Tag Archives: Ministry of the Environment Ontario

Amherst Island wind farm approved

25 Tuesday Aug 2015

Posted by in Renewable energy, Wind power

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Kingston Whig-Standard, August 24, 2015

Amherst Island wind project approved

By Elliot Ferguson, Kingston Whig-Standard

Monday, August 24, 2015 10:11:43 EDT PM

A map of Amherst Island from the Revised Draft Site Plan by Windlectric.

A map of Amherst Island from the Revised Draft Site Plan by Windlectric.

STELLA – A controversial wind energy project for Amherst Island has received conditional approval from the Ontario government.

The Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change announced Monday the project received a renewable energy approval with more than two dozen conditions.

Windlectric Inc.’s Amherst Island Wind Energy Project is to include up to 26 wind turbine generators and one substation transformer.

The project has been ferociously opposed by many island residents, who argue the project is bad for their health, the environment and the heritage of the island.

The Association to Protect Amherst Island said the project proposal, which the government deemed complete in January 2014, is not finished and leaves too many unanswered questions.

“The Association to Protect Amherst Island deplores today’s decision by the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change to approve a Renewable Energy Application by Windlectric Inc. for the construction of turbines on Amherst Island, the jewel of Lake Ontario,” association member Michele Le Lay said in an email Monday evening. “The APAI team is ready to continue its commitment to preserve the cultural and natural heritage of the Island with a strong legal position and fact-based evidence.”

Since July 2014, the project has been modified four times, including a change earlier in May that lowered the maximum number of wind turbines from 33 to 26 but replaced the remaining turbines with higher power models.

In addition to the project approval, the government placed 27 conditions on the project.

Among the conditions is a three-year time frame to get the project built, requirements to monitor noise emissions and ensure they do not exceed acceptable limits, implement a post construction natural heritage monitoring program, which includes bird and bat monitoring and complete any remaining archaeological fieldwork.

Gunn’s Hill wind farm proposal incomplete, should be denied: community group

02 Wednesday Jul 2014

Posted by in Renewable energy, Wind power

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The proposal by Germany-based Prowind to build a wind “farm” near Woodstock Ontario is the subject of a complaint to the Ministry of the Environment, and the Office of the Ombudsman. While the application process is supposed to be “transparent” and open to the public, the truth is, documentation is not complete, and the Ministry and the proponent engage in correspondence that is not available to the public.

Joan Morris, Chair of the group East Oxford Community Alliance, wrote a letter to the Ministry of the Environment, both to the Minister and staff, demanding that approval not be granted to Prowind for the project, due to the failure to follow process. The letter follows:

Dear Minister,
I am writing to draw to your attention serious process issues at the Ministry of Environment with respect to renewable energy project reviews.  The public is being denied the opportunity to receive complete and accurate information regarding a project, and also to participate in the “iterative process” between the proponent and MOE reportedly occurring following the EBR comment period.
I trust you will investigate these issues in which Ontario citizens’ rights are being denied.
Sincerely,
Joan Morris
From: Joan Morris
Sent: June-23-14 11:15 AM
To: Garcia-Wright, Agatha (ENE)
Cc: ‘Eric Gillespie’
Subject: Environmental Approval Process – Gunn’s Hill Wind Project – “Iterative Process”
Dear Ms. Garcia-Wright,
In your letter dated April 25, 2014 you have indicated the following:
·         The MOE may require “additional information or clarification from the proponent”
·         The review process may be an “iterative process”
These points raise significant concern for reasons as follows:
·         The proponent has reportedly already deemed its application for the project to be complete and accurate (although our FOI request of April 13, 2014 has not yet been fulfilled to confirm this information)
·         MOE staff have deemed the application to be complete (again, results of FOI request pending at this time)
·         The iterative process conducted solely between the MOE and the proponent (without public disclosure or participation) is an admission that the application did not contain sufficient and accurate information for approval and therefore should not have been deemed complete and accurate by the proponent nor by the MOE.  This is also an admission that the information available for public review during the EBR comment period was not complete and accurate.
If the MOE has adopted practices such that the proponent’s REA documents are no longer required to be complete and accurate, and an “iterative process” between the proponent and MOE is accepted practice, then posting to the EBR is a sham and is misleading and deceptive to Ontario citizens.
In your letter of April 15, 2014, you state that projects are planned in a transparent manner, yet, the public appears to have no timely access to the ongoing communication between the MOE, proponent and other ministries.  It appears the only manner in which the public may obtain information is to submit FOI requests on an ongoing basis, to obtain information retrospectively and to incur costs.  Despite my submission of three FOI requests to the Ministry of Environment April 13, April 15 and May 27, 2014 with all applicable fees, as of June 23, I have received no documents whatsoever.  My rights as a citizen to obtain information regarding a project that directly impacts me are being violated due to your ministry’s failure to provide disclosure via either direct request to your agency or via the FOI process.  This, coupled with the “iterative process” between proponent and MOE leads me to reject your claim that projects are planned in a transparent manner, and in fact is reflective of a process designed to facilitate and “remove barriers” for the proponent to gain approval,  rather than to involve and protect the public.
Any iterative process should require that the public be involved at each stage and have the opportunity to participate in a transparent manner. I am not aware that the MOE has disclosed that the process is iterative until now.
I request that the MOE disclose:
·         The date when the iterative process was established between MOE and the proponent and its consultants. In particular please clarify whether the iterative process between MOE and the proponent and its consultants been in effect in the past; AND
·         The process by which the public will be advised of the iterative process;  AND
·         The process by which the public will be full participants in the iterative process;  AND
·         Whether the iterative process will replace the FOI process for obtaining disclosure.
I request that your agency deny the application of the Gunn’s Hill Wind Farm until such time as your Ministry discloses complete and accurate information to the public regarding all communication relating to this project, and the public has adequate opportunity to participate fully in the “iterative process” in an open and transparent manner.
Sincerely,
Joan Morris
Copy:    Eric Gillespie (lawyer)

 

See related story here.

Letter: ask questions about Gunn’s Hill (and Prowind)

06 Tuesday May 2014

Posted by in Ottawa, Wind power

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Here is a letter to the Editor from the current edition of the Norwich Gazette. This community is the location of Prowind’s ONLY active wind power development.

Letters to the Editor

Norwich Gazette

May 5, 2014

The public should be asking questions about the Gunn’s Hill wind project, and asking about the organization called The Oxford Community Energy Co-operative.

If the “community” in the project area wanted a co-operative why wouldn’t they create their own? Why are Prowind Canada, Ontario Sustainability Services (OSS), “Friends of Wind” (presumably funded by Canadian Wind Energy Association) and IPC Energy trying to push it into the community? Doesn’t this appear more like a mechanism for the developer to apply for the “co-operative” adder from the Ontario Power Authority (to make more money for the developer) rather than a true community initiative?

What is IPC Energy’s interest in this project? Will the project be changing ownership? Why would the Oxford Community Energy Co-operative’s (OCEC) corporate office address have been registered as the IPC Energy address in Mississauga, with IPC’s president being a director of the OCEC?

While Prowind stated in its Renewable Energy application documents its plans to be a “long-term presence and neighbour”, it already tried unsuccessfully to sell the Gunn’s Hill project to Boralex in 2013. Given that Prowind Canada has still not begun operating any projects in Canada, and their staff has been dwindling in number each year, why would there be any assurance that Prowind will be involved long-term? At what point will the project ownership change?

Ask about the provider, Prowind.

Why does Prowind claim employment opportunities will be offered to Six Nations workers in one section of their REA documents, while stating preference will be given to local community residents in another?

Why did Prowind claim the Talbot Wind Farm near Ridgetown was a “well planned project” without researching the impact on residents? Why have they not admitted that residents have had significant adverse impacts in this “well planned project”, including having to vacate their homes or sleep in their basements?

Take a look at a website we’ve been observing – http://www.windontario.ca. You already know the Norwich Township council has declared themselves to be an “unwilling host”.

Do you truly believe the Gunn’s Hill project will benefit the environment? Ontario’s coal-fired generating stations have already been shut down and we are exporting surplus electricity at a loss to other jurisdictions on a regular basis, with manufacturing industries closing down in Ontario.

The public should be asking the hard questions.

Gerald and Carol Engberts. RR4 Woodstock

Prowind's Head Office in Hamilton until 2013
Prowind’s Head Office in Hamilton until 2013

 

Editor note: Prowind is the Germany-based company that has proposed a wind power development for North Gower-Richmond until the Feed In Tariff subsidy process was put on hold in 2013; a new procurement process is slated to begin in the summer of 2014.

Wrong, wrong, wrong

27 Thursday Feb 2014

Posted by in Renewable energy, Wind power

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The Times

Wrong to assume

Blanding-SmallThe Prince Edward County Field Naturalists are wrong. Ontario Nature. Nature Canada. Both wrong. Dr. Robert McMurtry is wrong. The South Shore Conservancy is wrong. So too is the Prince Edward Point Bird Observatory. Alvar, bird, butterfly, turtle and bat experts are all wrong. The municipality of Prince Edward is wrong. As are the majority of County residents who believed Crown Land at Ostrander Point should be preserved—rather than industrialized for the profit of one corporation.

And now we have learned that Ontario’s own Environmental Review Tribunal is wrong. A Toronto court has said so. This ought to keep Premier Kathleen Wynne up at night.

The Tribunal’s Robert Wright and Heather Gibbs spent more than 40 days hearing evidence, challenging testimony and witnesses and weighing competing claims. They began their task in a snowstorm in February; and delivered their decision on a hot July day last summer. Wright and Gibbs visited Ostrander Point. They walked around. They saw, with their own eyes, what was at stake.

They dug deep into the evidence. They weren’t satisfied that the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) had sufficiently scrutinized the developer’s plans before issuing it a permit to “harm, harass and kill” endangered species, including the Blanding’s turtle.

They discovered that mitigation measures proposed by the developer to ensure overall benefit to the species were untested and worse, according to evidence presented before them—unlikely to work, particularly for the population at Ostrander Point.

However, the Toronto court ruled that Wright and Gibbs should have given the MNR the benefit of doubt.

“In my view, the Tribunal ought to have assumed that the MNR would properly and adequately monitor compliance with the ESA (Endangered Species Act) permit,” wrote Justice Ian Nordheimer in the decision.

But Wright and Gibbs, after listening to 40 days of testimony and examining nearly 200 documents entered into evidence, concluded they could not make that assumption.

The Tribunal’s error was that it didn’t believe the MNR would adequately look out for the Blanding’s turtle.

Wright and Gibbs had gone backward and forward through the proposals prepared and submitted by the developer and accepted by the MNR. They concluded the “Blanding’s turtle at Ostrander Point Crown Land Block will not be effectively mitigated by the conditions of the REA [Renewable Energy Approval].”

The court didn’t say Wright and Gibbs were wrong about their conclusions, but that they should have “accepted the ESA permit at face value” or explained better why their conclusions were different than the MNR.

“The Tribunal was obliged to explain how the fact that the MNR had concluded under the ESA that the project would lead to an overall benefit to Blanding’s turtle (notwithstanding the harm that would arise from the project) could mesh with its conclusion that the project would cause irreversible harm to the same species,” wrote Justice Nordheimer.

This is the bit that ought to send a cold shiver through Premier Wynne and anyone else who is worries about the welfare of endangered species in this province.

Read the full article here.