Category Archives: Government Misrepresentation

Cost Benefit, Government Misrepresentation, Green Energy

Unmanageable

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green windWhere does the money go? Global News has presented a series of stories over the past few weeks painting a troubling picture of rural Ontario residents struggling to pay soaring electricity bills. In a particularly telling interview, Ontario’s new Energy Minister, Glenn Thibault, was forced to admit he didn’t know how many residents have had their electricity disconnected because they couldn’t pay— nor was he aware if anyone in his department was keeping track of this information.

Thibault’s suggestion? Residents should conserve electricity. Besides, his government has a new support program designed specifically to help low-income Ontario residents pay their electricity bills. Relief of sorts perhaps, but more along the lines of putting one’s thumb in a dike, rather than addressing the bigger issue.

All it really does is transfer these costs to the taxpayer.

So where is the money going? Many millions, indeed billions, of dollars are being extracted from customers and taxpayers to fund rising electricity costs. Is it paying for research and development into electricity storage so that perhaps one day, intermittent generating sources (i.e. wind and solar) might serve a useful purpose? Is it being used to offset the hardship faced by low income Ontarians? Is it funding Ontario infrastructure development or green transit plans? No, no and no.

Maybe it is funding a network of charging stations across the province, including one planned for the King Street parking lot in Picton? No. Perhaps it is helping to pay the $14,000 subsidy Ontario pays purchasers of electric cars? No.

As it turns out, much of this money is going into the pockets of a few developers, investors, pension funds and corporations. It’s called profit—and a handful of companies are profiting handsomely from your electricity bills.

Scott Luft has been poring over the mounds of data produced by the Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) and other sources for the past six years. Luft’s research and analysis, compiled on his website coldair.luftonline.net, is an important resource for anyone interested in understanding what has gone so terribly wrong with Ontario’s electricity market. Luft has methodically revealed, and laid bare, the destructive politically driven management of Ontario’s electricity system and shows why residents will be paying for these decisions for decades to come.

According to Luft’s analysis, Ontario electricity customers have subsidized wind and solar energy producers by $6.4 billion over the past decade. Worse, the rate of subsidization is climbing rapidly. We are on track in Ontario to subsidize wind and solar producers by more than $2 billion in 2016 alone.

This is money going directly from consumers into the bank accounts of producers. This doesn’t include the many millions of dollars Ontario spends, or forgoes, each year offloading excess electricity to New York or Michigan from intermittent wind and solar generators it can’t control. Or the amount we pay smelters and mineral processors to spare them the high cost of Ontario electricity.

How did we get here?

Through the 1990s, Ontario dabbled in renewable energy but couldn’t persuade investors and the capital markets to participate with them. They increased incentives and tax breaks but investors stayed on the sidelines.

Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals came to power in 2003 promising to close Ontario’s coal-fired generating facilities and replace this capacity with electricity generated from renewable sources, including wind and solar. While he successfully closed coal-fired plants, it was gas and nuclear-powered generation, not wind and solar, that filled the gap. (Luft’s charting, based on IESO data, illustrates this clearly).

Still, investors remained stubbornly on the sidelines. So McGuinty doubled down and doubled down again. Eventually, he would agree to pay wind and solar producers as much as 25 times the market price for electricity for up to 20 years—if it appeared to be green. That did the trick. Now, long queues form seeking to join the gravy train each time the wicket opens for the province to buy more power.

Despite a decade of rapid and ill-planned expansion of industrial wind and solar facilities across the province, these generators produce a paltry portion of the province’s electricity—at an extraordinarily high cost. They did, however, provide one important advantage for McGuinty and, later, Kathleen Wynne. The massive turbines and acres of solar panels have proved to be helpful political emblems signalling to urban voters their government is green.

It has won this praise at a very high cost. Sadly, it is Ontario’s rural poor who are paying it.

rick@wellingtontimes.ca

READ AT: http://wellingtontimes.ca/unmanageable/

Environment, Government Misrepresentation

Heresy

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“To be clear, none of this is about sympathy for the planet. If it was, we wouldn’t use the legal might of the Ontario government to exterminate endangered turtles and bats that get in the way”

green windMay 20, 2016.  Posted in The Times

To be sure, the $7 billion the Ontario government wants to spend in its latest plan to tackle climate change is a mere drop in the bucket.

Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk last year tabulated the cost of the Ontario Liberals’ energy policies. She calculated that between 2006 and 2014, Ontarians paid $37 billion more for electricity than they should have. And, if left unchecked, we were likely to spend an additional $133 billion for electricity by 2032.

Lysyk didn’t know that Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals were just warming up. In the aboutto- be-unleashed plan cooked up by Wynne, her Environment Minister, Glen Murray, and the folks they listen to, 12 per cent of us will be driving electric cars by 2025 (0.16 per cent of us are driving them now), and new homes will be heated by electricity. It will be the law.

Nevermind that the electricity powering these cars and fossil-fuel free homes will continue to be generated by natural gas. After all, we continue to build massive gas-fired electricity generating facilities in Napanee and Sarnia. It is the press release that matters—not the facts.

Automakers and large homebuilders already have their hands out. They know how this works. They have already signalled that accomplishing these goals will be a monumental challenge for them, and they are willing give it a shot, if, of course, it’s Wynne and Ontario taxpayers footing the bill.

Pop-up businesses are emerging out of thin air to get in the way of the money—to snag contracts doing any number of silly and useless things. Few, if any, will achieve anything that measurably affects the Earth’s climate. But that misses the point altogether.

To be clear, none of this is about sympathy for the planet. If it was, we wouldn’t use the legal might of the Ontario government to exterminate endangered turtles and bats that get in the way. We wouldn’t actively work to minimize the importance of their loss. We wouldn’t sanction the swatting of 300,000 of birds out of the sky each year. We wouldn’t industrialize raw and rugged land for useless, intermittent and expensive energy generation. And we wouldn’t work to bankrupt conservancy and nature groups and their donors seeking only to do what governments have failed to do.

If it was about the planet we would care about such things. We would care about nature.

Instead Ontario’s climate change policies are exclusively about appealing to the faithful. They are about exploiting the vulnerable. Those who have been psychologically badgered and beaten over the past decades with the catechism that they are the cause of the end of days—and only through repentance and rejection of self-indulgent lifestyles can they fix the Earth’s weather. Only through sacrifice can they achieve salvation. It is a seductive, effective and proven message.

There is a generation coming of age that knows only this religion. It is all that is taught in Ontario schools. Countering views are held only by deniers, oil companies and other bad people. Blasphemers.

The righteous are now able to look forward with optimism and satisfaction. Their day is nearly here.

“There may be some disruption, for sure, but you can’t really address climate change and not do things differently,” said Keith Brooks of Environmental Defence, rejoicing in the Ontario government’s climate change plan to The Globe and Mail this week. “There may be losers, but there are going to be a lot of winners too.”

That is how these folks see the world. Winners and losers. Faithful and deniers. There is no middle ground. No room for discussion or debate. You are in, or you are out. And the truly evil bit is that Environmental Defence, Kathleen Wynne and Glen Murray will decide who will win and who will lose

Leave aside the fact that humans have a persistent track record of doing the most odious things in defence of righteous conviction, let us look more narrowly at the road ahead.

When the state decides it will choose who wins and who loses in its economy—it is always the individual who is most vulnerable. Big business and investors are far too agile. They will transform instantly into whatever shape makes them the most money. Besides, they’ve invested heavily into 90 Liberal fundraising events over the past two years to ensure the cash continues to flow their way.

READ MORE: http://wellingtontimes.ca/heresy/

Adverse Health Effects, Corruption, Government corruption, Government Misrepresentation, Noise, The problem with Wind Turbines

Damning report of the Polish national auditor on wind developments

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Wind Power Complex installations demonstrate a common, reoccurring  and global pattern of adverse effects and harm.  The following  mirrors the range of issues being reported and documented by impacted residents in Ontario, Canada.

Massive conflict of interests, no adequate measurement of noise and deliberate misinformation of residents.
stopwiatrakom.eu
A NATIONAL ONLINE PLATFORM
FOR SAFE WIND TURBINE SETBACKS FROM HOMES

 

13 May 2016

The president of the Polish National Audit Authority (NIK) told a parliamentary committee on 12 May 2016 that in up to one third of all the rural municipalities covered by the NIK investigation, decision makers responsible for granting permits for wind farm developments, or close family members of such local officials, were beneficiaries of land leases for these projects.

These are the findings of a multi-year study by the Polish Audit Authority, which sought to investigate if the public interest was adequately safeguarded in the planning and permitting process for publicly-subsidized wind power developments. Krzysztof Kwiatkowski, NIK president, told the parliamentary committee on infrastructure that the study included a total of 70 inspections in 51 municipalities and 19 county-level local government administrations.

In 90 per cent of inspected municipalities, local authority’s approval of wind farm developments was made contingent on the developer’s funding the preparation of planning documentation or making donations to the municipality. Yet, under Polish law such expenditures must be covered from the municipality’s own budget. According to the Polish Audit Authority, such actions may give rise to conflict of interests between the developer’s preferences and the interests of municipalities and local communities.

Mr Kwiatkowski also noted that the existing regulations on noise measurement did not guarantee “reliable [assessment] of nuisance resulting from the operation of a wind farm”. Specifically, under the existing regulations noise was measured at low speed levels, with wind speed below 5 m/s. However, the noise is most intensive at wind speeds of 10-12 m per second, which are optimal for wind turbine’s performance. Furthermore, the regulations did not require measurements of other impacts such as infrasound and shadow flicker, according to President Kwiatkowski.

The Polish National Auditor also noted that in the absence of clear laws and consistent caselaw of courts, wind farms were occasionally built in areas of outstanding landscape value.

The inspections also disclosed that in one third of the municipalities there were conflicts of interests involving “individuals who were primary beneficiaries of wind farm projects”, that is people who concluded land lease contracts for wind turbines. Such people tended to be “mayors, members of their immediate families, municipality officials, council members” who had approved changes to local zoning plans enabling the construction of wind farms in the first place.

The Polish National Auditor also questioned the manner in which local communities were being informed about the planned developments. At times, meetings were announced in a manner intended to make it difficult for interested residents to attend and then the failure to attend such meeting was considered to imply consent on the part of local population.

Source: http://www.cire.pl/item,129196,1,0,0,0,0,0,prezes-nik-w-sejmie-o-nieprawidlowosciach-dotyczacych-lokalizacji-wiatrakow.html (12.05.2016)

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Article originally posted on: friends-against-wind.org

Government Misrepresentation, Green Energy

Gridmonsters attack!

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In his April 26 Letter to the Editor, Energy Minister Bob Chiarelli wrote that “for the first time the cost of producing electricity from wind is below the average cost of producing electricity in Ontario.”

Using this Orwellian “doublespeak”, Chiarelli failed to mention that under his 20-year “Feed-in Tariff” (FIT) contracts, we pay wind energy corporations much more, not less, than the rates we pay for each kilowatt of the hydro, nuclear or gas-generated electricity that wind energy replaces.

In addition, in Ontario, most wind and solar energy is generated when not needed.

In fact, wind and solar “farms” have become troublesome “gridmonsters”.

They are uncontrollable, cruel and unreasonably costly.

Gridmonsters have a licence not only to kill, but also to bill.

Enabled by Ontario’s Green Energy Act , they drive up electricity prices while ravaging rural neighbourhoods and wildlife.

They are malignant tumours attached to our electricity grid.

They will continue to force electricity rates to rise unless we act now to bring them under rigorous control.

When gridmonsters were in their infant stage, we were able to store their fluctuating output in rechargeable batteries for later use in electric cars or household power.

But they have grown much too big for batteries, and they keep growing because governments keep feeding them subsidies.

Gridmonsters were created by huge wind and solar corporations that lobbied governments for subsidies that guaranteed ongoing profits.

That was the beginning of the scam, to which governments and citizens succumbed because of our fear of climate change.

But unlike other energy sources, the sun and the wind cannot be turned on and off when demand fluctuates.

On dark and still nights, gridmonsters lurk in rural fields.DSCN3152

Then, when the sun shines or the wind blows, they invade power transmission lines.

With government permission, they replace cheaper electricity from hydroelectric power, nuclear, or gas plants. Electricity rates then rise.

When the wind dies or when the sun is obscured, the Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) routinely fires up recently-added backup natural gas power plants.

Rates routinely rise again.

Whenever we can’t find consumers for this unneeded electricity, we pay solar and wind energy producers to not produce power. Rates rise more!

Gridmonsters keep metastasizing. Ontario is exporting more and more excess green energy to Quebec or Michigan, at a loss of millions more dollars every month.

Rates keep rising.

Amazingly, the Ontario government recently invited proposals for even more subsidized, unneeded and unreliable wind factories and solar farms.

In his April 26 letter to the editor, Chiarelli tries to make us believe that subsidized “renewable energy is now a level playing field with other forms of generation!”

To what end?

We now know gridmonsters cannot fight climate change. Ontario’s professional engineers report wind and solar factories are actually causing an increase in carbon dioxide emissions.

The federal government is an accomplice.

It budgets our tax money to support the proliferation of provincial green energy fantasies.

It ignores its responsibility to protect endangered and migrating wildlife from habitat destruction and migration hazards, and to protect humans from unhealthy turbine noise.

It ignores its duty to safeguard Charter rights of rural citizens seeking quiet enjoyment of their homes.

Rural municipal governments know that wind and solar factories damage local economies and tourism.

They realize gridmonsters are hazardous to humans and wildlife, drive up electricity prices, devastate neighbourhoods, depress property values and erode municipal tax bases.

Provincial and federal governments do not care about local constituents, endangered and migrating wildlife and electricity prices.

Rural municipal governments do care.

They need to regain their authority to manage energy-related industrial developments in their own back yards.

If we can’t consume the energy generated by gridmonsters at the moment it’s produced, we need to store it, or get rid of it affordably.

It would probably be better to get rid of the politicians and the legislation that caused this problem.

One way or another, we must put a stop to the gridmonster scam.

McPherson is a retired professional engineer, now living in Tweed, where there are no industrial wind turbines

READ AT: http://www.torontosun.com/2016/05/07/gridmonsters-attack

Environment, Government Misrepresentation, Health

In China, the true cost of Britain’s clean, green wind power experiment: Pollution on a disastrous scale

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This Article is making its rounds again.  If you have not seen it yet, after you read it, you won’t look at a turbine the same again.  Turbines are far from GREEN!

article-1350811-0CF36063000005DC-625_634x286This toxic lake poisons Chinese farmers, their children and their land. It is what’s left behind after making the magnets for Britain’s latest wind turbines… and, as a special Live investigation reveals, is merely one of a multitude of environmental sins committed in the name of our new green Jerusalem

On the outskirts of one of China’s most polluted cities, an old farmer stares despairingly out across an immense lake of bubbling toxic waste covered in black dust. He remembers it as fields of wheat and corn.

Yan Man Jia Hong is a dedicated Communist. At 74, he still believes in his revolutionary heroes, but he despises the young local officials and entrepreneurs who have let this happen.

‘Chairman Mao was a hero and saved us,’ he says. ‘But these people only care about money. They have destroyed our lives.’

Vast fortunes are being amassed here in Inner Mongolia; the region has more than 90 per cent of the world’s legal reserves of rare earth metals, and specifically neodymium, the element needed to make the magnets in the most striking of green energy producers, wind turbines.

Live has uncovered the distinctly dirty truth about the process used to extract neodymium: it has an appalling environmental impact that raises serious questions over the credibility of so-called green technology.

The reality is that, as Britain flaunts its environmental credentials by speckling its coastlines and unspoiled moors and mountains with thousands of wind turbines, it is contributing to a vast man-made lake of poison in northern China. This is the deadly and sinister side of the massively profitable rare-earths industry that the ‘green’ companies profiting from the demand for wind turbines would prefer you knew nothing about.

Villagers Su Bairen, 69, and Yan Man Jia Hong, 74, stand on the edge of the six-mile-wide toxic lake in Baotou, China that has devastated their farmland and ruined the health of the people in their community
Villagers Su Bairen, 69, and Yan Man Jia Hong, 74, stand on the edge of the six-mile-wide toxic lake in Baotou, China that has devastated their farmland and ruined the health of the people in their community

Hidden out of sight behind smoke-shrouded factory complexes in the city of Baotou, and patrolled by platoons of security guards, lies a five-mile wide ‘tailing’ lake. It has killed farmland for miles around, made thousands of people ill and put one of China’s key waterways in jeopardy.

This vast, hissing cauldron of chemicals is the dumping ground for seven million tons a year of mined rare earth after it has been doused in acid and chemicals and processed through red-hot furnaces to extract its components.

read “much” more : Mail One, By SIMON PARRY in China and ED DOUGLAS in Scotland , 26 January 2011

 

 

 

Government Misrepresentation, Health, Health effects from wind turbines

An ill wind blows as the surge of turbines stirs fears of silent danger to our health

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TENS of thousands of Scots may be suffering from a hidden sickness epidemic caused by wind farms, campaigners have warned.

Andrew Vivers has suffered from headaches since a wind farm was built near his home [PAUL REID]
Andrew Vivers has suffered from headaches since a wind farm was built near his home [PAUL REID]
The Sunday Express can reveal that the Scottish Government has recently commissioned a study into the potential ill effects of turbines at 10 sites across the country.

More than 33,500 families live within two miles of these 10 wind farms – which represent just a fraction of the 2,300 turbines – already built north of the Border.

Hundreds of residents are now being asked to report back to Holyrood ministers about the visual impacts, and effects of noise and shadow flickers from nearby wind farms.

Campaigners fear that many people do not realise they are suffering from ailments brought on by infrasound – noise at such a low frequency that it cannot be heard but can be felt.

One such person is Andrew Vivers, an ex-Army captain who has suffered from headaches, dizziness, tinnitus, raised blood pressure and disturbed sleep since Ark Hill wind farm was built near his home in Glamis, Angus.

Mr Vivers, who served almost 10 years in the military, said the authorities had so far refused to accept the ill effects of infrasound despite it being a “known military interrogation aid and weapon”.

He said: “When white noise was disallowed they went on to infrasound. If it is directed at you, you can feel your brain or your body vibrating. With wind turbines, you don’t realise that is what’s happening to you.

“It is bonkers that infrasound low frequency noise monitoring is not included in any environmental assessments. It should be mandatory before and after turbine erection.”

He is raising concerns about an “acknowledged and unexplained increase of insomnia, dizziness and headaches in Dundee”, where two large wind turbines have been operating since 2006. Mr Vivers, 59, said all medical explanations of his own sudden health issues had been ruled out and it was more than 12 months before he was convinced of the link to the wind farm.

read more: Scottish Sunday Express, By: Paula MurrayPublished: Sun, August 10, 2014

 

Environment, Government Misrepresentation, Protecting our children

Callous Ontario Liberals ignore wind power’s victims

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June 3, 2014 – Sun News – Straight Talk – Jerry Agar

SOUTH KENT WIND FARM NEAR LONDON, ONTARIO Credits: Mike Hensen/The London Free Press/QMI Agenc

 

It is heart wrenching to see and feel the pain of fellow Ontarians breaking down in tears as they explain how the Liberal government drove them from their homes.

But to understand how cold and callous our current political leadership is in this province, you need to experience it.

Rebecca Thompson’s documentary, Down Wind: How Ontario’s Green Dream Turned into a Nightmare (Surge Media Productions), airs on Sun News Wednesday at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m.

It is a story of reckless, agenda-driven politics resulting in shattered lives.

The Ontario Liberal government’s Green Energy Act isn’t just an economic failure; it is an act of brutal indifference to the human cost of politics.

A cost ignored by people living far from the thump of the giant wind turbines, secure in their downtown Toronto homes and politically correct theories; a safe distance from places like Ripley, Clear Creek and Lucknow, Ontario.

Many may not care – worshiping as they do at the altar of so-called green energy – that the jobs promised by the Liberals through their Green Energy Act were never delivered, while the cost of hydro skyrocketed.

But the human cost should matter to us all.

Giant wind turbines, as high as 50 storeys, with blades the size of a 747, were foisted on communities in rural Ontario with no consultation or agreement from the residents, their municipal governments having been stripped of their planning powers by the Green Energy Act.

Unlike politicians who pay lip service to “serving others” while stomping all over people’s lives and looking after themselves, Norma Schmidt spent her life in Underwood, Ontario in the actual service of others as a nurse and instructor of future nurses.

She and her husband spent their lives in the home they lovingly restored over the years; a place they had hoped to share with their grandchildren.

But Norma has been forced out of her home by severe migraines and depression, brought on by the relentless noise and vibration from the industrial wind turbines erected practically in her back yard.

She left both the job and the home she loved, escaping to a room in her daughter’s house.

It is not the life she worked all these years to achieve, and it is not what she deserves.

Do Norma’s tears, and those of others similarly affected, fall to no effect at the feet of Premier Kathleen Wynne?

Norma’s story is one among many, some of them told in Down Wind.

This is the same Dalton McGuinty/Wynne Liberal government that used public money to reward violent aboriginal protesters who seized private property and terrorized people in Caledonia.

That “occupation” continues today and the government, knowing that their voting base in Toronto couldn’t care less about some rubes in the country, keeps the issue quiet by caving into thugs, rather than protecting law-abiding citizens.

Would the government be as forgiving to people across rural Ontario if some were to blow up a few of the industrial wind turbines that have made their lives hell? Of course not.

There are no turbines thumping the night away in Don Valley West or Toronto-Centre.

It remains to be seen whether the people in such ridings, who overwhelmingly voted Liberal in 2011, will care more for their fellow citizens in rural Ontario this time around.

There are any number of political parties to support other than the Liberals.

ERT Appeal, Government Misrepresentation, legal challenges, Ontario Wind

“Unite The Fight” Dinner Another Success!

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Lowbanks, Ontario
May 29 2014

DSCN2114

The Mothers Against Wind Turbines hosted another successful dinner and information night in a recent series called “Unite The Fight.” It was held in Haldimand County on the beautiful shores of Lake Erie, at the Lowbanks Community Hall. Great food was served buffet style and the desert table was sinfully tempting.  New faces and the meeting of old friends and supporters as the relentless invasion of wind turbines continues in Ontario.

The night was one of discussion about wind projects and governmental process grievances.  Updates were given on various legal strategies against the unwanted wind projects. A special focus was made about the Niagara Region Wind Corporations proposal to erect 77,  3 MW turbines in a sprawling foot print, that would cover three counties which would include West Lincoln, Wainfleet and Haldimand.  The project has submitted its reports to the Ministry of the Environment for technicalDSCN2112 review and though its reports have
multiple deficiencies, its approval remains a real threat.  Several members of the Mothers Against Wind Turbines working committees made presentations of activities and actions already undertaken and anticipated next steps. The Trees Not Turbines campaign was underway!

Ontario is currently facing Provincial elections and Municipal elections will take place later, in the fall of 2014.  Renewable energy, wind turbines and electricity rates are hot button topics and politicians are being demanded to articulate their party platforms and to work for the people. MAWT and dinner guests heard some words from Marnie Knight a well-known and longtime community activist in the fight against the wind projects. She is now a declared Mayoral candidate for Haldimand and is running in opposition
to the current Mayor, Ken Hewitt.    Notice of the dinner had been sent to multiple candidates and representatives of the local communities. Toby Barrett MPP of Haldimand Norfolk who is seeking re-election in the Provincial elections, stopped by for dinner and accepted hard questions from community members on wind power, including those from Wainfleet Alderman, Betty Konc who was also dining at the event.  Barrett was challenged to speak to a range of issues surrounding the Green Energy Act, FIT contracts
and renewable energy.

Tara Pitts owner of Burnaby Sky Dive a local business  gave a passionate speech and put a human face on the hurtful impacts, unjust planning process and questionable project placements.  She was very honest about how the ongoing legal battle will likely bankrupt her business.  The receDSCN2127ntly released decision was not favourable for the Pitts and surrounding residents. Industrial wind turbines are being located in proximity to their base of operations and are raising legitimate concerns of safety and the future operational parameters of Burnaby Sky Dive.  Wind turbines, aviation and sky divers, these words paint a picture of deadly risk and speak to a clear lack of any planning common sense. The next step in the tortuous legal path will be an appeal in Divisional Court.  She urged everyone present that this was everyone’s fight and to get angry over the injustices and not to be complacent.  A legal battle may have been lost but it isn’t over,  as she said “the fat lady is only humming but she isn’t singing yet.”

Wainfleet Ratepayers Association in partnership with Mothers Against Wind Turbines Inc launched the start of their Raffle with the monies raised to support the ongoing legal costs involving Burnaby Sky Dive opposition  to the wind turbines.   If you are interested in purchasing raffle tickets they will be available at MAWT events now until the draw in September.  Contact the Mothers Against Wind Turbines Inc.  at their website:
mothersagainsturbines.com

The Mothers Against Wind Turbines Inc have many other events in the works, and next up will a booth at Friday the 13th in Port Dover, and Poultry Fest at the end of June.

Thank you to all for your support!

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ERT Appeal, Government Misrepresentation, Health, Ontario Wind

Moving out: Anti-wind activist leaves Ontario worried for family’s health

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April 25, 2014 – The Independent – Serving Petrolia & Central Lambton

Esther Wrightman feels like she is being evicted from her own home.

The woman who has been at the forefront of the anti-industrial wind turbine movement in Middlesex and Lambton County is moving to New Brunswick.

Wrightman, who heads up the Middlesex-Lambton Wind Concerns group and runs the Ontario Wind Resistance website, put up the for sale sign on her home Tuesday as workers from NextEra continue to put up wind turbines around her home just outside of Warwick. She says it was one of the toughest things she’s ever done. “You feel like you’ve been evicted,” says Wrightman who fears for the health of her family.

“I don’t think we had much of a choice here,” she says. “When you have people in your family with (pre-existing) health problems…you can’t risk it to stay…you have to leave.”

Wrightman has be in the forefront of the fight against a number of projects, including the Bornish and Adelaide projects by NextEra Energy which are right in her backyard. She went to the Ontario Energy Board to try to stop the company from building its transmission wires down the roads in her community, but lost. Now, crews are busy in the neighbourhood putting up one turbine after another.

“It really does make you want to throw up,” she says as she watches the turbines go up in the places which used to be dots on maps in NextEra’s plans. “I know these dots on these maps in my head now, after so many years now – where they are and who they effect …And then you see the dots ripped in the ground…yeah this is exactly what I had imagined. Somewhere in my mind there was a chance it wouldn’t happen…but now it’s holes and concrete… “This is what I thought would happen, but now its worse because it has happened.

“These companies have come in, they won’t be staying as people they’ll be staying as machines but you have to stay and suffer or you have to leave…That does make me angry.”

Wrightman says some of that anger has worn off as she plans to move her family to New Brunswick with her parents. New Brunswick isn’t pursuing wind energy so the family will take its nursery business to the province this summer and start again. The activist may have to return to Ontario. NextEra is suing Wrightman for libel after labeling the company as Next-Terror on line and on placards during some of the dozens of demonstrations she’s been part of. She’s not ready to walk away from that fight.

“They’ve taken my place, taken my home that I was so attached to, and five years of my life fighting,” she says. “I’m determined that they won’t take my right to speak out as a person. I’m determined they won’t take my happiness and they won’t take my health and the health of my family.”

But she admits they have taken away some very precious things – her sense of being rooted in a community and her faith in the political system. “I cannot put any faith in politicians at all…It’s a game and your pawns in their game,” says Wrightman who won’t stay in Ontario to see if an anticipated provincial election will change the situation.

Wrightman says she is concerned for the neighbours she leaves behind and the impression she may leave with others who are still fight projects in their neighbourhoods. “It does look somewhat that I’m pulling up stakes, leaving retreating. I don’t like how it looks. I’m sure the wind companies like it, “ she says. “Some people may say ‘you need to stay you have to stay and help,’ As much as I would like to stay and fight I can’t do that to my family.”

In the end, she says it is a personal choice to leave the province to protect the health of her family. “I’m a voice I’m a single person…this is what happens. We fought, we pushed them back,” she says adding she doesn’t know what to say to others continuing the fight. “When they ask, what could I do, I don’t even know what to tell them – fight government? Fight wind companies? I don’t know. Now, when the wind turbines are up its even harder – it’s almost impossible. They’re not coming down. “It’s a hard pill to swallow.”

See original article here: http://petrolialambtonindependent.ca/2014/04/25/moving-out-anti-wind-activist-leaves-ontario-worried-for-familys-health/

ERT Appeal, Government Misrepresentation, Ontario Wind

Wind Concerns asks Ombudsman to investigate wind power approvals

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NEWS RELEASE

April 14, 2014

Wind Concerns asks Ombudsman to investigate wind power approvals

Wind Concerns Ontario, the coalition of individuals and community groups concerned about the impact of large-scale wind power projects, sent a letter to Ombudsman of Ontario, requesting an investigation of aspects of the approval process for wind power projects.

“Our members, and Ontario municipalities, are very concerned about the lack of transparency that appears to be the hallmark of the approval of these power projects,” says Jane Wilson, president, Wind Concerns Ontario.

“For example, the Ministry of the Environment has ‘deemed complete’ documentation for some projects when in fact environmental studies and assessments for emergency response and aviation safety are not complete and in some cases absent entirely,” Wilson says. “This is not acceptable, and not the ‘fair’ and ‘transparent’ process the government claims it fosters.”

At least one Ontario community has already taken legal action based on the fact it believes documentation to be incomplete: the citizens’ group in Amherst Island filed for a judicial review in March, citing numerous flaws and deficiencies in the wind power developer’s application.

Wind Concerns Ontario also asked about the appropriateness of large wind power developers offering money to municipalities in return for an expression of municipal support, referring to Samsung’s recent offer to the community of Southgate, which was eventually refused by the local government.

“This looks  like Ontario’s small towns are literally up for sale to huge power developers,” Wilson explains.

Ontario municipalities are being allowed to have more input into decisions about large-scale wind power generation facilities, but still do not have a “veto” according to the Minister of Energy, despite community concerns.

View the letter to the Ombudsman here:

April 2014 Ombudsman Letter

windconcerns@gmail.com

Original Article Here: http://www.windconcernsontario.ca/wind-concerns-ontario-asks-ombudsman-to-investigate/