Tag Archives: Patrick Meagher

Farmers Forum editorial on wind: I don’t want a turbine

15 Monday Sep 2014

Posted by in Ottawa, Renewable energy, Wind power

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Apparently, everyone is tickety-boo with Wolfe Island being turned into a factory--or are they?

Apparently, everyone is tickety-boo with Wolfe Island being turned into a factory–or are they?

Wind turbine woes

September 2014, Farmers Forum

Farmers Forum surveyed a big chunk of Wolfe Island residents and found that 75 per cent approve of or are indifferent toward the 86 wind turbines they’ve been living with for five years.

There are only two wind turbine projects in Eastern Ontario–one in Wolfe Island and one near Brinston, south of Ottawa. But Wolfe Island, surrounded by the St. Lawrence River at one end and Lake Ontario at the other, is a captive crowd. We easily surveyed 200 of the 1,400 residents lining up for the Kingston ferry or working in the hamlet of Marysville.

With such a high proportion of residents surveyed–one in seven–we captured a fairly good picture of how people feel about those gigantic white gosal posts with their three imposing blades. Of course, having a visual of a turbine makes a huge difference. On many properties on the 29-kilometer long island, you can’t even see the turbines.* From other vantage points, you can see more than 10.

We found that money makes a difference. Those landowners (many of them farmers) hosting one or more turbines, are delighted with the $10,000 to $14,000 they earn each year per turbine just to look at them. The wind turbine company hands over another $100,000 to the island annually. Improvements to the local outdoor rink are one of the many benefits. It’s like getting paid twice for having the good luck of living at the right place on the right island at the right time.

Not surprisingly, wind power companies in other areas of the province are now offering “hush” money to Ontarians living near a proposed wind turbine project. As I’ve said before, if a company wants to pay me $14,000 a year to put a wind turbine on my property, I’d move the garage in order to accommodate them. Change their mind and offer the turbine to my neighbour and suddenly that turbine doesn’t look so good. It’s kind of an eyesore and doesn’t it affect bird migration? Could this be the health issues that we hear about or am I just sick at the thought that I just lost $280,000 of free money over 20 years? I think I know the answer. But when you offer to cut me in on the monetary benefits of my neighbour’s turbine, I’m suddenly all sunshine and happy thoughts.

This is not to say there aren’t honest-to-goodness health risks. Farmers Forum has no reason to disbelieve those survey respondents who complain of low-level noise when the wind changes direction.

We’re losing $24,000 an hour on wind

This brings me to my only real beef against wind power. As happy as I thought I would be to have a turbine, I don’t want  one.

They are the biggest money losers in the history of the province. Not for Wolfe Islanders or anyone else who gets a wind turbine contract. But for everyone else forced to pay an electricity bill. Electricity costs have already risen 12.5 per cent each year for the past five years. There are more than 1,000 operating wind turbines and another more than 4,000 to go up in the province. Ontario’s auditor general says we can expect another 40 per cent price hike over the next few years in our electricity bills. By 2018, every Ontario family will be paying an extra $636 per year to go green. And why? So the province can claim to be the first green province or state in North America? Big deal.

Wind turbines are incredibly inefficient. In a major report last year, the Fraser Institute noted that 80 per cent of the power generated by wind turbines occur when Ontario doesn’t need the power. So, while the province pays 13.5 cents per kilowatt hour, it often resells is for 2.5 cents south of the border. The report, Environmental and Economic Consequences of Ontario’s Green Energy Act, observed that data from the Independent Electricity System Operator show Ontario loses, on average, $24,000 per operating hour on wind power sales. Numerous companies, including Kelloggs and Heinz, have closed plants because Ontario companies pay more for power than any other jurisdiction in North America.

Not “green”

To make matters worse, a wind turbine can contain more than 200 tonnes of steel and Chinese factories need the mining of even more tonnes of coal and iron to make them. Writes David Hughes in his book Carbon Shift, “A windmill could spin until it falls apart and never generate as much energy as was invested in building it.”

So, you can’t even call wind turbines green energy. It’s appalling that farmers have been lied to about the benefits. We’re wasting billions on a phoney cause.

Patrick Meagher is editor of Farmers Forum and can be reached at editor@farmersforum.com

Re-posted from Wind Concerns Ontario

WCO editor’s note: Although Farmers Forum was clear on the limitations of their survey they missed several key points: one, by surveying only people at the ferry dock and in a coffee shop, they may have missed people who stay on the island all day, but more important, as the Island has turbines on one half and none on the other, it would have been absolutely critical to define where the survey respondents actually live. They didn’t. Another key factor in any survey of community residents living with turbines is the fact that many turbine contracts force landowners to sign a non-disclosure agreement—in other words, if they have anything negative to say about the turbines, they can’t talk.

Amherst Island community tearing apart: “No way would anything this tall with this opposition be built in the city”

15 Saturday Dec 2012

Posted by in Renewable energy, Wind power

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Amherst Island is a small community offshore from Kingston, Ontario, which if Toronto-based wind power developer Algonquin Power gets its way, will soon be populated by as many as 37 huge wind turbines.

The community has been ripped apart by the controversy, as is becoming typical for rural Ontario communities where farm owners want the revenue from leasing their land for the turbines, while other residents worry about health and property values.

Here is a feature article from this week’s Farmer’s Forum, by Patrick Meagher. http://www.farmersforum.com/DEC2012/p12.htm

 

The big chill

Eastern Ontario’s latest battle over wind turbines reveals another divided community

 

By Patrick Meagher

 

AMHERST ISLAND — Bruce Caughey is the only dairy farmer on the 20-kilometre long Amherst Island, a three-kilometre offshore ferry ride west of Kingston. In 1970, there were 28.

Times have changed. Looks like they’re changing again.

If Algonquin Power & Utilities Corp. has its way, there will be 33 to 37 new wind turbines, each standing 50 storeys tall, on the humble island. Contracts have been signed, so Caughey expects to see eight of them from his back window.

“This is not a popular project,” he said, noting that the year-round population of about 410 people (2011 census) are overwhelmingly against it. Some say the issue has defined people by who now waves to whom.

“You can have differences of opinion,” Caughey said. “Most people rise above that. There are lots of social things we still enjoy together. Most people get along.”

Amherst Island is the typical story of many small Ontario communities where ugly battles have erupted over a landowner’s right to do what he wants on his property versus the neighbour’s right to the enjoyment of his property.

Despite worry about killing birds, the biggest issues are health concerns caused by the turbines and having to look at them. You can see the turbines towering over neighbouring Wolfe Island from the grassy southeast. To some they look good. To others they don’t. To some who lease land for a turbine, they look like money, up to $15,000 per year. Others cynically said the island will become a factory. The ones on Amherst will be taller by 20 to 30 metres, reaching 150 metres from ground to the tip of a vertical blade.

Caughey visited a farmer with three turbines on Wolfe Island and was struck by the “haunting” afternoon shadow but also the noise. The farmer told him they can sometimes sound like a jet plane taking off. A neighbour and a visiting veterinarian said they have heard it too.

“The only people getting a return are the landowners but we’re all going to enjoy them or not,” said Caughey, who once considered signing up for a turbine.

The setback is 550 metres but Caughey agreed with others that setbacks from homes should be at least one kilometre.

Local councilor for Loyalist Township, Duncan Ashley, lives on the island and said that in 18 years in municipal politics this issue is by far the most divisive. “Without a doubt,” he said. “Nothing comes close. This is tearing the community apart.”

Farmers Forum conducted a survey of 200 of Wolfe Island’s residents last year and the most significant conclusion was that 28.5 per cent of respondents said that community spirit had gotten worse since 86 turbines were erected in 2009.

Even though Premier Dalton McGuinty announced a priority points system that sends projects that are not community-supported to the bottom of the list, Ashley said he has not seen any legislation that gives municipalities power to stop a project. “Municipality rights have been stripped,” he said.

Some road work has been done to bring in the wind turbines and the province is considering a multi-million dollar upgrade of the ferry but the wind project has yet to be approved.

The president of the Association for the Protection of Amherst Island, Peter Large, said that 15 to 18 landowners have signed a deal to get a wind turbine but 200 people have signed on with the association in protest, representing the “vast majority” of the year-round adult population.

Large makes numerous arguments but there are two that stand out: health concerns and lack of local autonomy.

There’s no way that a building this tall would be approved in a city with such overwhelming opposition from the community, he said, adding that there is no local input, no hearing and no appeal process. “This in itself is unthinkable.”

The many health concerns from existing wind projects are now being studied by Health Canada, which expects to reach conclusions in about two years.

One concern, which has rarely been discussed in the news media, is the shadow flicker or strobe light effect created by the setting sun passing behind the turning blades and casting long but interrupted shadows into homes. (Google “wind turbine shadow flicker” and see the shadow action for yourself.)

Loyalist Township planner Murray Beckel said that if the project is approved he suspects turbine construction will not start until 2014, as the company first needs to hold a second open house in the new year and then provide numerous reports to the Ministry of Environment and obtain various permits. The ministry will need about six months to respond to the report package, he said.

But while the opposition has the numbers this is far from a one-sided battle. The pro-wind group has the law on its side. It also has long-time residents, mostly farming families, said sheep farmer Dave Willard, who stands to gain from two wind turbines on his property. “Every traditional island family that has been here for three, four, five generations are all on side but one (dairy farmer Bruce Caughy),” he said. “I can’t think of one other long-term island family that is opposed. Almost everyone with 100 acres signed on.”

He added that some families signed on but didn’t get a turbine and will still earn $2,500 a year for the 20-year term of the project.

“I don’t like being dictated to by a group of newcomers (fewer than 30 years),” Willard protested. “They don’t have historical authority. They didn’t raise their kids here.”

Editor’s note: APAI is a sister organization to Ottawa Wind Concerns, as group members of Wind Concerns Ontario. http://www.windconcernsontario.ca