What are they thinking? Look at the following pictures of the guardrails being installed in West Lincoln for the Niagara Wind project to protect their hydro poles. They are taken as if viewed while driving north from Smithville and show the random and lack of a consistent pattern in guardrail installation at various locations:
Some guardrails are many feet past the hydro poles and some are
even shorter…
Coming into the bend…
In the middle of the bend…
In front of the neighbour’s house…
Coming out of the turn! Come winter this could be a real danger! People coming out of the turn could slam right into this mess…
This picture is heading south …
Final photo of today’s drive- The section of guardrail doesn’t even cover the hydro pole!
(but it sure does”enhance” the value of the neighbour’s frontage)
APAI President Michèle Le Lay has called on Dr. Tim O’Neill, Chair, and Members of the Board of the Independent Electricity Operator of Ontario to cancel a contract with Windlectric Inc.(Algonquin) due to the inability of the company to achieve its Commercial Operation Date (COD) and comply with its contractual obligations.
In its 2016 Q2 Quarterly Report Algonquin advises that construction is expected to take 12 to 18 months and that the Commercial Operation Date (COD) will be in 2018. This timeline is contrary to what was submitted to the Environmental Review Tribunal and to the Ontario Energy Board. A COD of 2018 is seven years from the date of award of the contract.
Cancellation of the contract at this time would enable the IESO to achieve cost avoidance exceeding $500 million over the next 20 years based on the high cost of power generation at 13.5 cents per kilowatt-hour set out in the contract with Windlectric and based on the IESO’s commitment to pay Windlectric to not produce power when capacity exceeds demand. Cancellation of the Windlectric contract could be achieved without penalty due to noncompliance and would address in part the IESO’s budget challenges and energy poverty in Ontario.
Rick Conroy, in the “The End of Reason” from the Wellington Times, explains the Kafkaesque and cruel nature of allowing the Amherst island project to continue especially in light of the unused power capacity of the nearby Lennox Generating Station and the Napanee Gas Plant under construction.
In summary:
• Windlectric cannot comply with the Commercial Operation Date in its Fit Contract.
• At a time of skyrocketing hydro rates and financial challenges the IESO could save $500 million over the next 20 years by cancelling the Windlectric Contract without penalty.
• Existing nearby generating capacity is almost never used and will increase when the Napanee Gas Plant comes online. Intermittent and expensive power from wind turbines on Amherst Island is not necessary
The End of Reason
Rick Conroy The Wellington Times
wellingtontimes.ca
From Amherst Island, you can see the Lennox gas-fired generating station sitting idle most days. The plant sits just across the narrow channel. It burns both oil and gas to produce steam that, in turn, drives generators to create electricity. The plant has the capacity to generate 2,100 MW of electricity—enough to power more than a million homes. But that electricity is rarely ever used. Over the last decade, the Lennox station has operated at less than three per cent of its capacity. That means it is idle much more often than it runs. Yet it earns more than $7 million each month—whether it runs or doesn’t. Such is Ontario’s hyper-politicized energy regime.
Last Thursday was a warm day across Ontario— one of the warmest in a hot summer. With air conditioners humming, electricity demand across the province peaked at 22,312 MW. Meanwhile, Lennox sat idle all day. As it does most days.
So it seems odd that yet another gas-fired generating plant is emerging from the ground next to the mostly-idle Lennox station. It will add another 900 MW of generating capacity to a grid that clearly doesn’t need any more.
From Amherst Island, it must seem cruel. Within a couple of kilometres, there is enough unused power generating capacity to light millions of homes, yet island residents are being forced to give up their pastoral landscape— for the sake of an intermittent electricity source that nobody needs.
Last week, an Environmental Review Tribunal rejected an appeal by Amherst Island residents seeking to stop Windlectric, a wind energy developer, from covering their island home from end to end with industrial wind turbines, each one soaring 55 storeys into the sky.
Amherst Island is tiny. Just 20 kilometres long and 7 kilometres wide, there is no place, no horizon, no home that can avoid being transformed by this out-of-scale industrialization.
The treachery gets worse. Amherst Island is administered by a council that presides over the larger Loyalist Township from the mainland. Last year, council made a deal with the wind developer, agreeing to receive a $500,000 payment each year the wind turbines spin. It is a lot of money for a municipality that operates on a $12-million budget annually.
But perhaps the most disappointing bit of this story is the damage that has been done to friendships and families on Amherst Island. Just 450 people live here. It swells to about 600 in the summer. It was a close community in the way island life tends to be.
Industrial wind energy has, however, ripped this community in two. Property owners hoping to share in the windfall from the development are on one side and those who must endure the blight on the landscape for a generation or more on the other.
Lifelong friends no longer speak to each other. At St. Paul’s Presbyterian service on Sunday mornings, the wind energy benefactors sit on one side of the church, the opponents on the other. A hard, angry line silently divides this community.
The Environmental Review Tribunal concluded not enough evidence was presented in the hearings to say the project will cause serious and irreversible harm to endangered species including the bobolink, Blanding’s turtle and little brown bat.
The decision underlines the terrible and oppressive cruelty of the Green Energy Act—that the only appeal allowed for opponents is whether the project will cause serious harm to human health or serious and irreversible harm to plant life, animal life or the natural environment. It is a profoundly unjust restriction on the right of people to challenge the policies and decisions of their government as they directly impact their lives.
The folks on Amherst Island weren’t permitted, for example, to argue that the power is unneeded— that this project is a grotesquely wasteful use of provincial tax dollars. Their neighbourhood already boasts enough electricity capacity to power a small country, yet it sits idle—at a cost of millions of dollars each month. It might have been a useful addition to the debate—but this evidence wasn’t permitted.
Nor were island residents allowed to appeal the fundamental alteration of their landscape. Nor the loss of property value. They can’t undo the broken friendships and the hollow feeling that hangs over the church suppers or the lonely trips across the channel.
Wide swathes of reason and logic have been excluded in the consideration of renewable energy projects in Ontario.
To the extent that urban folks are even aware of what green energy policies are doing to places like Amherst Island, they console themselves by believing it is the cost of a clean energy future—that diminishing the lives of some rural communities is an acceptable trade-off for the warm feeling of doing better by the planet.
Yet these folks need to explain to Amherst Island residents how decimating their landscape, risking the survival of endangered species and filling the pockets of a developer with taxpayer dollars for an expensive power supply that nobody needs makes Ontario greener.
Visit Amherst Island. Soon.
Remember it as it is today. Mourn for its tomorrow.
“The Huron County Board of Health has voted in favour of partnering with the University of Waterloo and Wind Concerns Ontario on a study of the health impacts of wind turbines in Huron County.
It was made clear to board members the health unit’s commitment is limited to collecting date and analyzing that data, and nothing more than that, and it was also pointed out the participation of the health unit would not result in any additional costs.
Spokesperson for the Concerned Citizens of Huron Patti Kellar says she’s happy that the board has agreed to move ahead with the study, but maintains it should have happened six months ago. She believes there’s no doubt the study will find a relationship between proximity to turbines and health problems, because she experiences them herself. Kellar says she hopes that once that link has been established the wind energy companies will halt the operation of the turbines, and work with residents to address their concerns. She adds she would like to see them removed, but admits realistically that’s not likely to happen.
Kellar says not everyone feels the affects of the turbines, but maintains people with a health issue will find that aggravated by the turbines, and anyone who is predisposed with a health problem will find that problem will be triggered by the presence of wind turbines.”
Moved by: Member Jewitt and Seconded by: Member Steffler
THAT:
The Board of Health accepts the report of Jean-Guy Albert, Public Health Manager, dated September 1, 2016, entitled Proposed joint investigation to be conducted by Wind Concerns Ontario, University of Waterloo and Huron County Health Unit into wind turbines and reported associated human health effects, as presented for information;
AND FURTHER THAT:
The Board of Health agrees to the request made during its August 4, 2016 meeting for the Health Unit’s participation in the proposed investigation into wind turbines and reported associated human health effects, to be conducted in partnership with Wind Concerns Ontario and the University of Waterloo.
“How do you report that birds are taken, are you counting them, and are they reporting them?” Kasperik asked.
“The short answer is, no,” Abbott said.
“Pretty much with all the projects out there, unless the company that is running that operation is going out there and conducting surveys of their own, there are no data being collected in terms of the number of migratory birds being taken.”
Doug Bell of the East Bay Regional Park District, in a 2007 photo with a golden eagle found near turbines in California’s Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area. The raptor, which had a compound wing fracture, later was euthanized. Janice Gan/Courtesy East Bay Regional Park District
Eagle Take Permit Considered at Hearing
A new federal regulation that would give the wind industry 30-year permits for unintentional eagle deaths was the topic of a recent legislative committee hearing in Casper.
The issue centers on a 2013 U.S. Fish and Wildlife decision that increased the length of eagle take permits from the current five years to 30, but only for wind energy projects and related infrastructure, such as transmission facilities.
A federal judge in California struck down the rule in 2014, shortly after it was issued, after conservation groups challenged it on environmental grounds. This past February the federal government decided it was not going to appeal the court’s decision.
Tyler Abbott, a deputy field supervisor for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Wyoming Ecological Services, told the Select Federal Natural Resources Management Committee that a new rule was emerging as a result of those actions.
“The Fish and Wildlife Service … is in the process of developing some definitions, some draft regulations and an environmental impact statement that could potentially lead to the authorization of an incidental take permit in the future, but right now it’s in development, and it’s not active legally,” Abbott said.
The proposed new rule would continue to allow 30-year permits for wind energy, but it now also includes a review every five years, bringing it somewhat in line with present permit length. The rule also has stipulations that companies seeking eagle take permits work collaboratively with Fish and Wildlife on a bird protection plan.
WEST LINCOLN — When massive transmission towers were erected alongside rural roads, farmers took notice. Now that guide rails have been installed alongside them, those concerns have been amplified.
Since the rails were installed in close proximity to Port Davidson Road several farmers have reached out to the local office of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture to express their concerns. Chief among them is road safety.
“The poles raised concerns about safety, being that close to the road,” said Henry Swierenga, OFA member services representative. “The guiderails are even closer. It’s a concern for the farm community and the travelling public. Unfortunately, we’ve had incidents involving farm equipment in the past and this just adds to the risk.
“There’s not a lot of room to get yourself out of trouble.”
According to Montreal-based Boralex, which owns a 25-per-cent stake in the Niagara Region Wind Farm project, the guide rails have been installed to follow provincial road safety regulations and with the approval of the local municipality.
“We have contracted a professional engineering consulting firm to do the design of these, including defining how close to/far away from the road the guide rails should be,” said Marc Weatherill, project manager, via email. “That said, we have asked them to keep the guide rails as far from the road as possible so that there is room for larger vehicles and equipment to pass through, particularly farm equipment.”
Weatherill said they are working with the municipal and regional governments on the placement of the guide rails.
“We are working together with local representatives and professional advisors to do what we can to keep the guide rails away from the road while still abiding by road safety regulations,” he said.
Farmers say those considerations are not enough, and the placement will present a challenge in just a few weeks when the harvest begins.
Cash crop farmer John Sikkens said it’s a risk every time he takes his large machinery down the road. While the majority of drivers are patient with farmers, there are some who are in such a hurry they put themselves and farmers in danger, he said. Sikkens said there is not much room to pass as it is on rural roads in the township, as shoulders are close to non-existent. He suspects the guide rails will present challenges come fall when crops like soybean and corn need to be harvested….
The Concerned Citizens of Wallace and Mapleton are meeting the challenges of wind power development head on and held a community meeting attended by over 200 residents on August 15, 2016. The following is one of the presentations given that night.
Niagara Wind blocked access to the West Lincoln McCaffery heritage cemetery at the beginning of August. The guardrails are installed along the rural road edges to protect huge transmission poles required for the sprawling intrusive 77 industrial wind turbine complex.
Responding to complaints a portion of the guardrail has been cut out to allow access to the cemetery.
McCaffery Cemetry Niagara Wind Guardrail now cut to allow access
Guardrails of Niagara Wind
Guardrails and massive hydro poles & transmission lines of Niagara Wind
Just wondered since I have never had a reply to my question regarding all the excess guard rail being put up on Port Davidson Road, if there had been any resolution to what was considered safe and what was considered overkill. I supplied some photos in my last email which I will include again in this email of guard rail that is 6 lengths(approx. 72′ ) and some that is 27 lengths (approx. 324′ ) past the transmission towers. My question was if 6 lengths is safe in one spot (actually more then one spot along the road), why do we need to cover someone’s entire road frontage including their beautiful homes with 27 lengths of this horrible looking guard rail that they need to now trim around weekly and look at day after day??
Going back to the cemetery if only 6 lengths are used there most of the frontage for the cemetery will be open and it will still be safe for motorists. If 6 lengths are not safe enough what is being done to change those areas?
On August 24, 2016, Barbara Ashbee from Ontario wrote to Marie-Eve Héroux, member of the panel developing the WHO Environmental Noise Guidelines for the European Region:
Dear Mme. Héroux,
My name is Barbara Ashbee.
I live in Mulmur, Dufferin County, Ontario and I am writing to submit information on wind turbine noise in our communities to include in your research.
An industrial wind turbine installation had serious impact on our family personally and many others in our neighbourhood, our province, country and globally.
I have met with many impacted families here in Ontario and have corresponded with others out of province. I didn’t know any of these people before the effects of wind turbines changed our lives.
In 2008/2009 my husband and I both had our health seriously impacted after a turbine project started up around our home. The adverse health effects started petty much right away.
We had loud cyclical noise and a vibration and humming in our house that made sleep impossible, ongoing, multiple nights in a row. I had no idea how serious and dangerous sleep deprivation was until I experienced it first-hand. Due to ongoing exposure to the emissions from the turbines our health declined to the point that we had to leave our home.
My husband and I were both healthy and happy adults. We took no medications and we enjoyed life and our work outside the home. We had purchased our bungalow 3 years before the turbine project was built and had done a lot of updating with plans for it to be our retirement home. We were building my husband’s new garage/workshop at the same time the turbines were being built. We had no idea that they were going to cause us problems as we had not heard of any issues from the first phase that was erected in 2006. I was taking photos and sharing them with my family as the project was erected. In fact when one of our neighbours came to us in 2006 and asked if we would have any concerns with them putting one on their property we said of course not.
We were not anti-turbine or anti-wind and we had not been informed by anyone that there were problems.
We were harmed by these wind turbines surrounding us and even as we had engineering noise reports showing out of compliance cyclical noise, a vibration and infrasound measured inside of our home and dirty electricity our government continued to tell us that the wind company was running in compliance and there was nothing they could do. Only after our pleas to our government and attempts to have the noise and vibration problems corrected did we find out that there had been many families before us that had been billeted, bought out by the developer, or forced to move because they couldn’t take living in their homes anymore.
Along with sleep deprivation we experienced headaches, stomach aches, episodes of dizziness, nausea, impaired cognitive and memory function, heart palpitations and chest pressure, infection requiring antibiotics, pressure in the head and ears, a bleeding nose that required liquid nitrogen treatment, and just before we moved out of our home my husband was diagnosed with hyper thyroidism, something he had never had before. We knew what was causing it and informed his specialist. He was not put on any medication and after we moved his levels returned to normal and he has not had an issue since.
Being exposed to the cyclical noise, the low frequency noise and infrasound left us physically ill and with no resolution offered and no ability to shut the turbines off, we were completely disempowered. Unable to have the problems fixed and unable to stay in the home we loved has been very distressing. The realization that our lives were deemed worthless by authorities was hard to take.
Our pets were also affected with one dog in particular whimpering and crying when the conditions were the worst. They were at times antsy, restless and bothered, sometimes crying, sometimes going from room to room. It was not normal behaviour. It was heartbreaking and so we started to look for a place to move. We asked locally about renting a mobile home to park on our driveway to get out of our house. We were not successful. We moved our bed into our detached garage but the noise and vibration was no better. We started to make inquiries about renting another house but with three dogs and 2 cats it was not easy and it is extremely hard to leave everything we had knowing that if they would just shut the project off we could at least get some sleep. We kept hoping a solution was around the corner. We just kept trying to resolve it.
An attempt by the wind company was made to move us to a property that they had purchased one concession over from us but it was rank with mold so we had to abort that. In the end we purchased a tent and we moved our bed, a night table, a lamp and a heater out into the tent and spent our remaining days on our property sleeping outside. The vibration was not as bad as it was in the house and they had agreed to shut 5 surrounding turbines down. While it was pretty cold some nights, it was better than in our house. Our pets slept outside with us.
I am quite confident you will hear the word torturous from other impacted people and I can attest to the fact that description nails it. To be deprived of sleep, with no power to shut the noise or vibration off, to have your health decline from the impacts of the noise, infrasound and vibration in the sanctity of your own home, the very place you normally turn for restorative sleep and relaxation is pure torture. It is unbearable. It is spirit crushing and heartbreaking.
The ultimate insult of having gone through this, to having fought for our home and lost, to losing faith and trust in any authority that we thought was concerned about people’s health and wellness, is to have it happen to even more families in our area and globally because it continues.
Were you to meet any of these families, the small children, the seniors, teens, it doesn’t matter age, gender, race, religion or economic background, if you could meet with these people and listen to them, it would be a huge step in understanding. Please, as you consider the research, the academic input, the physicians, acousticians and others who are giving you information, please also talk to the people. Talk to the ones who have been harmed. Talk with the families who have first-hand experience. You will find their personal accounts and symptoms are the same regardless of what country they come from or what language they speak.
I am appealing to you to investigate fully and to order turbines cease operation until the people have had a genuine hearing of their complaints. Nobody consented to having their lives so negatively impacted. This is clearly a case of terribly flawed policy trumping health and wellness.
It should never have happened.
– Attached is a compilation of statements from wind turbine affected families in Ontario that were drawn from early news reports, personal comments from meetings and testimony from different communities in Ontario. This compilation is a number of years old now and represents a small snapshot of affected families. The purpose for compiling it was to inform our government that the complaints are the same and that they are growing. Hundreds more turbines have been built since and every project has additional impacted families. Not only did early turbine projects cause harm but the newer turbines are much larger and yet the setbacks remain the same. Wind Turbine Impacts in Ontario – A small collection of testimony
– I am attaching an abatement plan, drawn up by Ministry of Environment field officers in our area that ultimately never made it to the public. It was shelved by authorities.
The officers acknowledged and reported on many occasions that they knew people were being harmed and that it was not trivial but nothing happened to help the people they were trying to help. FOI_1NR_03046.pdf FOI_P00_03046_11.12 02.pdf
– This is a link to windvictimsontario.com where testimony, video statements, and interviews of impacted people can be found. Much of this info is found on websites as no ministry or agency in any level of government in Canada has gathered or reviewed the complaints.
In the past 8 years since this happened to us, I could supply reams of letters, documents and testimony all supporting the need for an investigation and for the turbine projects to cease operating so innocent families can live in their own homes and try to recuperate from the turbine emissions that harm them.
The people living among these wind power centers need relief.
That these projects are allowed to continue to operate where complaints, illness and home abandonment have been made is cruel and inhumane.
Please keep me posted on your progress with your research and please contact me if I can help in any way. I am pleading with great urgency that you please help those who are being impacted right now.
There stands to be a landmark Huron County Board of Health Meeting, Thursday, September 1, 2016, starting at 9:00 a.m.in the Auditorium of the Health and Library Complex, Huron County Health Unit, 77722B London Rd., Clinton, Ontario.
Under section 8.1 of the agenda is a recommended motion that
“the Board of Health agrees to the request made during its August 4, 2016 meeting for the Health Unit’s participation in the proposed investigation into wind turbines and reported associated human health effects, to be conducted in partnership with Wind Concerns Ontario and the University of Waterloo”
It is expected that the Board will pass the above motion. Given the public is typically not allowed to speak, I would hope there will also be additional clarification on next steps, providing residents with an opportunity to make informed choices on how each can best support efforts moving forward.
Many people are suffering and I encourage everyone who is able to please attend. A crowd in the public gallery at these meetings is important and powerful. Don’t leave it to others to show up and please pass the word along to family, friends and neighbours.
It takes great courage for people to share their concerns, especially when it comes to something as personal as health. Tremendous efforts on the part of many have brought us to this point and I want to thank all who have worked so hard to ensure the health concerns of Huron County residents are going to be addressed.
The Concerned Citizens of Wallace and Mapleton are meeting the challenges of wind power development head on and held a community meeting attended by over 200 residents on August 15, 2016. The following is one of the presentations given that night.
We were harmed by these wind turbines surrounding us and even as we had engineering noise reports showing out of compliance cyclical noise, a vibration and infrasound measured inside of our home and dirty electricity our government continued to tell us that the wind company was running in compliance and there was nothing they could do. Only after our pleas to our government and attempts to have the noise and vibration problems corrected did we find out that there had been many families before us that had been billeted, bought out by the developer, or forced to move because they couldn’t take living in their homes anymore.
Mothers Against Wind Turbines Inc. 