The Hancock Herald

Established in 1873 The Hancock Herald is the official newspaper for Delaware County.

[Alex Fasulo @alex_fasulo]

Many solar complexes never end up tied into the grid - or they do for a short period and go offline. We’re tracking a few that have been offline since 2022 around Upstate NY.

How could this happen?

The credits and subsidies come from BUILDING the complexes. Once they’re “built,” the money flows and the foreign corporations move on. No one monitors the facilities.

Since they generate such a pathetic amount of energy, they’re not a fix for the grid. Without the subsidies and credits, they’d never stand on their own.

What’s one effective way to put that to the test? Your electric bill hasn’t gone down. In fact, it has tripled.

[Alex Fasulo @alex_fasulo]

We take for granted how rich and versatile our soil is in the Northeast.

I didn’t realize this until I spent a day with ranchers from out West.

We’ve all heard of the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. But what about that land today?

Ranchers from Utah, Arizona, etc. talked about how the land is so dry, arid, and rocky that they can’t till. If they do, it’ll blow away in the wind. Heavy irrigation is required if they want to grow food in the ground.

So they ranch instead (and we thank them for it!).

In contrast, our soil is so fertile and richly watered in Upstate NY that the vast majority of it qualifies as @USDA prime farmland. You can walk outside, clear a patch of land in your yard, plant seeds, and watch them grow.

Do you understand how much of the world would kill for that kind of soil?

That’s the same soil @KathyHochul is throwing away to foreign corporations as part of the green energy grift.

A nation that discards its most fertile soil for subsidies and credits is a nation that will not exist to see its future.

[Alex Fasulo @alex_fasulo]

When I was walking to the White House this past Thursday in DC, I looked up and saw something that had everyone else there stopped in their tracks.

An Amish delegation had come to Washington DC to take part in America 250.

Just that morning, I had shared with congressmen, @SecRollins and @SBA_Kelly, @johnrich, the @BLMNational, the @USDA, and many, many attorneys what is happening to the Amish of New York State as part of the green energy grift.

These solar monstrosities (and soon to be wind) are being sited in the epicenter of Amish communities, where they rely on horse and buggy, and the ability to walk, to get to church and their children to school.

Countless Amish have gone on the ORES record stating they’ll be forced to leave the state if they build these industrial complexes inside of their homes.

ORES tries to shut the Amish out of public discussions. They don’t inform them of incoming complexes or make it easy for the Amish to file their comments.

Expert anabaptist testimony by Steven Nolt has been entered into the ORES docket for Mill Point and Flat Creek Solar. ORES ignores it.

The Amish are the backbone of many rural Upstate NY counties. If they pull out, county economies will collapse.

The Amish have done so much for me, starting with building out my farm.

I will not stand by while eco terrorists purposely force them from their homes.

Seeing the Amish in DC felt like seeing a piece of home.

[Secretary Brooke Rollins @SecRollins]

New York is destroying prime farmland for solar sprawl.

First-generation farmer Alexandra Fasulo is watching land across the state get overridden by the state’s Office of Renewable Energy Siting — local zoning ignored, property values crushed, rural voices silenced.

We invited Alexandra to Washington because the Trump Administration is fighting back for her and farmers nationwide:

⚖️ Crushing agricultural lawfare
📍 Restoring local control
🌾 Protecting prime farmland

Under @POTUS, no farmer stands alone. Report your case: https://t.co/NJlgGwQw6x 🇺🇸

[Alex Fasulo @alex_fasulo]

We need to save the environment from the people who want to “save the environment.”

Animals can’t move through 500 acre industrial complexes sited in the middle of rural/agricultural land.

For any other business, an industrial complex would have to reside in a zoned industrial region of the county. That’s why zoning exists.

When you get to depart from zoning everyone else has to follow, surrounding property values plummet.

Along the way, our wildlife is displaced, killed (lake effect, turbine collisions, inability to go around the perimeter fencing), and disoriented.

This is a sick experiment. And Upstate NY communities are being treated as the lab rats.

[Alex Fasulo @alex_fasulo]

You're looking at a drone shot of Byron, New York, where thousands of acres of solar panels have swallowed up a county that boasts the MOST amount of productive agricultural land in the entire state.

This is only a portion of the panels that have been anchored into Byron for Excelsior Solar.

With the newly announced Brusselville Solar on the ORES docket, this aerial view will only encompass a fraction of the total solar footprint.

Those responsible for this must be held accountable. This video should be on NATIONAL news.

We are going to lose our state and the land that feeds us very quickly if there is not immediate intervention.

This is dystopian, anti-human, catastrophic to wildlife, a direct threat to our future food autonomy, and the largest land grab of our American lifetimes from generational landowners to foreign corporations.

And it's all on purpose.

[Alex Fasulo @alex_fasulo]

Have you ever paused to think about how these dystopian solar and wind complexes make the people who see them every day feel?

What it does to the human spirit to suddenly find your farmhouse cottage smack dab in the middle of a 4,000 acre industrial complex, equipped with chainlink perimeter fencing, stripped topsoil, Chinese solar panels, and a numbing “hum” coming out of the land all night long?

It’s the opposite of idyllic, pastoral, and beautiful.

It’s spirit-crushing brutalism, forced into areas of the country that are the last remaining vestiges of our agrarian history as a nation.

And I think that’s very much on purpose.

People write to me every day from these regions telling me what it’s like to see hundreds of panels behind their parents’ graves. What it’s like to watch their pets hide indoors, scared to go into the backyard. What it’s like to watch neighbors try to move away, and struggle to find a buyer for a home that’s now swallowed on all four sides by foreign solar complexes.

We might think that “war” looks like what we’ve read about in history text books with soldiers storming beaches in lands far away. And that is what war was for a very long time.

But in 2026, war looks very different. Our land is being invaded by foreign countries while those in Albany and ORES hold the back door open for them.

Stand up for your town, community, and county today. It’s what the men who founded our country would be asking us all to do.

We’re only going to get one chance to save the land that feeds us.

These photos were taken by @JenniferSitter2.

[Alex Fasulo @alex_fasulo]

I used to say this when I began to fight for our open spaces at local town board meetings.

I didn’t get why they’re putting the panels on prime farmland.

And then I began an 8 month long investigative look into the “green” energy industry.

The only thing green about green energy is the disgusting amounts of money being laundered between corrupt American politicians and foreign corporations.

Why do they target farmland?

4 reasons. A solar salesman told me this:

1) the land is already flattened / cleared so they can get the panels in quicker
2) the scalability… the more acres covered, the more subsidies and credits earned
3) solar companies count on rural Americans being “too dumb” to have an attorney review the contracts
4) solar companies know rural towns don’t have the funds to enlist legal help to stop the complexes

[Chris Tague @ChrisTague51]

🚨🚨Thank you to the people of the 51st Senate District for your support tonight.

This victory is one more step toward giving our communities the strong voice and common-sense fighter we need in Albany.

I’m grateful, I’m energized, and I’m ready to keep this campaign moving forward. Now we unite, we work, and we win in November.

Senate District 51 is TAGUE COUNTRY! 🇺🇸

[Alex Fasulo @alex_fasulo]

I need you to look at this map out of Montgomery County, posted by Meghan M Manion, their county attorney, yesterday.

Do you understand the CUMULATIVE impacts of what ORES is doing to rural counties in Upstate NY?

Right now, Montgomery County, against its will, is being sited for over 18,800 acres of solar panels.

Remember that 1 acre = roughly equals the size of a football field.

And for context, a Walmart Supercenter plus its parking and setbacks come to around 19-21 acres.

The average size of an entire village in Upstate NY comes to around 1,200 acres.

You are looking at 18,800 acres of solar. Is your mind able to conceive the size of that? It isn't. Our brains can't comprehend the catastrophic sprawl conceptually, which is why this map should help you see that if all of this solar is allowed to be built, the rural way of life, rural businesses, retail stores, agrotourism, designated habitat, endangered species, and Amish communities will be obliterated.

That's why Montgomery County, thanks to Meghan M Manion and the towns of Root, Glen, and Canajoharie, continue to sue ORES over the forcible siting of its projects.

The towns said NO to these solar complexes. ORES doesn't care.

This should be national news. Our home rule has been devoured by faceless bureaucrats in Albany in the name of "green" energy.

[Alex Fasulo @alex_fasulo]

FOUR different lawsuits were filed in Montgomery County, New York yesterday against the Office of Renewable Energy Siting (ORES).

The Town of Root, the Town of Canajoharie, Montgomery County, and Residents for the Preservation of the Mohawk Valley each filed their own lawsuit against ORES and the New York State Department of Public Service in the case of Flat Creek Solar.

That name might sound familiar to you all. The proposed Flat Creek Solar project site contains eagles' nests. The picture attached below is one that I took, right in Canajoharie, of a mature eagle within the facility map.

Residents in the area have made ORES and the @NYSDEC aware there are eagles present and nesting. The DEC either doesn't respond to the emails, or uploads them to the ORES docket REDACTED.

For a county, two towns, and a nonprofit to have to SUE to defend itself against authoritarian bureaucratic overreach coming out of Albany, New York, treating our rural counties like a dumping ground for their renewable energy experiments... should tell you how dire this has become.

It is unprecedented for a county and towns to stand up to ORES like Montgomery County has. They are a model county when it comes to going up against the "powers that be" no matter the fall out.

This same county filed THREE prior lawsuits against ORES in the case of Mill Point Solar last month as well.

In the four newly filed lawsuits, each one brings its own angle to how ORES has failed rural New York.

Together, the lawsuits over Flat Creek Solar argue ORES:
- Denied meaningful participation.
- Denied party status.
- Refused to hold hearings.
- Waived local laws improperly.
- Issued the permit anyway.

Bravo to the men and women of Montgomery County putting up the fight of a lifetime. And none of this is cheap! They are paying to preserve what's left of our Upstate NY rural heritage.

This should be national news.

[Alex Fasulo @alex_fasulo]

All of the paid-off environmental groups love to skirt around talking about perimeter fencing at solar industrial complexes.

This fencing is 8-10 feet high. It displaces wildlife in every direction. If these complexes were only 3 acres wide, I wouldn’t be writing about this. They are hundreds of acres wide, which for many animals is more land than they’d ever travel in their LIFETIMES.

People are sharing media of the turtle carnage in the roads next to these complexes. The turtles aren’t aware the path they’ve always used to ponds and lakes is suddenly gone. They can’t make their way around these things.

Individuals are reporting increased roadkill and disoriented deer, turkeys, and raccoons, who were not divinely designed to know what to do when 600 acres is suddenly industrially shut off to them from access.

Solar and wind are industrial sites that belong in zoned industrial and commercial areas that already destroyed and paved over the environment there years ago.

Placing them in zoned rural residential settings and piecing together 15 different parcels departs from the zoning everyone else had to follow.

Along the way, the animals in the area die.

It’s disgusting.

[Marc Molinaro @MarcMolinaro]

Well done.

This is bigger than any single solar field or wind project.

It’s about whether the State of New York is bound by the same laws, environmental standards, and due process requirements it imposes on everyone else.

No matter where you stand on renewable energy, you should be concerned when Albany sidelines local communities, overrides land use, and treats environmental review as optional when it becomes politically inconvenient.

Transparency. Due process. Public participation. The rule of law.

Those aren’t obstacles to progress. They’re the foundation of public trust.

Well done Alex Fasulo, the Town of Glen, and everyone willing to stand up and demand accountability. If state government can ignore its own rules to achieve a preferred outcome, then those rules don’t mean much at all.

New Yorkers deserve an energy policy that can withstand scrutiny—not one that depends on avoiding it.

[Rep. Josh Riley @RepRileyNY]

While foreign-owned utility companies like NYSEG & Central Hudson are raking in record profits and sending millions overseas, folks in Upstate New York are rationing medicine and picking up a second job or extra shifts just to keep the lights on. It’s robbery.

I pressed @SecretaryWright to join our fight and help BAN foreign corporations from owning American utilities. Your money should stay in your pocket and our community, not line the pockets of executives halfway around the world.

[Glenn Beck @glennbeck]

In a recent poll, 55% of Democrats said they would rather live in another country than the United States. And 74% believed that America has failed to live up to its founding ideals. But before Republicans respond with, “good riddance! I'll buy your ticket,” I don't think that's the solution here.

To an extent, I can agree that America has failed to live up to the promises our founding documents make. Martin Luther King Jr. also agreed. But instead of telling black Americans to just abandon those documents (like some wanted him to), he called them a promissory note.

He said the men who built this nation signed a promise, even if they didn’t live up to it, that EVERY SINGLE American would be guaranteed life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

That’s the difference compared to the squawking leftists of today. Today, it’s the documents and the foundation that are the issue. MLK could have said the same thing, but he didn’t. He refused to renounce the founding. Instead, he demanded that Washington cash the check and fulfill the promise.

[Peter Oberacker @PeterforNY19]

Some Sunday evening thoughts.

I will always fight to protect our land, our farms, and our communities. I believe we can pursue common-sense energy solutions without sacrificing the open space and abundant waterways that make Upstate New York special.

Local voices matter, and local control matters.

[Rep. Josh Riley @RepRileyNY]

Out-of-state corporate developers shouldn’t get to steamroll our small towns and pave over beautiful Upstate farmland. The entire Copake community is united to fight the Shepherd’s Run industrial solar project, but unelected Albany bureaucrats are trying to overrule them and push it through anyway. Not on my watch.

I’m glad to get a bipartisan commitment from Ag Secretary Rollins to help me protect Upstate farmland and defend our communities.

[Alex Fasulo @alex_fasulo]

The NYS legislature is going to destroy our water, environment, grasslands, farmland, and wildlife if the Climate Act is not thrown out immediately.

These people are hellbent on poisoning our natural resources.

Solar panels leach cadmium, lead, silver, and zinc, and drop microplastics and glass shards. A singular tornado, hail storm, or ice storm will break the panels floating over our drinking water.

Potato growing associations nationwide will not farm a single acre of land that sat below a solar complex.

Putting the panels over water is insanity.

[Peter Oberacker @PeterforNY19]

First it was our farmland. Now radical Albany politicians just passed a bill (S.4571A) to put those ugly solar panels on our Upstate waterways!

Instead of listening to the concerns of rural communities already dealing with the impacts of large-scale solar development, downstate interests continue to force costly energy mandates here -- without ever bothering to address the legitimate affordability concerns faced by millions of New Yorkers.

Our farms, our land, and our waterways deserve better!