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Animals and turbines, Destruction from turbines, ERT Appeal, fighting big wind., Government corruption, harm to wildlife, How to Fight Big Wind..., legal challenges, Ontario Wind

Divisional Court January 22, 2014- Going Down a Rabbit Hole

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Cheryl Anderson

Interested observers continued to give up their personal time to attend the Divisional Court hearing today.  About 40 people attended.  It is wonderful how many people have been willing to come from the County in the middle of the week to support PECFN.

Sitting in the Court one begins to wonder about the whole process.  PECFN is here to defend the decision of the Environmental Review Tribunal.  The Tribunal is not in Court.  The Ministry of Natural Resources is not in Court and yet the decision of that ministry to allow species at risk to be killed, harmed or harassed at Ostrander Point is being discussed at length.  The Tribunal was a creature of the MOE and yet the MOE trying to prove that the Tribunal made the wrong decision.  Shouldn’t the MOE be supporting its own creation?  Myrna asks “Are we going down the rabbit hole here?”

The Gilead and Ministry of Environment lawyers spent the morning discussing whether the Environmental Review Tribunal’s decision was in conflict with the Environmental Protection Act and why there was no evidence given about the numbers of Blanding’s turtles at Ostrander Point, the amount of vehicular traffic or the potential increase in vehicular traffic if the project is approved.  Throughout, the 9 turbine Industrial Wind Turbine project at Ostrander Point was described as a” Public Infrastructure Project”.  As you can imagine, this description made the majority of the observers gag!  The next topic was the suggestion that the Tribunal should have considered alternatives to the project – i.e. made a provision that the roads be closed to the public and offered to approve the project with that condition.   Again there was protracted discussion about the relationship between the ERT and the ESA permit issued by the MNR.

Eric Gillespie spent the afternoon responding to the arguments of the MOE and Gilead.  At this juncture we have to say a very special “Thank you” to Natalie Smith.  Natalie spent the fall analysing the ERT decision and preparing for the counter appeal by Gilead and the MOE.  She has been at Eric’s side throughout and provides the extra knowledge to make sure that we are successful in defending the appeal.

Justice Nordheim put a little wrinkle in the proceedings when he asked Eric to show him where in the ERT analysed the difference between “serious” and “irreversible”.  He wanted to be able to follow the ERT’s reasons for coming to the decision that the Gilead project would cause irreversible damage to the Blanding’s Turtles at Ostrander Point.  Of course, Eric and Natalie were able to find several instances in the decision that showed the analysis of the ERT and how they came to the decision to turn down the Gilead project.

The appeal continues tomorrow morning at 9:30.  The APPEC appeal is scheduled for Thursday afternoon.  I will report on the final few hours of the PECFN appeal tomorrow evening when I get back to the County.

Thank you to everyone for your continued support and for the encouraging messages.
Cheryl Anderson

Animals and turbines, Destruction from turbines, Environment, fighting big wind., harm to wildlife

Birds and wind turbines at a crossroads

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Written by Donna Lueke –   Beacon News, Dec. 3 2013

Two environmental issues are at a crossroads here on the shores of Lake Erie. Two of our most prominent natural resources seem to be on a collision course.

Birds and birders flock to the shores of Lake Erie. There is more of a concentration of bald eagle nests here than anywhere in the United States except Alaska. The Atlantic and Mississippi Flyways converge near here. Each spring this area is the home of the largest birding event in the country, The Biggest Week in American Birding, which last year helped attract more than 70,000 birders from all over the world. Economic impact studies conducted by Black Swamp Bird Observatory (BSBO) and Bowling Green State University show that visiting birders spend more than 30 million dollars in the local area each spring. The internationally renowned Kaufman Birding Guides and the Black Swamp Bird Observatory (BSBO) have made Ottawa County their home.

Energy costs are high in Ottawa County. Here where the water meets the shore, the winds are frequent and strong. Wind turbines are being constructed at schools and private industries all over the area. As a green, clean, renewable alternative to the fossil-fuel-fired plants, wind power is becoming a popular choice. Yet, even with government subsidies, wind power is still an expensive alternative form of energy. The other significant negative with wind power is that birds, especially songbirds, eagles and other raptors, can be killed by wind turbines.

Read rest of article here.

Animals and turbines, Destruction from turbines, harm to wildlife, US Wind

Wind Power Is Brought to Justice -Wall Street Journal

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By Robert Bryce  November 28,2013
The Justice Department announced late last week that a subsidiary of Duke Energy  has agreed to pay $1 million for killing golden eagles and other federally protected birds at two of the company’s wind projects in Wyoming. The guilty plea was a long-overdue victory for the rule of law and a sign that green energy might be going out of vogue.As Justice noted in its news release, this is the first time a case has been brought against a wind company for violating the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. The 1918 law makes it a federal crime to kill any bird of more than 1,000 different species. Over the past few decades, federal authorities have brought hundreds of cases against oil and gas companies for killing birds, while the wind industry has enjoyed a de facto exemption. By bringing criminal charges against Duke for killing 14 golden eagles and 149 other protected birds, Justice has ended the legal double standard on enforcement.

While it is heartening to see the Obama administration finally following the law, Justice’s decision might also indicate that the green bubble is about to burst.

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Consider data from the American Wind Energy Association, an industry group. In 2012, when federal subsidies were flowing, wind companies installed a record 13,131 megawatts of new capacity—about 6,500 turbines. But installations have tanked this year amid uncertainty over the extension of the federal production tax credit, which offers companies a hefty 2.3 cent per kilowatt-hour subsidy. During the first three quarters of 2013, the domestic wind industry installed a mere 70.6 megawatts of new capacity. Wind-industry lobbyists are desperately trying to get the production tax credit extended again before it expires at the end of the year. The Duke case won’t endear them to the public.

The renewable-energy craze may also lose its lustre as the public discovers how expensive “green jobs” are. Texas is the top wind-energy state in the nation. But in January Texas Comptroller Susan Combs  reported that each wind-related job in the Lone Star State is costing taxpayers $1.75 million.

There is also a public backlash against ruining scenic countryside with giant wind turbines. The outrage spans from the United Kingdom to Wisconsin. Last year, to cite just one example, about five dozen landowners in Herkimer County, New York filed a lawsuit against the owners of the Hardscrabble Wind Power Project. Their many complaints included reduced property values and excessive noise. To judge from news reports, suburban and rural residents don’t want 130-meter-tall windmills in their neighborhoods. They also don’t want the constant noise the turbines produce, or the relentless blink of the turbines’ red lights all night, every night.

Definitive proof that the green energy bubble has burst will come when the government brings more legal action against renewable companies for violating U.S. law. That may be happening: The Fish and Wildlife Service has 18 active investigations into bird kills at various wind-energy projects. Seven have been referred to Justice for prosecution.

And it may not be limited to wind energy. Last week, Chris Clarke  of the California public television station KCET reported that the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, a new solar-thermal plant in the Mojave Desert, killed 52 birds in October. Many of the birds were apparently killed by the intense heat generated by the project’s mirrors. It appears that the project is attracting birds, which means the deaths may increase when the facility reaches capacity. Mr. Clarke went on to opine that the solar-thermal projects now being built in the California desert “could well depress bird populations from the Arctic to the Panama Canal.”

Apologists for wind and solar power insist that wind turbines only kill a few birds while climate change is the real threat. Last month, in a letter to The Wall Street Journal, an official from the American Wind Energy Association said that wind energy “enables the U.S. to develop a diverse energy portfolio better equipped to fight climate change—the number one threat to wildlife, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.”

Perhaps that’s true. But everyone is threatened when the law is not applied equally, and so the Justice Department should continue ruffling the feathers of lawbreakers in the green-energy business.

 

Animals and turbines

The Acoustic Ecology Institute: “Animals directly affected by some aspect of living near wind turbines”

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The Acoustic Ecology Institute: \”Animals directly affected by some aspect of living near wind turbines\”.

via The Acoustic Ecology Institute: “Animals directly affected by some aspect of living near wind turbines”.