Wind power ‘tearing communities apart’ say farm owners

02 Wednesday Mar 2016

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Wind farms cause animosity in Ontario communities

3-MW wind turbine and house near Brinston: Ontario hasn't learned a thing. [Photo: Ray Pilon, Ottawa]
3-MW wind turbine and house near Brinston: communities “torn apart” by conflict. [Photo: Ray Pilon, Ottawa]

While the Wynne government claims to be “Building Ontario Up” the reality is different for rural communities where wind power developers offered leases to farmers, who then chose money over their neighbours and communityFarmers Forum, Eastern Ontario Edition, March 2016

TEARING US APART

Wounds not healing after wind turbines turned friends into bitter enemies

By Tom Collins

BRINSTON—Wind turbines tear apart communities and relationships, causing animosity that lingers for years, warn farmers who have lived through the ugly battles.

Don Winslow signed up almost immediately in 2013 when a wind company planned to build five turbines near Peterborough. Three months later, after immense public pressure and hostility, he couldn’t do it anymore.

“It relieved our stress tremendously [to cancel the contract],” the then-70-year-old Winslow told Farmers Forum after he cancelled his turbine. “We don’t have to sneak around the neighbours hoping not to run into them. There is always an element of society that is going to go overboard but people I respected were just as upset as the real radicals.”

There are only three wind turbine projects in Eastern Ontario – Brinston (10 turbines), Wolfe Island (86 turbines) and 5 turbines just west of Kingston, but there are more than 1,200 turbines in the province with another 1,500 on the way. The province is expected to announce new projects this month that could include another 98 turbines in Eastern and East-Central Ontario.

Most turbines are in Western Ontario where the stories are shocking.

They put their pocketbook ahead of the community

Time doesn’t heal all wounds, said Guelph-area dairy farmer Tim Martin. “There are people here that have absolute hatred for others. I have never seen anything so divisive in our community, ever, in my entire life. You try to say forgive and forget, but a lot of people say ‘We forgive them but we remember.’ They put their pocketbook ahead of our health and above the community’s well-being, and people don’t forget that.”

…

… But not everyone blames wind turbines. Some lay the blame on anti-wind protestors for stoking fears and fueling the fighting. Farmers with turbines have signed confidentiality agreements and won’t speak to news media. However, North Gower farmer Ed Schouten signed up for turbines on his dairy farm years ago but the project never went ahead. Although he is a strong supporter, Schouten said he would have to think long and hard about signing up again if the opportunity arose.

“You’ve got to be careful today because people are jealous and they’ll get back at you,” he said. “We have a lot to lose here. They can easily sabotage something on you. There’s all kinds of crazy people out there today.”*

Schouten credited anti-wind groups for doing a good job of fear-mongering and, while they are a minority, get people riled up.

The anti-wind protestors “say [turbines] tear up the communities. They’re the people that tore up the communities, not the turbines. They say [wind turbines] pit neighbor against neighbor and all this stuff because they want another reason to get rid of them.”

See an excerpt of this article here: Farmers ForumMarch2016-Tearing UsApart

To see the full article, go the FarmersForum.com next week or call 613-247-1334 to purchase a copy.

*Ottawa Wind Concerns Editor note: during the time of community action to oppose the proposed North Gower-Richmond wind power project, there was NEVER any threats of violence or civil disobedience. As to the comments about the opposition being a “minority,” readers will recall that a petition to the City of Ottawa requesting that North Gower be Not A Willing Host to the wind power project garnered signatures from 1,400 residents— almost every taxpayer in Ward 21. The petition was accepted and a motion of support passed unanimously at Ottawa City Council.

North Frontenac vows to appeal wind power project if approved

02 Wednesday Mar 2016

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North Frontenac tells Wynne government: we will appeal wind power project

Kingston Whig-Standard, February 29, 2016

By Elliot Ferguson

PLEVNA — North Frontenac Township is to appeal any large-scale wind energy project approved for the township.

Township council agreed on Friday that an appeal to the Environmental Review Tribunal would be pursued if either of the large wind energy projects proposed for the area are approved.

“We just had a general discussion and I asked council that if the wind turbine decision was in favour of the proponents, are we agreed that we would appeal it based on our position paper and our decisions made back in October?” Mayor Ron Higgins said. “They all agreed yes.”

NextEra Canada has proposed two projects for North Frontenac and neighbouring Addington Highlands Township. The Ontario government is expected to announce in the coming weeks which of the almost 120 proposed energy projects would be approved. The government is seeking to add up to 565 megawatts of renewable energy to the province’s electricity supply. Of that new energy, up to 300 megawatts is to come from new wind projects, 140 megawatts of new solar power, 50 megawatts of bioenergy and 75 megawatts of hydro electricity.

The NextEra projects include the 100-megawatt, 50-turbine Northpoint I in North Frontenac and the 200-megawatt, 100-turbine Northpoint II in Addington Highlands and North Frontenac. Seven of the 100 turbines proposed for the Northpoint II project are in North Frontenac, and the township provides the shortest, most affordable route to connect the project to the transmission lines.

In early June last year, citing public opposition, North Frontenac council unanimously voted to declare the township “not a willing host” for the proposed wind energy projects. The council voted not to provide municipal support to the project. Next door, Addington Highlands council voted to support the proposal.*

Higgins said the whole process of new energy procurement has been marked by secrecy and a lack of information being shared amongst involved parties.

“There was no collaboration from a number of different ministries within the Ontario provincial government,” Higgins said. “Everything came on us without any communication or collaboration whatsoever. We were kind of taken off guard.”

Higgins said he has asked four times to meet with Ontario Energy Minister Bob Chiarelli but has received no response …

Read the full story here.

*Web editor note: Addington Highlands council did vote to support the project but that was after a poll of taxpayers was conducted, with the results that 81% of residents did NOT support the power project. Council voted to support it anyway. See www.bearat.org for more details, including FOI documents.

24 Ontario communities say NO new wind power contracts

02 Wednesday Mar 2016

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Ontario municipalities demanding no new wind power contracts now 24

wind contract banner

Huron-Kinloss and West Lincoln have joined 22 other Ontario municipalities supporting the Wainfleet Resolution; the total is now 24.

The resolution refers to the Auditor General’s 2015 report in which Bonnie Lysyk detailed the amount of money Ontario citizens have paid for renewable power in a program that never had  cost-benefit analysis. Ontarians paid twice as much for wind power as they should have, she said, with the result that Ontario consumers have seen their electricity bills skyrocket. Worse, she said, is the fact that Ontario is in a situation of surplus power generation, which means regular losses as power generators are paid to “constrain” production, and surplus power is sold off at bargain-basement process on the electricity market.

The Wainfleet Resolution asks that the province not give out any new wind power contracts; the IESO accepted bids for more than 2,000 megawatts of new wind power generation last year, and planned to let contracts for 300 megawatts of new projects, despite the surplus.

While Ontario has over 400 municipalities, only about 100 are rural/small-town communities vulnerable to wind power development. Wind power projects have also been proposed in Northern Ontario where there are no organized municipalities but “unorganized territories.”

(Re-posted from Wind Concerns Ontario)

Wind farm noise measurements questioned by acoustics consultant

27 Saturday Feb 2016

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Ministry of Environment noise study for wind power project was done using average wind speed at a “particularly quiet site” says consultant hired by Kincardine: increase in sound from wind alone is “staggering”

(Re-posted from Wind Concerns Ontario)

Kincardine Independent, February 24, 2016

GROUNDBREAKING INFRASOUND STUDY RESULTS UNVEILED

By Barb McKay

An acoustics engineer is questioning the Ontario government’s methods for setting baseline sound limits for wind turbines after field testing was recently conducted in Kincardine.

Todd Busch, project manager for Swallow Acoustic Consultants Ltd., was in front of the Municipality of Kincardine council during its meeting last Wednesday to go over data from a study conducted within the boundaries of the Armow Wind Project last fall. Swallow was contracted by the municipality to study baseline acoustic and infrasound levels prior to the 92-turbine, 180-megawatt project becoming operational.

Engineers conducted interior and exterior sound testing at five homes within the project area between Oct. 30 and Nov. 14, 2015, using special microphones designed specifically to record infrasound (sound not picked up by the human ear). The sound measurements account for sound levels from wind in exterior testing.

Busch said when a noise impact study was conducted with audible sound testing for Armow Wind in 2013, engineers who did the study declared that the project would comply with Ontario Ministry of the Environment noise limits for industrial wind turbines. He said the study was done using an average wind speed at a particularly quiet site and a measurement of seven decibels was added to factor in sound levels at a higher wind speed. In the noise impact assessment summary, Busch said sound levels were calculated at between 37 and 39.8 decibels. The noise level limit set by the province is 40 decibels. Infrasound levels were not tested.

Busch said the report that was generated from the noise impact study did not explain why seven decibels was assumed for higher wind speeds and he questions the mehodology used to measure residual noise levels in the background environment. He does not believe the study factored in noise levels associated with wind and therefore is concerned the testing was compromised.

“We placed our microphones within 10 metres of where the noise impact assessment (study) microphones would have been,” Busch said. “A measurement of 39.8 decibels would be a candidate for scrutiny.”

Testing by Swallow generated acoustic sound levels of between 37 and 57 decibels outdoors and 20 to 40 decibels indoors. Infrasound levels measured between 57 and 88 decibels outdoors and 53 to 72 decibels indoors. He said the increase in sound from wind alone is staggering and should be explored further.

“We have been told many times from the provincial government that we can’t measure infrasound,” councillor Randy Roppel said. “Can you?”

“We did,” Busch replied.

Read the full story here

Wind farm will harm endangered wildlife, Ontario Tribunal finds

27 Saturday Feb 2016

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Wind farm will cause serious irreversible harm to wildlife, Tribunal finds

South Shore of Prince Edward County: [Photo Court Noxon, courtesy Point To Point Foundation]South Shore of Prince Edward County: [Photo Court Noxon, courtesy Point To Point Foundation]
The decision on the appeal of the White Pines wind power project in Prince Edward County was released yesterday: the Environmental Review Tribunal found for the appellant and the environment (in part), in that serious and irreversible harm would result to the endangered Blandings turtle and the little brown bat. The Tribunal also noted risk to migratory birds.This is a victory for a very hard-fought battle as members of this community fought to save the environment from Ontario’s own Ministry of the Environment.

See the decision in various formats here.

Statement from Orville Walsh, president of the Alliance to Protect Prince Edward County:

We are pleased to announce that APPEC’s appeal of wpd’s White Pines Wind Project has been upheld in part.  The Tribunal has found that the White Pines project will cause serious and irreversible harm to Little Brown Bats and to the Blanding’s turtle.
The Tribunal did not find serious and irreversible harm to human health, to hydrology or to migratory birds. However in regards to the latter the Tribunal did note that this wind project presents a significant risk of serious harm to migrating birds and that the project site was poorly chosen from a migratory bird perspective.
We are cautiously elated!  The Tribunal acknowledges that engaging in this wind project in accordance with the REA (Renewable Energy Approval) will cause serious and irreversible harm to animal life.  Therefore wpd no longer has an REA to stand behind.
The ERT has ordered a hearing of submissions with respect to potential remedies.
The board will be studying the decision over the weekend and following consultation with our legal counsel Eric Gillespie, will have more information to give you next week.
Orville Walsh
President, APPEC
Please go to the Save the South Shore website for information on how to donate toward the legal costs of this fight for the environment. The work done by the community groups in Prince Edward County, Eric K. Gillespie’s legal team, and the witness statements benefit everyone in Ontario.
ToughonNature

How Ontario could have saved billions: by doing nothing with electricity

27 Saturday Feb 2016

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Wind turbines pockmark Ontario’s landscape, says Kelly McParland, producing excess power at marked-up prices, using heavy subsidies

“They fell for all that “green energy” stuff, can you believe it?”

Photo: Canadian Press

National Post, February 25, 2016

Ontario premiers have a weak spot for pithy little slogans they can use to brush away troublesome matters.

“There’s never a wrong time to do the right thing,” Dalton McGuinty loved to say whenever stuck for an explanation for some horrific mistake. Why did his government spend $1.2 billion to not build two power plants after repeatedly insisting the projects would go ahead come hell or high water? Well, “there’s never the wrong time to do the right thing.” Smile. Next question.

His successor, Kathleen Wynne, has adopted a catchphrase of her own. “The cost of doing nothing is much, much higher than the cost of going forward ,” she’ll say when confronted with questions about some expenditure that has heads exploding across the province.

She deployed it Wednesday while seeking to justify the new tax on Ontarians that will accompany her cap and trade plan. Gasoline prices are expected to rise 4.3 cents a litre, while natural gas bills will increase about $5 a month.

Just in case the increases annoy Ontarians, Wynne came prepared: “The cost of doing nothing is much, much higher than the cost of going forward and reducing greenhouse-gas emissions,” she declared.

That’s debatable, and it raised an obvious question: Wynne’s Liberals have been in power since 2003. If the province has been “doing nothing,” who, precisely is to blame? And why are motorists and homeowners expected to pay the price now?

The reality is that the Liberals have been doing a great deal — much of it expensive, wasteful, ill-considered and counterproductive. Windmills now pockmark vast stretches of the countryside, producing excess power at marked-up prices supported by heavy subsidies. An Ontario Chamber of Commerce report indicated demand for power has fallen 8% since the Liberals came to power, due to a stagnating economy, but generation has increased 13%, producing a surplus of unneeded electricity. Twenty percent of businesses say the soaring costs could force them to shut down within five years. Rates rose in October, and again in January.

Read the full article here.

Ontario’s broken promises on health care and jobs

27 Saturday Feb 2016

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Re-posted from Wind Concerns Ontario

Ontario’s broken promises on funding for health care and jobs

Ontario’s nurses are campaigning for more health care dollars. If only they hadn’t believed the government’s promises …

The Truth Hurts

Back in January 2012, the Ontario Nurses Association (ONA) issued its Research Paper # 3. The paper was directed at the provincial government and called for increased health care spending including adding 9,000 registered nurses to the sector.

One of the recommendations in the paper was: “To fulfill the 2009 G20 Pittsburg commitment to put quality jobs at the heart of economic recovery – part of the coordinated G20 stimulus plans to which Canada was a signatory – the Ontario government should work with the federal government to establish job creation targets in various areas. This should include job-intensive green job creation and fully subsidized skills training programs accessible to all unemployed and underemployed workers.”

Disaster for health care

Fast-forward four years: the ONA is running TV ads focusing on nursing layoffs at hospitals and reduced health care funding throughout the province. Layoff notices have been appearing regularly since release of the Research Paper. The ONA’s President, Linda Haslam-Stroud, RN, has been outspoken about the health care cuts as in a February 2016 media release where she says “that 2016 is turning into a ‘disaster’ for patient care and it’s now hitting Toronto hospitals.”

It is ironic that the ONA appeared to support Ontario’s Liberal government in the last election, even giving $100,000 to “Working Families,” the coalition of unions that used union dues to paint the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario as not worthy of election. Almost $2.5 million was spent to accomplish that task. The ONA, whose members pay high union dues, spent $687,000 in total.

Billions lost in cheap power exports

Had the ONA re-considered their recommendation to “include job-intensive green job creation” in Research Paper # 3 and instead examined the fall-out from the Green Energy and Green Economy Act (GEA), they might have taken a different tack.  As I noted in an earlier article, just the cost of Ontario’s net exports of electricity from 2007 to 2015 removed almost $4.5 billion from ratepayer pockets. That $4.5 billion would have gone a long way to ensure both the retention of registered nurses and the hiring of recently graduated RNs.

Believing the Ontario Liberal government promises of job creation with the GEA, and endorsing it, the ONA may have exacerbated the continuing cuts to health care. Many earlier studies out of the EU noted that, rather than creating private sector jobs, renewable power developments actually caused the demise of private sector jobs in ratios as much as five to one.  Tax dollars need to come from the private sector and those jobs promised by the McGuinty-led government were simply a pipe dream.

The ONA may also have been led astray by George Smitherman when he set up a $40-million irrevocable trust to save nursing jobs referred to as the Nurses Retention Fund, but only a very small portion of the fund has actually gone to retain jobs.  While the $40 million is a long way from the $4.5 billion mentioned above, it would appear to have done little to support Registered Nursing jobs, perhaps because of the way it was setup by the former Minister of Health.

The ONA should ask the government to focus on wasted tax dollars both within the health care portfolio and elsewhere, including the Energy Ministry where billions of dollars are being wasted annually.

(C) Parker Gallant

The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily represent Wind Concerns Ontario policy.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Please see a news release on a report issued today by the CD Howe Institute on poor governance in Ontario’s electricity sector. An excerpt: “If a disproportionately large amount is dedicated to unnecessary electricity projects, then that amount is not available to meet other needs – such as transportation, schools and hospitals.”

Counties and Town join forces to find wind farm danger

27 Saturday Feb 2016

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Simcoe and Clearview Counties have announced they are joining forces with the Town of Collingwood to fight a proposed (and approved) wind “farm” that will be near the Collingwood airport.

Collingwood already had a consulting firm examine the economic impacts of the wind power project, which concluded the power development would “serve a narrow range of private interests,” not the public. Now, the counties and Town are concerned about the danger to pilots and passengers from the proximity of the turbines to the local airport.

See a CTV News report http://barrie.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=816331

Billions spent on electricity projects In Ontario with no oversight: CD Howe Institute

24 Wednesday Feb 2016

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Set Limits on Queen’s Park’s Power over Electricity Market

 

“It is remarkable that the expenditure of billions of dollars can be made with the stroke of a pen with virtually no oversight.”

February 24, 2016 – The government of Ontario should move away from controlling electricity planning, according to a new C.D. Howe Institute report. In “Learning from Mistakes: Improving Governance in the Ontario Electricity Sector,” author George Vegh argues that the government should face more checks and balances when spending electricity ratepayer money. The government should only set broad policy objectives and not make choices on which technologies and which suppliers should receive government contracts.

Over the last 10 years, the government has directed the expenditure of billions of dollars of public money on electricity projects with virtually no oversight or checks and balances. During this time, Ontario consumers have seen a large increase in electricity prices, with more to come.

“It is remarkable that the expenditure of billions of dollars can be made with the stroke of a pen with virtually no oversight,” commented Vegh.

In response to concerns about the rising cost of electricity and poor governance, most notably from the Auditor General’s report last December, the Ontario government has touted its proposed Bill 135 as the solution. However, far from solving the concerns about electricity-sector governance, the proposed Bill entrenches and expands the status quo and provides no role for oversight of government electricity directives.

The author proposes the following recommendations to improve the system:

  1. Move away from a central planning model towards a locally based supply obligation that aligns accountability with responsibility.
  2. Even if the government is to maintain its central role in setting outcomes, it can reduce its role in picking winners and losers. This requires increased reliance on market mechanisms, including requests for proposals, and capacity markets to meet operational and capacity needs based on demonstrable system requirements.

Vegh concluded: “Rather than extend and entrench the problems, Bill 135 should provide the opportunity to correct them.”

Click here for the full report.

The C.D. Howe Institute is an independent not-for-profit research institute whose mission is to raise living standards by fostering economically sound public policies. Widely considered to be Canada’s most influential think tank, the Institute is a trusted source of essential policy intelligence, distinguished by research that is nonpartisan, evidence-based and subject to definitive expert review.

For more information contact: George Vegh, Counsel, McCarthy Tétrault, and Adjunct Professor, University of Toronto School of Public Policy and Governance, University of Toronto Law School and Osgoode Hall Law School; 416-865-1904, or email: kmurphy@cdhowe.org.

Economic, social disaster: Wynne government green energy policy

09 Tuesday Feb 2016

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Higher electricity bills, manufacturing being driven away, social costs of huge wind power plants

Shoreline Beacon, February 8, 2016

By Jim Merriam

Premier Kathleen Wynne (Antonella Artuso/Toronto Sun)

Photo Toronto Sun

It’s to be hoped the Fraser Institute didn’t spend much money on its recent study of the fiscal performance of Canada’s premiers.

Every resident of Ontario able to sit up and take nourishment — probably including Wiarton Willie last week — has known the study’s conclusion for a long time: Premier Kathleen Wynne is doing a lousy job of managing Ontario’s economy.

Wynne, with the help of her predecessor Dalton McGuinty, has reduced Ontario from a powerhouse to an empty house.

On almost every file Wynne’s government is found wanting if not severely under water, to borrow a phrase from the mortgage industry.

The worst is energy. The cost of power in the province has forced industries to close and some families to choose between heat and groceries.

A columnist in a Toronto newspaper recently suggested the heat-vs.-food statement is an exaggeration. He should spend a few minutes listening to clients at food banks in rural areas. But I digress.

Much of the high cost of power is associated with renewable energy production.

A new study from the University of Ottawa confirms what we’ve been saying all along: Ontario brought in wind energy with a “top-down” style that brushed off the worries of communities where the massive turbines now stand.

Stewart Fast, who headed the study, said, “It was a gold rush, basically.” Since those involved kept details secret to avoid giving their competitors an edge, residents didn’t know what their neighbours were planning.

“That is really the worst way to go about something that you know is going to have a big impact on landscape and people,” he said.

In defence of renewable energy, we keep hearing from our urban cousins how much money farmers are earning by allowing turbines on their land. Although true on the surface, there’s much more to that equation, said Jane Wilson, president of Wind Concerns Ontario.

Just one question is the impact of the presence of a turbine on the farm owner’s financing.

Read the full story here.