Ontario Wind

Wainfleet mayor takes aim at rising hydro rates

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Wainfleet Mayor April Jeffs Rob Houle January 21, 2014 St Catherine Standard

April Jeffs is ticked off at rising electricity rates.

The Wainfleet mayor asked fellow regional councillors Thursday to support her motion to ask Premier Kathleen Wynne to “take immediate action” to prevent rate hikes forecast to rise 42% over the next five years.

“I’m presenting this motion … more as a resident and small business owner,” Jeffs said after presenting her motion to council. “I do think it’s something we can all agree on, we’re already in a strained economy and these increases are negatively impacting our residents and businesses.

“With small to medium (sized) enterprises being the backbone of the province and comprising a large portion of Niagara businesses, it’s absolutely crucial that these rate increases stop.”

Read rest of article here.

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

Property Rights, Scotland Wind

Turbines Topple Property Prices

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Dolan Nolan – January 22, 2014 – The Kerryman (North Kerry)

FINUGE HOMES LOSE VALUE… AND A SALE HAS COLLAPSED

PROPERTIES are already losing value in Finuge because of plans to locate ten massive turbines there, locals claimed at a protest meeting on Monday night.

One house sale collapsed at the last minute as buyers were about to sign on the dotted line immediately after controversy flared up over the plans by Stacks Mountain Windfarm Ltd.

Locals say they are in no doubt the sale of a house closed to the planned windfarm site collapsed because buyers didn’t want to own a home in an area that could be dominated by the massive generators.

Up to 200 people attended the public meeting in Finuge on Monday night at which anger over the plans was palpable. The vast majority of people living in the Ballyhorgan area of Finuge are fiercely opposed to the windfarm as they fear the planned 157-metre turbines would impact on their homes, cause noise and shadow flicker and affect health.

One Banemore woman who attended the meeting told how shadow flicker from a turbine behind her home is ‘constant’ and likened the noise from the turbine to a ‘plane’ in evidence that hit locals hard on Monday.

It’s expected that hundreds of individual objections to the plan will be lodged in the coming weeks as Finuge prepares for a fight locals believe will have lasting implications for all of north Kerry. HUNDREDS OF objections will be lodged by Finuge locals as part of the community’s first formal move in its fight against plans to erect giant wind turbines in the low-lying rural area.

Anger was palpable at a massive public meeting in Finuge on Monday night attended by up to 200 locals fiercely opposed to the plans which are currently before Kerry County Council.

Company Stacks Mountain Windfarm Ltd hopes to erect the ten tallest wind turbines ever seen in the State – at a height of 157 metres – in the heart of the farming community. The turbines, labelled ‘monstrosities’ by locals on Monday, would dwarf even the Great Pyramid in Egypt as well as Dublin’s Spire.

Locals say the visual impact of the turbines would utterly transform the attractive community – officially a heritage village – devalue homes, cause noise pollution and ‘shadow flicker’ and lead to a general deterioration of the quality of life in the community.

And many are now of the feeling that north Kerry is being ‘sacrificed’ by local government to supply the county’s windenergy requirements with large tracts of populated areas categorised as potential windfarm locations – from the Stacks Mountains over to Lerrig Lough in Kilmoyley.

“These things are going to be huge,” committee member Anne Quilter told Monday night’s public meeting at Dromclough National School. “Bird’s big wheel is forty metres tall, these will be four times the size of that going up here.”

Anger was also directed at the apparent downgrading of large parts of north Kerry, including Finuge, as being of ‘no scenic value’ under the new County Development Plan (CDP). “That makes me angry. I chose to come here and make my life in north Kerry,” Ms Quilter said.

“The CDP suggests that Kerry should produce one third of the nation’s renewable energy, to do that they are going to locate most of the windfarms in north Kerry…we have to fight this,” Ms Quilter said, also rejecting claims the development would result in jobs: “This is going to decimate our community.”

Clinics are to be held all week in Dromclough school where the windfarm committee will help people fill in objections. Chairman Gerry Doyle is urging locals to ring Kerry County Council planners to ensure the plan is validated as quickly as possible as no objections can be lodged before then.

The five week deadline for objections is meanwhile ticking down.

Among the most forceful evidence of windfarm impact heard on the night came from Banemore woman Shirley Thornton who said that shadow flicker and noise had reduced her quality of life. “I actually have these at the back of my house..the shadow flicker is constant coming in and the noise is like planes flying overhead.”

Locals in the Irremore side of Finuge said they can hear the Banemore windfarm – two-anda-half miles from their homes.

But the committee are optimistic at the outset of the fight. They are receiving guidance from a similar group that succeeded in blocking a wind development in Offaly.

The committee also revealed its plans to launch large balloons to the height of the turbines in an event designed to give people a real idea of the scale of the proposed development as well as to garner more publicity for their cause.

Visit Link to find original story:

http://kerryman.newspaperdirect.com/epaper/viewer.aspx

 

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Citizens across the province ask: “Is Ontario still a democracy?”

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We live in such a bizarre time. Ideology and greed has overtaken our ministries and government. The biggest loser will be wildlife habitats and the creatures that live there. How incredibly sad.

CCSAGEadmin's avatarCCSAGE Naturally Green

[Here is an opinion piece from the Prince Edward County Field Naturalists.]

Citizens all across Ontario have been asking themselves this question.
Over the past decade, municipalities and planners have participated in provincial programs to preserve our important natural heritage. People have joined together to help by participating in planning for the Niagara Escarpment, Oak Ridges Moraine, and countless smaller areas. They have contributed funds to conservancy and land trust organizations to allow the purchase and protection of significant natural areas.

In spite of all this, the Ontario government’s Green Energy Act has allowed developers to plow roughshod over important natural habitat. The Prince Edward County Field Naturalists will be in Divisional Court from Jan 21-24 to defend an Environmental Review Tribunal decision they won last July to stop an industrial wind turbine development at Ostrander Point Crown Land Block. The Ministry of Environment and the developer, Gilead Power, are appealing…

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P.E.I. arenas say their new wind turbines an expensive ‘burden,’ want them removed

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Abigale Subdhan | January 16, 2014  National Post

Several Prince Edward Island rinks that were convinced to make the expensive conversion to wind power, but never saw the promised savings, are now trying to get rid of the trouble-plagued turbines and win compensation for their troubles.

“We went into debt to purchase this windmill on the promise that it would make us money and it would help us with our power costs,” said Tom Albrecht, vice-president of the South Shore Actiplex in Crapaud, P.E.I., which spent $70,000 and received another $230,000 from the federal and provincial governments to install a turbine.

“The bottom line is buy us out and give us our money back.”

Read the rest or article here.

Autism, Children Affected, fighting big wind., Government Misrepresentation, Health, Health effects from wind turbines, Noise, Ontario Wind, Protecting our children

Committed Citizens Can Change The World

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people unitedTurbines Not As Benign As Promised            Susan Smith  Niagara This Week    January 14, 2014

It was recently found in the German Supreme Court that the Enercon Wind Turbines are performing much louder and with potentially greater harm to people than previously determined. The Enercon turbines, E82, height 124 meters and E101 height 135 meters (with blades 183.5 meters or 602 feet in height) are proposed for the 77 Industrial Wind Turbines in the Niagara Regional Wind Corporation Project in West Lincoln. These turbines are among the tallest in the world.

The World Health Organization guarantees that we should be able to live without the negative effects of noise which can interfere with communication, annoy our psychophysiological systems, effect our productivity and social behaviour and cause noise induced hearing impairment. Are we going to have such guarantees with the planned project in West Lincoln?

Children living and attending schools within the proposed wind turbine project will be exposed to low frequency noise, acoustic noise, mechanical noise and infrasound. Children with asthma, Asberger’s syndrome, epilepsy, bronchitis, autism, ADD, ADHD, CAP are more greatly affected by extraneous noise. These children may have more sleeplessness, headaches and jaw issues. It may be more difficult for them to comprehend in reading and process mathematics if turbine noise interferes with their learning.

Many of the children at non-participating homes will be close to the minimum 550 meters from a turbine. Host farmer children, according to information from the NRWC project, may be living much closer than 550 meters from an IWT. This will mean that host children may live in homes much closer to wind turbines than the current Ontario guidelines allow.

Read the rest of this excellent article here.

German Wind, Government Misrepresentation

Germany’s Bavaria Moves To Kill Off Unsightly Wind Energy Industry Using 10H Rule

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By Pierre Gosselin No Tricks Zone January 13,2014
Windkraftwerksprojekt auf Langenzenner Flur gestoppt
Industrial wind projects in Bavaria are on hold pending the new siting rule.

I got an email from the head of an Ontario wind-turbine protest-group seeking information about wind power development in Germany.

Ontario, it appears, is poised to industrialize its landscape – thinking this will somehow lead to nicer weather. The head of the protest group wrote that the Ontario windpark promoters and lobbyists “are continually referring to Germany and their Energiewende and how successful their implementation of renewables is in that country.”

First off, the claim that the Energiewende in Germany has been successful is an outright lie, and it shows that Ontarian leaders haven’t done their homework on wind power and renewables. The German politicians and activists who spread that myth forgot to mention that 1) German power rates have skyrocketed due to the feed-in act, 2) industries are now threatening to leave, citing costly and unreliable energy supply, and 3) protests against windparks in Germany are becoming increasingly fierce as nobody wants them in their backyard anymore. Moreover, the outputs are far from what was promised. More than ever plans for new windparks are being forced offshore. But there too the technical problems, and thus profitability problems, are great.

So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Germany is drastically scaling back its subsidies for renewable energies and windparks. Last year alone Germany saw a 55% plunge in solar investments, and over the last 2 years Germany’s solar manufacturing industry has been all but obliterated. So much for the green dream.
– See more at No Tricks Zone.

Protecting our children from Industrial Wind Power Emissions is our first priority!