Nepean-Carleton MP Pierre Poilievre rose in the House of Commons yesterday to present a petition to the House on behalf of residents of North Gower and Richmond (communities within the City of Ottawa) where a 20-megawatt wind power project is proposed.

Poilievre’s petition demands a halt to the wind power generation project until the results of the Health Canada study on noise and infrasound has been completed, anticipated for the end of 2014. “Decisions must be science-based,” he told the House.

He noted that Minister of Health Leona Aglukkaq announced the revised study design February 10th.

Ottawa Wind Concerns is grateful for the MP’s support on this issue, and for bringing forward a solid foundation for the community’s concerns about this project, which will expose the people living in 450 homes to noise and vibration. In 2010, Rogers TV host Mark Sutcliffe asked then-company representative Bart Geleynse Jr whether the turbines in North Gower-Richmond area project would make noise. “Of course they will,” said Geleynse, “they’re power plants!”

Indeed.

And they don’t belong so close to families.

The wind power development lobby group CanWEA this week put out a news release saying that a survey showed 80% of the residents of Denmark questioned about wind power said they were not bothered by the wind turbines. In fact, 17% of the respondents said they were disturbed, with about 4% saying they were disturbed to a “major extent” and 5% “moderately” disturbed. In other words, almost 10% had their lives disrupted and their health affected by wind turbines.

“North Gower and Richmond are quiet communities that don’t deserve to be turned into a wind power factory,” says Jane Wilson, chair of Ottawa Wind Concerns. “The community doesn’t want this, our MP and MPP supports us and so do many on Council. It’s a completely inappropriate land use.”

Last year, MP Poilievre asked the Library of Parliament to look at the cost to taxpayers of the North Gower-Richmond power project, and discovered the cost in subsidies to ratepayers would be $4.8 million per year (a conservative estimate, we’re told).

In fact, subsidies to the wind power developers run $500,000 per turbine per year. Worse, Ontario doesn’t need any more power, and the intermittent nature of power produced by wind turbines is having a destabilizing effect on the grid, say Ontario’s electrical engineers, in their 2011 report.

The video of Pierre Poilievre’s statement in the House is here: http://www.pierremp.ca/petition-calls-for-a-moratorium-on-local-wind-project/

Email us at ottawawindconcerns@yahoo.ca