CTV News reports on protests yesterday by Lindsay, Ontario residents who confronted Premier Dalton McGuinty on the alleged health concerns arising from local wind turbines:
"Have you heard about the children who are getting nosebleeds from these (turbines)?" asked Pontypool resident Mary Cowling.
"Just one child -- one child -- is one too many to suffer the effects of a wind turbine. One little child. And if it was your child, and your grandchild, you would feel the same way as we do and you would fight like we are."
Provincial regulations on wind turbines are among the toughest in the world, McGuinty argued, adding that there's no scientific evidence to suggest that turbines cause health problems.
The province has to move to clean energy sources in order to reduce Ontario's dependence on polluting, coal-fired generation, he said.
The Potential Health Impact of Wind Turbines, a study published in May 2010 by the Ontario Chief Medical Officer of Health, concludes that wind turbines do not pose any significant medical threat to nearby residents:
The review concludes that while some people living near wind turbines report symptoms such as dizziness, headaches, and sleep disturbance, the scientific evidence available to date does not demonstrate a direct causal link between wind turbine noise and adverse health effects. The sound level from wind turbines at common residential setbacks is not sufficient to cause hearing impairment or other direct health effects, although some people may find it annoying.
More on this via Wikipedia: Environmental effects of wind power
A European Commission report has found wind to have the lowest external costs, comprising human health impacts, building and crop damage, global warming, loss of amenities and ecological impact, when compared to coal, oil, gas, biomass, nuclear, hydro and photovoltaic.
Wind energy appears to hold the greatest promise of all clean energy alternatives. While I suppose it is predictable that turbine projects will attract frequent "not-in-my-backyard" styled opposition, the European Commission's comparison of damage costs per kWh for coal, gas, nuclear and wind electricity appears rather difficult to ignore:
For wind energy (one of the more promising renewable technologies to be implemented in some European countries) it should be emphasized that impacts from upstream processes and amenity impacts become important, since no pollutants are emitted during electricity production by wind turbines. These impacts and costs are calculated using emission databases for steel and concrete production - materials used to build a wind turbine and tower. Impacts from noise are quite low. Impacts from visual intrusion are difficult to value. Both impacts can be minimised through planning and consultation. Impacts on birds and animals are negligible when quantified. Human accidents during construction, or due to collisions on sea, are also very small, but can become relatively important when emissions from the production of materials decrease further.
- Garry J. Wise, Toronto
Update: September 17, 2010
Thanks to our readers for the very lively discussion in this post's comments thread.
Note this cautionary report on an ongoing Saskatchewan wind farm lawsuit. Scientifically unjustafiable legal opposition to wind farms could prove to be quite costsly to objecting landowners.
- GJW
Visit our Toronto Law Firm website: www.wiselaw.net
29 comments:
Garry, Garry, Garry - it's not nice to use facts to confront those in the erotic throes of nimbyism. And, as for those kids and their nosebleeds, well if their parents would stop tying them to those wind turbine blades that'd clear up in no time.
Thanks Gary, it seems like quit a few wind turbines are popping up in my state of Minnesota. Green energy is growing all around us. After the oil spill we need to teach ourselves to try wind or solar energy (at the very least) as a backup renewable energy source.
Please note that Dr King's report is not a study but simply a lit. review of three main survey's conducted in Europe which identified a need to further investigate the noise issue since they found that the quality of noise derived from wind turbines was more intrusive than similar levels from other sources such as airplanes, railroads, traffic etc. She did not investigate or interview any residents within wind projects in Ontario. (well over 100 people identified in a survey) An obligation she has ignored, under the requirements of the Health Protection and Promotion Act. Please note as well that Kistofer is basing his conclusion that wind can actually replace fossil fuels, which it can't!!! Ontario Wind ending in Dec/09 produced 80% of its capacity only 3% of the time with many times producing less than 5% for periods over 24 hours. 635 wind generators in Ontario last year produced, 2.3 TWh of electricity. Pickering produced 31 TWh; that is the equivalent of 84000 unreliable, fickle, inefficient wind turbines which would need to cover a land mass of Bruce, Grey and Huron counties using the present Enbridge farm in Bruce county which covers 168 square km with 110 turbines.
Kristofer is also confused since oil is a bit player in electrical generation. Therefore building thousands of turbines will never replace the need for oil extraction if you don't start walking or using your bike and buying all of your goods manufactured within a 5 mile radius of your home. In Ontario the majority of our electrial needs are provided by nuclear and hydro. (approx. 70%) all emission free BTW. As a resident living with 24 turbines withn 5km of my home and farm, I can attest they are noisy but because MOE does not have a scientific methodology that can determine if noise is out of compliance, I have no recourse for mitigation. How convenient for the wind industry. As for indicating that this is all about nymbyism, this is a classical brush off that soon changes when you are the one facing this kind of industrial development 640 metres from your backend.
Since when are "dizziness, headaches, and sleep disturbance" not health issues?
Mound of Sound - Facts? What facts? King never went into the field. Probably afraid to come across some inconvenient facts.
Kristofer - Oil? Backup? What on earth do wind turbines have to do with either of those?
Do any of you live within a mile of a project? Didn't think so...
Do you think these turbines should be surrounding schools? Do you think that 300 young developing minds and bodies should be subject to this big experiment with industrial machines? My 2 young children will have their school in the middle of a 40 wind turbine development. Many of these children will return home in the evening to sleep with these machines turning (and their noise and shadow flicker) in the field behind their home. Many of them will not be able to sleep, and the next morning going to school to learn will be pure hell for them. This is already happening all around the world. People are suffering, that is a fact. Go talk to some of these residents that have been forced from their homes...it's not as pretty as it looks in the green commercials.
This blog post and the pursuant comments are absolutely typical of city-dwellers. You can hurl insults like "NIMBY" all you want but there is absolutely NO danger that someone is going to come along and erect a 626-foot industrial structure right behind your home, that will produce noise and vibration, that will reduce your property value (if not erase it altogether), destroy your community, ruin the rural landscape, kills birds and bats...and all for what? Industrial scale wind development is inefficient and unreliable as well as very expensive. And, while you are all calling for "green" energy, industrial scale wind is nothing of the sort: it is HIGH IMPACT low-return.
A better approach is conservation, improving the efficiency of existing technologies, and use of small-scale wind and solar. Not huge industrial turbines.
Put down your caffe lattes for a moment, Toronto, and head west 1 1/2 hours to Shelburne and ask yourself if you'd like to live in one of those houses with the whomp-whomp-whomp noise and vibration of those turbines all night; or head to Kingston and look at what Wolfe Island has become. Once a beautiful island across the harbour it now has all the beauty and appeal of the St Mary's Cement factor.
Check out the excellent series by Parker Gallant in The Financial Post and see where Ontario's power situation is heading (wrack and ruin); read Tom Adams' take on how Ontario's rush to wind development is going to be ruinous. And readrecent news reports from Denmark where the country is backing off onshore wind turbine developments because of the noise complaints.
As to Dr Arlene KIng's report, that was in no way a medical study but simply a review of carefully selected papers. As Dr Carl V. Phillips has said, these so-called medical reports are "self-serving" and prepared according to an agenda.
Legal minds will be watching the Ian Hanna challenge to the Green Energy Act in Ontario: if large-scale, industrial wind developments are so good for everyone, why did Ontario have to strip away all the municipalities' planning powers to make them happen?
I found the comment by Mound of Sound morally sickening. I know some of these families. I'd like you to sit down and look these kids in the eyes and see how "clever" you are. Can you make fun of kids with cancer too? What a clever boy.
Note that the NIMBY charge is an attempt by a self-selected elite to deny the rights of expression to others. Thank you Mr Wise for allowing countering arguments to be posted to your site and I am hopeful that in your attempts to understand the wind energy issue, you will discover that there is a often stiffled, dark side that is mostly misleading marketing spin promoted by AWEA/CanWEA. Please visit these sites
www. windaction.org, www. windconcernsontario.org, www.wind-watch.org for more information on the devastation that wind is bringing upon rural communities across Europe, U.S, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. In each country the story is the same. Wind developers convince the gov't of the day that wind will counter C02 emissions, reduce the use of coal, provide green jobs. Turbines go up, C02 emissions are minimal, coal plants are not shut down, green jobs are temporary and gone and people are living with intrusive noise robbing them of their restorative sleep and wind developers walk away or buy residents out ordering non-disclosure in the deal.
Look, if we don't break our carbon addiction soon, in 20-30 years the least of your kids' problems will be noisy windmills.
What are your alternatives? More coal? Perhaps you believe in the fantasy of "clean coal."
I don't live in a city, far from it, but I do live in a place that's already feeling the impacts of climate change and this is just beginning.
Why don't you get out of central/southern Ontario for a while. Go north and see what's happening and by north I don't mean the Bruce Peninsula.
If all you've got is to demand that wind power be scrapped and your society revert to coal-fueled electricity, your arguments are empty, meaningless.
Mound of Sound - The Nimby term and its corresponding description of affected people (psychosomatics) is used to marginalize people with real issues. When facts are tabled, the response is "well, would you rather live beside a coal plant?". So the answer is no I chose to live away from cities, and electrical plants. The GEA in Ontario creates a heavily subsidized 'gold rush' to put up IWTs in THOUSANDS of families' back yards. Without recourse. Without compensation. Without appeal. Everything has impacts and IWT impacts are simply denied. Do you research. Understand the business model. Then tell affected people to "suck it up". There is minimal benefit gained from IWTs and significant costs. That's why we're all so pissed off.
Mound of Sound.... we're going to end up building Gas plants to provide stable backup for the IWTs anyways. Cost effective storage is more of a pipe dream than CCS technology so that's not on the horizon. So Gas Plants it is for Ontario. Now if we had replaced the Coal plants with Gas Plants - one for one, tell me, what impact would that have on our electricity prices, on our GHG emissions, and on the health of rural residents. (We won't mention birds and bats - that just makes the discussion way too negative...).
And where do you imagine all this gas will magically appear from except shale fracking? Do you have any concept of what that's doing to other rural people's groundwater? Believe me, if that was in your backyard you would quickly enough beg to have that wind turbine back. Go online and catch the cute videos of folks turning on their kitchen water taps and lighting them afire with a Bic lighter.
Gas is somewhat better than coal but it's not clean and the only way we have for extracting the volumes of gas needed to support a switch over from coal in central and eastern N. America would create a groundwater disaster of massive proportions.
The only clean options are hydro-electric, wind, solar or nuclear. Take your pick.
Mound of Sound's concerns are correct, but his understanding of wind power is incomplete. In short, wind is highly variable and intermittent and therefore cannot replace other sources of electricity. Its destabilizing effects on the grid may even increase emissions from fossil fuel plants forced to run less efficiently in balancing it.
So his question of what our alternatives are should be directed to proponents of wind, which is a nonsolution. And it is one that is not only wasting money but also causing increasing harm itself.
Yes, KM, I suspect wind power is better suited to coastal regions such as my own although we already have so many untapped tidal, geothermal and hydro-electric options that wind might not be competitive.
It's specious to say that the question of alternatives to wind should be left to wind proponents. You're the people opposing these wind turbines, it falls to you to propose the alternative. Make your choice and defend it - socially, economically and environmentally.
Your side recoil at the mention of NIMBY but that just keeps coming through. You want cheap electricity and, but for coal or fracked shale gas, that's not going to happen. If you're content with those sources of your energy at least be honest about it.
I don't think The Mound of Sound got my point.
Even off shore (where North American Windpower just noted it costs 3-4 times as much to erect wind a wind turbine as on shore -- not to mention the similarly increased maintenance costs), wind does not reduce the need for other sources. In fact, a substantial amount of wind on a system prevents the use of more efficient combined-cycle natural gas turbines and combined heat and power plants.
Since this is a discussion about wind, it is enough to point that out. Again: Wind is not an alternative. It does not the relieve the need to come up with real alternatives or to drastically reduce our use.
No KM, I have your point and, for the purpose of my question, I'll accept what you say. That doesn't answer my question. What do you propose for an alternative? Do you think Ontario should remain with coal or fracked shale gas or do you favour nuclear power plants?
An industrial/agricultural province such as yours needs affordable energy and lots of it. Are you content that your province continue to use coal or switch to fracked shale gas? Would you support shale gas production in Ontario?
Just because you seem to want to avoid answering these questions doesn't make them irrelevant to this issue. So, what's it going to be?
Just a couple of other points. I have seen the air you breathe in southern Ontario. In the summer it's quite visible. Structures such as the CN Tower disappear.
About five years ago I went to Ontario in August. I began by visiting relatives in Leamington for a few days before heading off to a reunion in the Muskokas.
While in Leamington I had to go to the emergency ward. I feared I had developed pneumonia. The staff put me through some tests and the results came back that I had developed asthma. I asked the doctor how a 56-year old, non-smoker who had never had asthma could suddenly develop it. He replied that it resulted from breathing your air.
When I returned to the island I mentioned this to my neighbour. The same thing had happened to her brother, a Coast Guard lieutenant and a daily runner when he was sent on a 2-week course in Toronto.
It strikes me as curious how you'll scream over windpower yet will put up with breathing such foul air. If you're really so concerned about your kids, your air is going to be by far the greater threat to their long-term health.
Now to my other point. I receive the publications from Angela Merkel's advisory panel on climate change, the WBGU. As you may know she's a PhD physicist.
After some initial setbacks the Germans appear to be doing quite well with wind power and I'm pretty sure that no one is pulling the wool over Dr. Merkel's eyes.
To set the record straight, the following is from that radical lefty publication, Bloomberg Businessweek:
It's too long to post here but you can find it at
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_19/b4177022147138.htm
It certainly puts many of your claims in an interesting perspective.
But the profits can't be all that uncertain. IKEA has just invested a small fortune in wind farms.
1. Not having an answer for cleaning up Ontario's air has nothing to do with pointing out the shortcomings of wind power, particularly its inability to clean up the air.
2. Why do you assume that critics of wind power are not also working to clean up the air and our environment in general? It's wind power we're talking about here, nothing else.
3. The Bloomberg story clearly describes a major failure of wind: producing energy when it's not needed. This is not a surplus, however, because the flip side is not producing energy when it IS needed.
4. Wind is profitable only as long as governments make sure it is, with generous subsidies and forcing utilities to buy it at inflated prices.
5. Germany just extended the lives of their nuclear power plants and have several new coal plants in the works.
This will be my last comment KM but I thought I should reply to your challenges.
I'll begin by saying I find your arguments dodgy. You're skilled at the art of the far Right, epistemic closure. As though it was some sort of Venn diagram, you amass all the points that appear to support your contention in one set and ignore the others. That's how FOX News operates.
Out of the Bloomberg article, for example, you seized on the comment about surplus wind energy but then swept under your intellectual carpet the paragraph dealing with how wind generators are learning to store surplus energy for use during peak demand. You ignore it because it destroys your already flimsy premise.
As you steadfastly refuse to propose a non-carbon alternative to wind power I am entitled to conclude you wish to continue with carbon-fueled electricity.
Yes Germany has extended the life of its nuclear plants. They're not stupid. They realize the need to rely on a basket of technologies until alternative energy evolves. I do follow their reports, do you?
And then we come to China which is going full bore into wind turbine energy. Do you think the Chinese have fallen for a hoax? In China that sort of thing ends for some poor bugger with a bullet in the back of the neck.
Sorry KM but, to me, you're simply not credible. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if you weren't a fossil fuel troll.
And that's it for me. Adios.
'Twas yourself that presented the Bloomberg piece as proof of wind's success, and now you accuse me of ignoring that for pointing out the parts that in fact describe wind's serious problems.
Storage is not a solution. It's a means of dumping power -- typically for nuclear power, which can't be ramped down. The return is a small fraction of what is put in.
China's interest in building wind is to sell renewable energy credits (an invention of Enron) to the West.
Mound: There are inherent facts about variable wind that you ignore. I'm not against WIND energy, I'm just very realistic about it. So point by point:
China is building IWTs to sell them to us
China is also building mass-produced Nukes
Gas doesn't just come from Shale but I can't help but notice how the companies that are Fracking are the same companies that are building IWTs. now they get to build two sets of power generation when only one is sufficient.
The environmentalists have managed to shut down much of the nuclear industry in the West. Meanwhile, ONLY France is meeting its GHG targets - because it has relied on Nukes. They are also, after exhaustive due diligence finally moving ahead with Bure. If North America had the balls to build two of those, and build next gen reactors, we'd have enough electricity for hundreds and hundreds of years - zero emissions. But these are MACRO issues. If you or I were KING I'm sure we'd be able to make more sensible decisions about power than Mr. McGuinty.
However, its the MICRO issues that started this little debate. So here are some indisputable facts.
1. Number of people who have sleep impacts when IWTs are built within 2km of their residences is > 0 and less than 100%. In some sites, up to 60% of residents are now taking prescription drugs for sleep disorders (Fact) - many of these people were all in favour of IWTs before they started up in their backyards. Recourse for these people - none. Compensation from companies - near zero and only after extreme and exhaustive pursuit by the affected people. The IWT companies know EXACTLY how many people complain, what their symptoms are, and how severe the impact is. I believe that not one single IWT company has released this data. In fact, it is now a universal practice to force a "confidentiality" clause on affected residents in any settlement. That moves settled cases into the realm of 'privileged' information thereby removing it from any scientific studies.
FACT: People leaving within 2km of IWTs lose property value. I've ready the studies that the IWT companies have paid for that proves that property values increase. I'm a statistician. They're bogus. I have spoken to people who have listed their houses for up to 2 years without a single showing. Must be the economy or other factors, I thought, as I looked up at 12 500ft IWTs.
So consider this. IF the Oil/Gas/Wind companies that are taking these subsidies voluntarily implemented a 2km setback - it would be easier for everyone. If they agreed to a property value protection clause (you know sort of like the ones that the Nuclear guys use), it would be easier for everyone. If they agreed to stop telling people, that IWTs don't make any noise, or they don't kill birds, or they're attractive in some kind of ZEN way, it would be easier for everyone. If communities actually had a say about where these went, and how many, it would be easier. And then to absorb all this disruption and loss to your life and see that a fracking gas plant has to be built nearby to back up the IWTs for the 70-80% of the time they don't actually generate any electricity.... a polluting gas plant in my backyard. And then I get to listen to my Honorable Premier tell the press that the "Citizens of Ontario are willing to pay more for clean energy"??? While his esteemed environmental minister decides to move the Scarborough Bluff IWTS to 5kms offshore so that all those environmentally conscious Torontonians won't have to see them as they commute to work in THEIR SUVs. Yeah. From a MICRO view, it just seems to be a little too FRACKING much, pun intended. Pardon me if I get a little emotional about "green" IWTs.
Mound: There are inherent facts about variable wind that you ignore. I'm not against WIND energy, I'm just very realistic about it. So point by point:
China is building IWTs to sell them to us
China is also building mass-produced Nukes
Gas doesn't just come from Shale but I can't help but notice how the companies that are Fracking are the same companies that are building IWTs. now they get to build two sets of power generation when only one is sufficient.
The environmentalists have managed to shut down much of the nuclear industry in the West. Meanwhile, ONLY France is meeting its GHG targets - because it has relied on Nukes. They are also, after exhaustive due diligence finally moving ahead with Bure. If North America had the balls to build two of those, and build next gen reactors, we'd have enough electricity for hundreds and hundreds of years - zero emissions. But these are MACRO issues. If you or I were KING I'm sure we'd be able to make more sensible decisions about power than Mr. McGuinty.
However, its the MICRO issues that started this little debate. So here are some indisputable facts.
1. Number of people who have sleep impacts when IWTs are built within 2km of their residences is > 0 and less than 100%. In some sites, up to 60% of residents are now taking prescription drugs for sleep disorders (Fact) - many of these people were all in favour of IWTs before they started up in their backyards. Recourse for these people - none. Compensation from companies - near zero and only after extreme and exhaustive pursuit by the affected people. The IWT companies know EXACTLY how many people complain, what their symptoms are, and how severe the impact is. I believe that not one single IWT company has released this data. In fact, it is now a universal practice to force a "confidentiality" clause on affected residents in any settlement. That moves settled cases into the realm of 'privileged' information thereby removing it from any scientific studies.
FACT: People leaving within 2km of IWTs lose property value. I've ready the studies that the IWT companies have paid for that proves that property values increase. I'm a statistician. They're bogus. I have spoken to people who have listed their houses for up to 2 years without a single showing. Must be the economy or other factors, I thought, as I looked up at 12 500ft IWTs.
So consider this. IF the Oil/Gas/Wind companies that are taking these subsidies voluntarily implemented a 2km setback - it would be easier for everyone. If they agreed to a property value protection clause (you know sort of like the ones that the Nuclear guys use), it would be easier for everyone. If they agreed to stop telling people, that IWTs don't make any noise, or they don't kill birds, or they're attractive in some kind of ZEN way, it would be easier for everyone. If communities actually had a say about where these went, and how many, it would be easier. And then to absorb all this disruption and loss to your life and see that a fracking gas plant has to be built nearby to back up the IWTs for the 70-80% of the time they don't actually generate any electricity.... a polluting gas plant in my backyard. And then I get to listen to my Honorable Premier tell the press that the "Citizens of Ontario are willing to pay more for clean energy"??? While his esteemed environmental minister decides to move the Scarborough Bluff IWTS to 5kms offshore so that all those environmentally conscious Torontonians won't have to see them as they commute to work in THEIR SUVs. Yeah. From a MICRO view, it just seems to be a little too FRACKING much, pun intended. Pardon me if I get a little emotional about "green" IWTs.
So consider this. IF the Oil/Gas/Wind companies that are taking these subsidies voluntarily implemented a 2km setback - it would be easier for everyone. If they agreed to a property value protection clause (you know sort of like the ones that the Nuclear guys use), it would be easier for everyone. If they agreed to stop telling people, that IWTs don't make any noise, or they don't kill birds, or they're attractive in some kind of ZEN way, it would be easier for everyone. If communities actually had a say about where these went, and how many, it would be easier. And then to absorb all this disruption and loss to your life and see that a fracking gas plant has to be built nearby to back up the IWTs for the 70-80% of the time they don't actually generate any electricity.... a polluting gas plant in my backyard. And then I get to listen to my Honorable Premier tell the press that the "Citizens of Ontario are willing to pay more for clean energy"??? While his esteemed environmental minister decides to move the Scarborough Bluff IWTS to 5kms offshore so that all those environmentally conscious Torontonians won't have to see them as they commute to work in THEIR SUVs. Yeah. From a MICRO view, it just seems to be a little too FRACKING much, pun intended. Pardon me if I get a little emotional about "green" IWTs.
Sorry for the duplicate posts.... Google was telling me that the post couldn't be processed - too large. Oh well.
This post has been updated today with links to a new report on ongoing Saskatchewan wind farm litigation.
Garry J. Wise
Mr. Wise, may I be permitted to suggest that your initial statements show an unfortunate lack of research? You quote Premier McGuinty stating that our regulations “are among the toughest in the world.” Did you examine that claim? Do you find it curious that Ontario allows wind turbines to be located 50 to 60 metres from roadways, railways, and even the lot lines of neighbours (so long as the proponent provides a “Setback Assessment Report.") It also allows turbines within 550 metres from the home of a “non-participation” and sets no limit for the home of someone with a “participating” status. Did you find that unusual if claimed to be “among the toughest in the world” when the manufacturer for wind turbines recommends a setback of turbines proposed in Ontario from roads of at least 300 metres for protection from ice throw, when in Ontario we have seen pieces of ice up to 30 cm by 30 cm by 5 cm on the ground at distances over 60 meters from a smaller wind turbine? It is also curious since in Denmark, any siting of a wind turbine within 6 times of the total height of a turbine to a home causes an automatic assessment to determine a financial compensation (turbines being proposed in Ontario are 150 metres in height – hence this would generate automatic action for a setback under 900 metres.) Ontario bases noise limits on 40 dBA, yet in Germany, in rural quiet areas the limit is 35 dBA. “Toughest in the world?” Really?
The quoted European Commission report (an area that in 2003, when the report was produced, were protecting their status as major exporter of wind turbines in the world) is rather filled with generalites without specifics. One might think that identification of setback distances might be appropriate to state “Impacts from noise are quite low” rather than a statement without any basis. Quite low at what distance? Work in Europe published in 2007 showed that wind turbines cause annoyance at lower sound levels than traffic noise or aircraft noise. Might your research have been more in depth?
Then, Mr. Wise, you state your conclusion, “Wind energy appears to hold the greatest promise of all clean energy alternatives.” Really? What did you compare it with, and on what basis? For example, in the summer of 2010, from June 1 to mid August, on 40% of all days, there were sustained periods from 5 to 32 hours when the aggregate output from 1085 MW Ontario wind turbines was from 0 to 54 MW of their capacity, while in some cases over 5000 MW of coal generation, 7000 MW of Gas, 9000 MW of nuclear, all available hydro generation was in service, and we were buying coal fired generation from the US. Is wind really the alternative with the greatest promise? Unfortunately, wind has the actual characteristic of being most available when least needed – and least available when most needed (based on the last year’s actual Ontario experience.) That characteristic hardly holds much promise.
Finally, today, you add a note identifying the potential penalty of a $450,000 lawsuit against a person who tried to protect his family, following the filing of an affidavit of a Medical Doctor related to the same wind power development which identifies concerns with the proposed setbacks. This would appear to be a “heavy handed” manner of preventing any future action, rather than a responsible attempt to resolve a concern, would you not think?
Sorry, Mr. Wise, your “not in my backyard comment” (and similar comments from some of the commentators) without a careful review of actual facts would appear to be wanting more research.
Dr Nissenbaum's testimony in the Red Lily case can be read here.
The Red Lily injunction has been dismissed -- no mention in this report about the $450,000 threat.
http://www.world-spectator.com/news/newsid35.html
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