Wind Leasing in Allegany County, NY: The Alle-Catt Wind Farm

Allegany County's hub covers its rural, forested Southern Tier land generally, but the Towns of Centerville and Rushford are host to part of a specific, large, real project: the 340-megawatt Alle-Catt Wind Farm, now under construction and expected online in late 2026. Because it was sited through New York's state-level Article 10 process, it's also a useful case study in how state siting authority can reach further than local town zoning.

This page covers what's specific to Allegany County. For the general explanation, see the national guide.

A real, large project, split across three counties

The Alle-Catt Wind Farm is an approximately $618 million, 340-megawatt wind project developed by Alle-Catt Wind Energy LLC, an Invenergy affiliate, spanning roughly 30,000 leased acres across the Towns of Centerville and Rushford in Allegany County, Farmersville and Freedom in Cattaraugus County, and Arcade in Wyoming County. The project calls for up to 83 onshore turbine sites in total; reporting on the county-by-county split puts 41 turbine sites in Cattaraugus County (14 in Farmersville, 27 in Freedom) and 13 in Wyoming County's Town of Arcade, with the balance -- roughly 29 sites -- in Allegany County's Centerville and Rushford. Developers began offering leases to landowners in these towns back in 2017; as of 2026, turbines have already been erected in Rushford and Farmersville, with commercial operation targeted for December 2026.

For a landowner or buyer in Centerville or Rushford specifically, that means the Alle-Catt project isn't a distant regional story -- it's an active construction project in your own towns, with real turbines going up, real access roads and collection lines being built across leased and adjoining parcels, and real payments flowing to both participating landowners and the county and towns through negotiated agreements.

Sited by the state, not the towns -- a distinctive process worth understanding

Alle-Catt was permitted through New York's Article 10 process (Case 17-F-0282 before the state Board on Electric Generation Siting and the Environment), the state-level review track for large power projects that -- critically -- gives the state siting authority to override local zoning, siting, and permitting standards it finds "unreasonably burdensome," rather than requiring the project to simply comply with each host town's own law. This played out concretely in this project: Centerville and Rushford, like the Cattaraugus towns, updated their own local wind laws during the review process (raising height limits to 600 feet and adjusting setback and noise standards), but ultimate siting authority sat with the state board, not the towns. New York has since created a related, faster-track process for large renewable projects (Executive Law 94-c) for newer applications, but Alle-Catt itself proceeded under the original Article 10 framework.

The practical takeaway for any Allegany County landowner near this project, or evaluating a future wind or solar lease offer elsewhere in the county: a local town's own zoning, height limit, or setback ordinance is not necessarily the final word on what a large-scale renewable project can build near you. If you're weighing a lease offer or buying land adjacent to a proposed project, ask specifically whether the project is going through Article 10, Section 94-c, or purely local review, since that determines whether the town's current zoning actually controls the outcome.

What a lease or nearby-turbine situation actually involves

Across the full project, Alle-Catt has stated it will pay more than $2.7 million annually to participating landowners over the life of the project -- a project-wide figure, not one broken out specifically for Allegany County's share of turbines, so a specific per-acre or per-turbine rate for a Centerville or Rushford parcel should be confirmed through an actual lease document rather than this aggregate figure. Allegany County and its host towns have executed Host Community Agreements and the Allegany County Industrial Development Agency has approved a PILOT (payment in lieu of taxes) arrangement with the project, which NYSERDA materials describe as structured in part to benefit the county's Disadvantaged Communities designation -- again, a county-level fiscal arrangement distinct from any individual landowner's lease terms.

If you own or are buying land with an existing lease, or land near turbine sites, get the actual lease or easement agreement rather than relying on general project figures: check the payment structure and escalation terms, whether the lease transfers to you on a sale or triggers renegotiation, the decommissioning obligation and who bears it, and whether any easement for access roads or collection lines crosses the specific parcel you're evaluating -- Alle-Catt's own decommissioning plan and financial-assurance terms have themselves been a point of dispute between host towns and the developer in neighboring Cattaraugus County, which is a useful reminder to confirm current decommissioning-bond terms directly rather than assume they're settled.

Wind Leasing in Allegany County: The Alle-Catt Wind Farm

A real, large project, split across three counties

Sited by the state, not the towns -- a distinctive process worth understanding

What a lease or nearby-turbine situation actually involves

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