," the senator said. "If everybody who flew Jet Blue voted for me, I'd be re-elected no problem."

The van arced up a hillside and crunched to a stop on the gravel road at the base of a windmill. Schumer hopped out, looked up and arched back, fists on his hips.

"Wow," he said. "That is amazing."

When he turned to the others gathering around, he was beaming as if he'd erected the thing himself, all 328 feet of it, measured from the ground to the tip of the highest rotor.

"You can't appreciate these things by reading or talking on the phone," he said. "You've got to come and stand under it."

Project manager Steve Pike, who'd driven from CHI Energy's headquarters in Andover, Mass., for Schumer's visit, tossed out tour-guide facts: a windmill weighs a million pounds; the wind has to blow 7 mph for the turbines to make power; the lights are required by the Federal Aviation Administration.

When the senator spoke, everyone listened. "This is the future. You're looking at the future of energy right here," said Schumer, a member of the Senate Energy Committee. "And it's as green as can be."

Schumer is a proponent of non-fossil fuel, so-called "green" power such as wind and solar energy.

"I was at the beach with my daughter yesterday," he said, "and I thought, "Wouldn't it be great if they could harness the waves?"'

Schumer said he was proud of Madison County for being a leader in wind power, with 20 windmills in Fenner and seven in the town of Madison. Asked how the U.S. government could encourage the development of wind power, Schumer said:

"Tax credits. We should have tax credits for this. We give tax credits for coal. We give tax credits for other things. We should give tax credits for this."

That was one of the things Schumer said he'd work for back in Washington. He also promised DiVeronica and Fenner town supervisor Russell Cary he'll seek federal money to help build a tourist and education center on land the town owns at one of the windmill sites.

At one point, Schumer ducked in through a heavy metal door Pike opened in the windmill's upright column to peer up the ladder and put his hands on the humming machinery inside.

It could only have been better if the huge three-bladed prop at the top had been turning.

"Tell the people of Madison County that I came and there was no wind," Schumer joked. "There was no hot air here."

Copyright, 2003, The Herald Company

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