A renewable energy company sent a letter to landowners suggesting they stop letting hunters on their property. The response seems to have arisen because of a case of vandalism involving gunfire that damaged a wind turbine. The wind company is asking that hunting not be permitted for “safety issues”.
Delta Waterfowl Foundation and Ontario Federation of Anglers & Hunters issued this letter of response on April 22, 2016.
The federal government’s inaction on wind turbine noise is making Canadians sick.
It’s been a year-and-a-half since Health Canada’s $2-million study determined low-frequency acoustic waves from industrial wind turbines cause community annoyance.
According to the World Health Organization, unwanted noise, even at a moderate level, can lead to a myriad of adverse health outcomes, including stress-related symptoms such as sleep disturbance, elevated blood pressure, cardiac events and depression.
It’s a “green” form of radiation sickness.
Canada’s Radiation Emitting Devices Act (REDA) is supposed to regulate the design and operation of devices that emit radiation, such as microwave ovens and tanning beds.
In sworn testimony at an environmental review tribunal, a Health Canada official confirmed industrial wind turbines — large, noise-emitting devices — are regulated by REDA.
REDA requires a manufacturer or importer of such a device to “forthwith notify the Minister” upon becoming aware its device is emitting radiations not necessary for the performance of its function.
On June 15, Barbara Ashbee of Mulmur, Ontario, together with hundreds of other Ontarians, sent an open letter to Health Minister Jane Philpott, asking why Health Canada has not insisted wind energy corporations report citizen complaints about noise radiation.
She wants the minister to meet with her and representatives of citizens suffering from turbine noise radiations.
Ashbee wrote: “Many in Ontario and elsewhere have logged serious health complaints with proponents/operators of wind turbine projects, provincial and federal government ministries as well as wind turbine manufacturers … As previous ministers and current Minister Philpott have been informed, the adverse effects of wind turbines are not trivial.”
READ MORE AT: http://www.torontosun.com/2016/06/29/ottawa-silent-on-wind-turbine-noise
To sign the open letter sent to the Prime Minister of Canada: https://mothersagainstturbines.com/2016/06/24/an-open-letter-to-the-prime-minister-of-canada/
‘Water Wells First!’ Public Protest Coming to Chatham-Kent,
Ontario
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Strathroy, Ontario – June 27, 2016 – “On Wednesday, June 29, 2016, residents of the municipality of Chatham-Kent, Ontario, embark on their Water Wells First! campaign to protest and advocate for protection of their water wells, says the Ontario Ground Water Association.” These residents understand that renewable energy is important to the future of Ontario and in the battle that is climate change but the safety and security of their water is their priority. The Ontario Ground Water Association (OGWA) became aware of increased water quality issues in the region when inquiries intensified from Chatham-Kent and Lambton County residents for well water testing through the OGWA’s ‘Well Wise’ water testing program. The OGWA is fully supportive of the Chatham-Kent residents in this endeavor.
Existing Wind Farm developments in this area are disregarding known science on vibration and seismic coupling, causing adverse effects on local ground water and drinking water wells. The pile driving of foundations began the onset of water quality deterioration during the construction phase. After the wind mills are in service, the vibrations transfer into the concrete foundations and continue to vibrate the rock and soil formations of the surrounding areas. This activity directly affects the sources of the residents’ water wells. The result is dirty, turbid water. These residents are also rightly concerned about what effects this vibration has in an area known to have elevated levels of Radon gas.
Water Wells First! is a call to action from the affected residents of Chatham Kent to have the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change (MOECC), the Provincial Government, and the wind industry recognize these adverse effects. This appeal is for the prohibition of pile driven foundations in this area, to demand vibration suppression, and to require assessment of seismic coupling on any wind developments. The OGWA shares the concerns and goals of these citizens in their efforts to ensure the sustainability of their water wells and ground water in Chatham-Kent.
The Ontario Ground Water Association is a not for profit organization representing ground water professionals in the Province of Ontario. Established in 1952, the OGWA is “Dedicated to protecting and promoting Ontario’s most precious resource – ground water”
Contacts:
K.C. Craig Stainton
Executive Director
Ontario Ground Water Association
www.ogwa.ca
Phone: 519-282-0063 (Cell)
Fax: 519-245-7196
Email: executivedirector@ogwa.ca
and
Kevin Jakubec
Water Wells First!
Phone 519-683-2771
jakubechome@gmail.com
Environmental noise, especially that caused by transportation means, is viewed as a significant cause of sleep disturbances. Poor sleep causes endocrine and metabolic measurable perturbations and is associated with a number of cardiometabolic, psychiatric and social negative outcomes both in adults and children. Nocturnal environmental noise also provokes measurable biological changes in the form of a stress response, and clearly affects sleep architecture, as well as subjective sleep quality. These sleep perturbations are similar in their nature to those observed in endogenous sleep disorders. Apart from these measurable effects and the subjective feeling of disturbed sleep, people who struggle with nocturnal environmental noise often also suffer the next day from daytime sleepiness and tiredness, annoyance, mood changes as well as decreased well-being and cognitive performance. But there is also emerging evidence that these short-term effects of environmental noise, particularly when the exposure is nocturnal, may be followed by long-term adverse cardiometabolic outcomes. Nocturnal environmental noise may be the most worrying form of noise pollution in terms of its health consequences because of its synergistic direct and indirect (through sleep disturbances acting as a mediator) influence on biological systems. Duration and quality of sleep should thus be regarded as risk factors or markers significantly influenced by the environment and possibly amenable to modification through both education and counseling as well as through measures of public health. One of the means that should be proposed is avoidance at all costs of sleep disruptions caused by environmental noise. 
READ MORE: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1984006314000601
“With each oversized, out-of-scale, in-your-face wind project presented, scores of people join the not-so-quiet ‘war on wind’ raging nationwide…. While Big Media and Big Wind are busy forcing the vision they want, communities are taking aggressive action to limit wind’s negative impacts and will ultimately lead to far fewer projects being built.”
Lisa Linowes – June 27, 2016
A journalist recently contacted windaction.org with questions about Colorado’s latest wind project sponsored by utility giant, Xcel Energy. The 600 MW, 300 turbine, $1.04 billion Rush Creek wind ‘farm’, if built, will span 150 square miles of Colorado’s sensitive eastern grasslands. To deliver the energy to market, Xcel must also construct a 90-mile 345 kv transmission line along a 150-foot wide right-of-way. The project is massive by any measure and the largest considered by the state. Yet, according to the reporter, no one local has raised any concerns which explains the call. Even the reporter — a freelancer from New Jersey where just five turbines (9 MW) spin — admitted having no idea wind had issues.
And why would anyone …?
Big media coverage is dominated by feel-good stories of cheap renewables (and now, apparently, cheap storage) overtaking coal and nuclear. The press, prodded by industry mouthpieces, never misses an opportunity to advocate for federal and state subsidies and their sister mandates that spur green ‘investment’ and leave the public believing that a world of all renewables, all the time is almost here. 
Nice vision, but far from real. In fact, with each oversized, out-of-scale, in-your-face wind project presented, scores of people join the not-so-quiet “war on wind” raging nationwide. For proof, just look at a few of the news stories from the last 45 days:
1) In Indiana, a judge ruled Rush County’s decision to impose larger safety setback distances on the Flat Rock wind facility (180 MW) was reasonable to protect health and preserve property values. The decision is likely to end the project. Another suit pending in Fayette Circuit Court against a NextEra project argues the decommissioning plan violates county regulations. And in Henry County, the Planning Commission denied two applications to erect meteorological towers used for measuring wind speed and direction. The towers are the first step in siting a wind project. Each vote to deny was met with applause and a standing ovation from the public.
2) Blowback over wind turbines impairing military operations prompted the North Carolina state senate to pass a bill restricting turbine sites. State leaders recognized the importance of protecting the economic benefits derived from hosting military bases, including thousands of jobs. Local benefits delivered by wind pale in comparison. Similar concerns are being raised in New York and Texas, where the Texas legislature is also considering a bill to protect military base missions.
3) A proposal to erect 2-dozen turbines standing up to 660-feet tall in Cumberland County, Tennessee has outraged residents and caught the attention of Senator Lamar Alexander, Congresswoman Diane Black, State Senator Paul Bailey (R-Sparta) and Representative Cameron Sexton (R-Crossville), all of whom are united in their opposition to the project. Senator Bailey highlighted one of the many failings of the proposal when he wrote “The wind turbine project proposed for Cumberland County would take us in the wrong direction for economic development in the Upper Cumberland. Tourism is over a $17 billion industry in Tennessee and it would be a step backwards to mar our scenic beauty with unsightly turbines.”
4) Wyoming’s Joint Revenue Committee has asked its staff to draft two bills that would increase taxes on wind, including one that would require wind developers to transfer a portion of the federal wind production tax credit to state coffers. When Converse County commissioner, Jim Willox, insisted the severance tax on oil and gas can’t be compared to a tax on wind since the fossil industry removes (severs) non-renewable products from the ground and are forever lost, State Senator Cale Case snapped back that wind turbines destroyed viewsheds. “With wind, that viewshed is lost forever. It is severed,” he said. Talk of taxing wind has delayed the outlandish 1,000 turbine, 3,000 MW Chokecherry Sierra Madre. [1]
5) In Vermont, the electorate is inflamed over the visual, environmental and health impacts of the spinning towers. Governor Peter Shumlin has been described as one who “loves wind turbines and hates the people who live next to them.” He is leaving office this year to the delight of many. At least three of the candidates vying for his seat – Bruce Lisman, Peter Galbraith, Brooke Paige – are openly running on a ‘NO Wind’ platform.
We could go on describing the intense fights now happening in New York, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, New Hampshire, Maine, Oklahoma, Ohio, Oregon, Massachusetts … you get the picture. But don’t expect big media to notice. After all, these fights don’t fit the national narrative honed by the wind industry that up-plays the image of turbines operating in concert with man and nature and downplays, or flatly denies the harms. While big media and big wind are busy forcing the vision they want, communities are taking aggressive action to limit wind’s negative impacts and will ultimately lead to far fewer projects being built.
[1] The State of Wyoming is the only state that imposes a wind energy tax which equates to $1 per MWh.
U.K. voters’ decision to exit the European Union sent shock waves through world markets today, including the energy sector. The consensus from policymakers, clean-energy advocates, and analysts was that while “Brexit” will not completely derail the EU’s efforts to reduce carbon emissions under the Paris climate accord, it will certainly throw a spanner in the works.
READ AT: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601776/brexit-brings-chaos-to-europes-clean-energy-goals/
“This is an Interview that we did for Irish radio at our abandoned house in Roscommon .I am posting this in response to some questions about how we dealt with the wind farm noise issues ,did we get compensation from the developer ,did the developer buy our house any why we had to abandon our home, and why we did not sue the Developer . There are seven families in County Cork who are in litigation against a developer after they and their children abandoned their homes over six years ago .We were offered the same legal team on a pro bono basis and declined the offer for two reasons ,one was the fact that we are both over sixty years old and were not prepared to spend six years or more fighting an entity with deep pockets and time on their hands,sure they only have to stretch things out in the hope that we might die before we get to court .The second reason was that having spent the rainy day money buying a new home exposing ourselves to any further loss if we lost a courtcase was a chance we were not prepared to take .We did however over a two year period and at our own expense travel to over 40 village halls and community centres across Ireland whose beautiful places were going to be destroyed by Industrial wind turbines to alert people to the noise torture that we had endured for two years an the associated health issues so that they at least had the truth from two victims and could make an informed decision about Industrial Turbines in their back yards .Dorothy and I were blessed that we had the funds to move on buy another house and try to get back to the people that we were before we we victimised by this Government and corporate greed. Our hearts go out to you if you are being tortured and cant escape .”
Michael Keane
Below you will find a link to the open letter written to the Prime Minister of Canada, the Minister of Health and Associate Director at Health Canada requesting a meeting with the Minister to discuss compliance by the wind turbine industry with the Radiation Emitting Devices Act and wind turbine industry compliance obligations, and the need to conduct an investigation of related complaints.
The letter includes issues with the design of Health Canada’s wind turbine noise and health study with interpretation of the results, and implications regarding the fact that wind turbines fall under the Radiation Emitting Devices Act as industrial Act.
We have been informed that there are numerous signatures supporting this letter. Those who wish to add their support can do so by contacting Barb Ashbee at barbashbee@gmail.com.
Open letter to Prime Minister Trudeau regarding industrial wind turbines June 2016
Thank you to CCSAGE and Barb Ashbee: https://ccsage.wordpress.com/2016/06/23/an-open-letter-to-the-prime-minister-of-canada/
“But we’re not normal down here in Windham, and haven’t been since Big Wind”
Windham in Wonderland.
This commentary is by Nancy Tips, who is a member of Friends of Windham.
Have you read Lewis Carroll’s books about Alice recently? “Alice in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking-Glass” are meticulous depictions of very bad dreams. As such, they present a bit of a challenge to normal readers. But we’re not normal down here in Windham, and haven’t been since Big Wind, in the form of Spanish mega-corporation Iberdrola, came our way. For many of us, these books are a vivid portrait of daily life. Like Alice, we inhabit a disorienting, chaotic dimension, where time and space are altered. We are either very, very big, or very, very small. Nutty despots play crazy games with us, and we aren’t able to know the rules. Logic and ethics stand on their heads. In fact, Alice’s trials are astonishingly like our own.
Take the distortion of time. Alice enters a rabbit hole and falls and falls and falls. She falls for years, giving her plenty of time to apprehend the unutterable strangeness of her situation. Us too: in 2012 Iberdrola declared they would know in a matter of months whether or not to put wind turbines in our town; instead we had nearly four years of not knowing, during which we suffered the profound transformation of our stable world into its opposite. Four years gave us plenty of time to notice that property values and property maintenance are meaningless, given the threatened installation of 20 mammoth energy factories nearby. It was plenty of time for hints, rumors, fabrications, and veiled promises and threats to turn friends into people we barely recognize. It has been plenty of time for us to wonder at our powerlessness, while being told that we can just vote the threat away, on Iberdrola’s terms and Iberdrola’s timetable; and plenty of time to consider that, voting it away, we apparently open ourselves to an endless chain of new battles with new developers, stretching into eternity. Eternity? Surely we’ve already lived it.
And finally, there’s the question of logic and ethics. In Alice’s Wonderland and in ours too, the codes we have tried to live by are turned on their heads.
Then there’s Alice’s being compelled to stand by herself against deranged despots who force her into grotesque games. In “Through the Looking Glass,” Alice plays a menacing game of chess with the erratic Red Queen; the rules of the game seem always out of her reach. For us, it’s Iberdrola’s turbine proposal, presented to us as the opening move in a high-stakes game. The rules of this game are likewise unknowable: until recently we didn’t even realize that Iberdrola’s proposal was a maneuver. Instead we imagined that it represented the corporation’s true intention. Now, although we don’t really know, it appears that perhaps it was a disingenuous feint; that our town is supposed to “negotiate;” that we are expected to create “setbacks” and “noise standards” and demand that Iberdrola adhere to them, ignoring our opponent’s experience, size and wealth and our own lack of same. Alternatively, perhaps we should hire a lawyer and experts (fees estimated to start at $100,000, according to one experienced negotiator) and turn our fate over to them. Only in a nightmare would a state invite mega-corporations to assault its villages, and then expect each village to develop a nuanced and successful defense entirely on its own and at its own expense. Perhaps, like Alice, we will eventually wake up from this dreadful dream.
And finally, there’s the question of logic and ethics. In Alice’s Wonderland and in ours too, the codes we have tried to live by are turned on their heads. Alice’s code involves manners and morals; the freakish sadists of Wonderland interrogate and abuse her in order to prove her code’s non-existence. In Windham, our logic and ethics are codified in our town plan. Among many other provisions designed to benefit the town and the region, our plan prohibits industrial wind installation in our forested land. This plan is no ordinary assembly of ideas: it cost us years to develop; it is based on careful study and the advice of land-use experts; it was required by the state and admired by regional planners. But our own freakish sadists, Iberdrola and its Montpelier cronies, have declared non-existent the logic of our plan’s development and its place at the heart of our orderly community. As for ethics, our town leaders refuse to support an industrial installation that will almost certainly result in increased flooding for our downstream neighbors, in our flood-prone region. As you might imagine, this ethical consideration is little more than a ponderous joke in the amoral, unprincipled Wonderland in which we’ve been forced to live.
So, if you want to understand and empathize with the plight of certain Vermonters, you might want to read “Alice in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking-Glass.” If you are unfortunate enough to live in Vermont anywhere near a ridgeline and a powerline, you will definitely want to read these books. They will serve as a primer on what your life will be like when the wind developers come, as they almost certainly will, to your town.
READ AT: http://vtdigger.org/2016/06/22/nancy-tips-windham-in-wonderland/
On June 1, OSPE sent a letter to Premier Wynne imploring the government to consult with engineers before implementing its cap-and-trade program. On June 14, OSPE received a response from the Premier that appeared to be a form letter intended for critics of the Climate Change Action Plan. The Premier’s response did not address OSPE’s main concern that the government does not consult with engineers before implementing policy.
So yesterday, OSPE sent a second letter to Kathleen Wynne:
READ AT: https://blog.ospe.on.ca/advocacy/letters-premier-wynne/
Mothers Against Wind Turbines Inc. 