HCW|About Us

Helderberg Community Watch

Protecting our Towns Protecting our People
Protecting our Future Generations

OUR MISSION:

To utilize public education

and to actively encourage citizen participation in the government process to protect the health, safety and welfare of Hilltown residents, and to safeguard the beauty and rural character of the Hilltowns for this and future generations.

Hilltown Government Contacts

NYS & Federal Government Contacts

NYS Legislation Watch

Fracking

Wind

ABOUT US

Our mission is to utilize public education and to actively encourage citizen participation in the government process to protect the health, safety and welfare of the Hilltown residents and to safeguard the beauty and rural character of the Hilltowns for this and future generations.

We believe that an open and transparent government process which is responsive to the residents it serves is essential to the continuance of the ideals upon which this great country was founded.

We believe in New York State’s Municipal Home Rule Law. Section 10 states that municipalities have the power to adopt and amend local laws for “the protection and enhancement of its physical and visual environment” and the “protection, order, conduct, safety, health and well-being of persons or property therein.”

We believe that citizens must take an active role in their local government to ensure that these concepts are carried out by their elected and appointed officials to the very best of their ability.

About Us

It’s clean energy ... the wind is free ... they’re green ... they’re good for the environment ... they don’t make any more noise than your refrigerator ...

That’s what we were told by the landsman - the representative sent by Shell Wind Energy, who wanted to site a project of 50 industrial wind turbines in the Hilltowns of western Albany County, NY in 2008. He was very convincing, but the old adage “if sounds too good to be true, it probably is” kept running through our minds. When we expressed doubts, we were told that the project was a done deal - it was coming anyway, and if we wanted to make any money, we had better sign on now.

We took the contract, read it, and were shocked at what we found. Then we started to do our own research. It didn’t take long before we found out that what we were being told, and the truth, were two entirely different things.

Soon after, in a conversation around the dining room table with friends, Helderberg Community Watch was born. We realized that we had to become informed, we had to help our neighbors become informed, and we had to do everything we could to make sure that a multi-million dollar multi-national corporation didn’t have the final say in what our our peaceful, beautiful, rural community would become.

HISTORY