VOW (Victims of Wind) – OPEN LETTER 04.2015
Statement on Government Funded Reviews of IWT Impacts on Health

VOW is a confidential support network for people who have been adversely affected by loud, cyclical noise, low frequency vibration, infrasound and dirty electricity emissions coming from industrial wind turbine facilities.

Victims of Wind are tired of tolerating years of literature reviews that are being used as a benchmark by the government to allow harm-imposing wind turbine facilities to operate.

Ongoing, time-consuming desk top reviews, reviews of earlier reviews and delays waiting for results are forcing more and more families to fall victim to the despair caused by new projects being sited too close to their homes.

We are dismayed that regardless of early admissions that there are people impacted, the projects continue to operate while new reviews are initiated. There is abundant evidence accumulated to warrant a moratorium and for projects to cease operation while government “research” is underway. But that is not happening.

We are therefore of the opinion that these efforts are about supporting and aiding in the success of the government’s renewable energy policy and not at all about genuine investigation of the adverse health complaints, severe enough to result in impaired health and abandonment of homes.

We are dismayed by the choice of some study team and panel experts, some who have historically supported wind energy implementation, some who are members of wind energy lobby groups in Canada and have received funding from the provincial and the Canadian Government. Lobby representatives have no obstruction to being granted meetings with federal officials while requests for help from those who have been harmed have gone unanswered for years.

We feel that government funded study teams and industry experts are being relied upon to inform the public on this issue when they are clearly not expressing what is actually happening on the ground. The routine trivializing of the impacts the emissions are having only serve to confuse the general population. The true experts are those living in the projects that are being harmed and driven from their homes but reviewers and study groups have not spoken with or included them despite their knowledge of them.

Affected citizens are being directed to follow government complaint protocols only to leave them piling up year after year unresolved.

Thousands of complaints have accumulated at the provincial Ministry of Environment and Climate Change. These complaints are not being reviewed by anyone, including study teams, and files are being closed without resolution.

We are disheartened by the use of derogatory public comments pertaining to the victims being made by politicians, influential environmentalists, government employees, association leaders and people in positions of power.

These comments are humiliating and degrading to the victims, causing deep-felt insult and social embarrassment to people who are already coping with ill health and chaos.

The harm to victims must stop. Victims have lost trust in all level of government as they struggle 24 hours a day to cope dealing with the impacts of chronic exposure living within these facilities.

Victims are fed up with relentlessly having to defend themselves as government/industry allies try to diminish and discredit their experiences.

There is an urgent need for transparency on this issue, for the government to open the channel to listen directly to the victims and to quit suppressing this tragedy by endless public denial.

Victims of wind deserve that action be taken.

We deserve protection from inhumane treatment of our families, our pets and livestock.

We are insistent that the Government of Canada start taking action by enforcing the federal Radiation Emitting Devices Act (REDA) an emissions reporting mechanism that has been in place for over a decade.

What we want is integrity from government leaders, from Health Canada who promote that good health and wellbeing of all Canadians is priority.

The victims did not consent to being exposed to the emissions of industrial wind turbines.

No more people should be put at risk. No more projects should be approved and those projects where there are reports of adverse health effects should cease operating immediately so affected families can return to living in a safe and healthy environment in their own home.

Barbara Ashbee
Coordinator of VOW – Victims of Wind
Dufferin County
vow2help@gmail.com

http://windvictimsontario.com/vowcopy-ndash-victims-of-wind.html