SARGEANT — For nearly 40 years, when Kathy Blanchard looked out her kitchen window of her home she would see a beautiful view. But now, she shares land with what she sees as a new and noisy neighbor: Pleasant Valley Wind Farm project.

Blanchard lives with her husband, Dan, just outside Sargeant Township in Mower County. Years ago, the two bought the 10-acre property for its scenic landscape. However, they say that the wind turbines and ongoing construction on the wind farm project has disrupted their lives.

read more:  Posted: Sunday, November 8, 2015

HENRY COUNTY, Ill (KWQC)- We’ve all seen aerial applicators dance through the sky fertilizing our fields.

These small planes move fast and the pilots in them make quick decisions.

Obstacles in the way make it even harder to fly, and some are virtually invisible.

Garrett Lindell has been flying for 26 years. He and the six spray planes he owns cover a lot of ground.

“It’s about 150 miles north to south and 100 miles east to west,” Lindell said.

Over the years the landscape of that area has changed, especially with the increase of wind energy in the midwest.

The FAA requires the maps and GPS systems he uses get updated every six months.

One thing that isn’t on those maps, meteorological towers. They’re used by wind companies to measure wind speed and other factors before putting up a wind turbine.

read more; kwqc.com/2015/11/10/sharing-the-sky-the-discussion-between-wind-companies-and-pilots-about-meteorological-towers/

VT study sheds light on how often wind farm noise reaches bothersome levels

A sneakily fascinating legal response was recently released, in which the State of Vermont Department of Public Service (DPS) responds to request by wind farm neighbor Paul Brouha for relief from noise coming from the Sheffield Wind Farm.  Most of the technical back-and-forth amounts to quibbling between sound experts about 1-3dB differences, caused by slightly different monitoring techniques.  This minutia matters, in that it may determine whether the Sheffield  by project is just barely in compliance or just barely too loud at times; after all, limits are limits.  However, as usual in such situations, even if slight adjustments in operations were made to bring the sound levels down 1-3dB, such small changes are unlikely to be change how loud the sounds seems at the home in question (the human ear generally can’t perceive a difference of less than 3dB).

Still, buried in the data at the end of the submission is some interesting data about how often sound levels reach various thresholds in each season.  The wind farm company, Vermont Wind, had done some on-the-ground sound monitoring at a location slightly closer than Brouha’s home, and the results shed some light on why some wind farm neighbors may be bothered by the noise.

read more:  http://aeinews.org/archives/2919

I’ve heard from many people from my riding and throughout Ontario regarding industrial wind turbine developments in their communities, and how municipal governments are being coerced into supporting these developments against the peoples’ wishes.

On Thursday Nov 5th, I questioned the government on their apparent tolerance of this dubious and problematic policy. I have included a link to the video of my questions to the Minister, and included the press release I subsequently issued outlining the problems.

If you share my concerns with these practices, I encourage you to write the Premier, the Minister of Energy, the Attorney General and the Independent Electrical System Operator (IESO) to give voice to your concerns. Their contact information is included near the bottom of this email.

If you’d like to keep up with my continuing efforts on this, please follow

Continue reading Corruption Acceptable? Liberals Won’t Answer →

Ontario Legislative Assembly Question Period – November 5th, 2015

Municipalities

Mr. Randy Hillier: My question is to the Attorney General. With four OPP investigations regarding Liberal misconduct; plus a multi-million dollar lawsuit by T. Boone Pickens against the IESO; and the US justice department investigation under the corrupt business practices act regarding NextEra, it appears your seatmate, the energy minister, is complicit in many of these cases. The minister knows that the US justice department is investigating US companies that are promising Ontario municipalities money in exchange for municipal support which financially benefits these very same companies. It appears that the Attorney General’s seatmate is facilitating and encouraging this financial impropriety under the Green Energy Act between foreign businesses and our municipal partners.

Speaker, does the Attorney General condone foreign businesses offering bribes on condition that the municipal government passes a resolution to support and promote those businesses?

Hon. Madeleine Meilleur: Minister of Energy. Continue reading Money in Exchange for Community Support of Wind Projects was Subject to Questions at Queens Park , November 5, 2015. →

PECFN lawyer accuses MNRF official of coaching developer, witholding documents

The optics have always been bad— provincial government officials aligned with a large wind developer in a no-holds-barred fight against the handful of volunteers who make up the Prince Edward County Field Naturalists (PECFN).

It became much worse when, under crossexamination, a species at risk expert testified that he had warned senior officials in the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry (MNRF) that the project posed a deadly risk to the Blanding’s turtle.

Now the Ostrander Tribunal has revealed a very close working relationship between MNRF officials and the developer. PECFN’s lawyer says the regulator, responsible for protecting species at risk, is withholding documents and emails the Tribunal ordered turned over.

All in all, it was another rough week for Ontario’s MNRF and Minstry of Environment and Climate Change (MOECC).

The proceedings, now deep into extra innings, showed no sign of wrapping up soon. Despite the tedium, lawyers pulled at the tangled web strand by strand. The crowd following these proceedings remained vigilant throughout the week. By Friday afternoon, 30 people remained in the gallery at the town hall in Demorestville.

The Tribunal, now it’s second incarnation at reviewing Gilead Power Company’s Renewable Energy Approval (REA) for its Ostrander Point project, had stretched another full week after being postponed from September as the MNRF gathered data ordered by Tribunal adjudicators Robert Wright and Heather Gibbs. These documents include emails, memos and correspondence that might shed light onto the Ministry’s internal deliberation over the decision to grant the developer a “harm, harass and kill” permit—specifically how ministry officials arrived at the decision to overide their own species-at-risk expert’s opinion.

read more: http://wellingtontimes.ca/?p=15161

Ontario’s approach to electricity policy has driven up prices for businesses and residents, undermining competitiveness. This is just one example of how misguided policy choices have contributed to Ontario’s economic weakness in recent years.

Once the engine of Canada’s economy, Ontario is now mired in a prolonged period of weak performance. In 2003, Ontario’s real GDP growth fell below the national average and consistently lagged behind the rest of Canada over the next decade. Consequently, real disposable household incomes in Ontario, which were fully 10 per cent higher than the national average in 2000, fell below the Canadian average for the first time on record in 2012 and 2013.

Investor confidence is understandably shaken, with the result being weak private-sector investment in the province. In fact, in 2013 (the last year for which we have data), private-sector investment still had not recovered to pre-recession levels.

The province’s relative decline cannot be entirely blamed, as some do, on external forces such as the resource boom elsewhere in Canada. Instead, a range of poor policy choices have undermined Ontario’s competitiveness. One of the clearest examples of this pattern can be found by examining the province’s policy on renewable electricity generation.

read more: National Post | November 2, 2015

Research

Announcement (Nov 3, 2015).  I am pleased to announce that University of Waterloo has approved funding for my research in Infra sound.  A research summary is provided here (PDF).

Note: Research funding is available for undergraduate research assistants (URA, both part time full time).  Areas of interest: Embeded computing, Computer Audio, and/or Electronics.  Feel free to contact me for details.

Research interests

• Computational vision (high-level vision, motion understanding, event recognition)
• Computational hearing (acoustics, speech, music, signal processing)
  
• Perception and Learning
• Artificial Intelligence
• Industrial Wind Turbine Noise (audible and infra sound)
  

Publications

Latest work: J. Vanderkooy and R. Mann. “Measuring Wind Turbine Coherent Infrasound”. Wind Turbine Noise 2015, INCE/EUROPE, Monday 20th April to Thursday 23rd April 2015. Glasgow, Scotland.

https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~mannr/

Report on the ERT Hearing on the White Pines Wind 

November 2, 2015

​by Henri Garand​, APPEC

If Day One is any indication, the White Pines appeal will be as contentious as Ostrander Point’s.   Even before opening statements the Environmental Review Tribunal (ERT) consisting of co-chairs Marcia Valiante and Hugh Wilkins, heard motions that may require an adjournment of the proceedings.

Eric Gillespie, counsel for APPEC, asked the ERT to summon two staff members of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry (MNRF) and to order production of all materials related to White Pines permits approved under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).  The request derived from similar disclosures and witnesses in the Ostrander Point appeal that have raised doubts about the integrity of the MNRF’s process for assessing risk to endangered species like the Blanding’s turtle.

Gillespie believes that testimony is relevant and necessary from Joe Crowley, the MNRF’s expert on reptiles and turtles, and Kathleen Pitt, the MNRF manager who oversaw permitting for White Pines.  He argued that an appellant has a right to all the related documents on the basic principles of  justness and fairness. Continue reading Day One – Report on Environmental Review Tribunal Hearing on White Pines Wind Project →

Six years ago the government spent close to a million dollars putting up a wind turbine to power a commuter station west of Toronto.

Even when they announced it, they admitted the train station would still need regular electricity.

But it was a “green” symbol, right? That’s what really mattered to all the politicians and lobbyists.

Well, it’s 2015 now, and they literally tore it down.

The wind turbine was producing 91% less energy than expected.

If this were a private company, in charge of moving people around, someone would be fired. But it’s a government company.

So I checked the Ontario government’s “Sunshine” list, and guess who’s on it?

Meanwhile, the average Ontario household will see their electricity bills rise next year — to pay for more wind turbines!

follow link  to watch video report:  EZRA LEVANT