We Love Outdoors June 21, 2021 - Episode 12

In this episode of We Love Outdoors with Rich Davenport, your humble host provides updates to the lifting of the covid covid covid rules in NY and impacts to the family fishing clinics coming up at the end of June, as well as impacts to the Erie County Fair as well.  Updates to the Youth Hunting pilot is also provided as more counties pass their local laws to capitalize on this new opportunity.  All of Region 9 EXCEPT Erie County has passed their local laws.  Erie County should be holding a public hearing on this in July, some time after the 4th, according to Majority Leader April Baskins. The NYSDEC Deer Management Plan published with public comment period running through August 8, 2021.  Rich does the promised deeper dive into this plan, discussing specifics and objectives, and some changes in regulations to help realize the objectives of the plan. With the big rush to push wind and solar power plants, your humble host discusses the realities of wind energy via production data audit, and it isn't pretty.  In fact, it would appear a wind factory performs like a real power plant less than 10% of the annual hours of operation!  Production data also proves wind doesn't meet the reliability standards of 30% of nameplate capacity being delivered to the grid, and wind doesn't deliver this level of energy nearly 70% of the time, but this is sporadic and spread out throughout the year, making managing and operating the grid more complex and difficult. But wind isn't the only folly being rushed into.  Solar arrays are planned to cover thousands of acres of idle farmlands, causing great concern in residents and local officials alike.  Niagara County is fighting back implementing new local ordinances governing recycling and end of life handling of these arrays.  Solar production is masked through being lumped into other fuels like refuse, biofuels and wood.  However, leaving these things abandoned on the landscape is not tolerable and a disposal and recycling plan must be presented to Niagara county, modeled after a similar law implemented in Washington State.