Thank you very much Councilor LaLonde and Mayor Bain. Don’t tell me CanWEA didn’t wine and dine you. Everything that has come out of your mouths on this for the past 2 years are direct quotes from this lobbyist group. You’ve been scammed.
COMBER — The proposal for what would be Canada’s largest wind farm ran into a surprising amount of flak at a planning meeting Monday, but still won a 6-4 vote from town council to move ahead.
Brookfield Renewable Power hopes to win a contract from the Ontario Power Authority to start building its $600-million wind farm next year.
About 111 of the 120-metre high turbines would be built in Lakeshore and another 37 in nearby parts of Kingsville.
More than 100 farmers and homeowners packed the community centre for a three-hour meeting that heard passionate arguments both for and against wind power.
The farming community in the eastern half of Lakeshore has generally been strongly in favour of wind power. But some farmers — even those who have signed leases that could bring them $10,000 or more a year in payments — said they are having second thoughts as a construction start looms.
Some farmers are worrying that their farm value could go up enough that increased taxes would cut too much into the revenue from the turbine leases.
Deputy Mayor Bob Sylvester, who favours wind energy, strongly denied a suggestion from one resident that “wining and dining” of councillors had anything to do with the town’s approval of the project.
“There has been no wining and dining,” Sylvester said.
“We’ve not circulated any invitations for wining and dining,” Ian Kerr, a senior manager for Brookfield, told the meeting.
Numerous residents who aren’t going to benefit directly from lease payments said they were worried about property values going down within the “view shed” of wind turbines. In relatively flat, treeless Essex County, the giant turbines are expected to be visible for 10 kilometres or more.
The setbacks the town intends to enforce from homes and farms to remove the risk of noise or falling ice from the blades were also questioned.
“Why is it that you have to ruin the entire landscape of the county?” asked Robert King of Stoney Point. He said wind power is going to contribute relatively little to Ontario’s future energy needs. “Our property values will go down,” he said.
Proponents pointed out the creation of jobs in the construction of the turbines and for ongoing maintenance. About $500,000 a year in property taxes will also go to the town, county and province annually from the Brookfield project.
Barb Bellemore of Stoney Point said she hopes to have a turbine go up on their farm and “we’re very proud of it.” She said she’s visited wind farms in Europe and elsewhere in Ontario and sees them as a sign of the future.
Coun. Francis Kennette, who voted against the rezoning for the Brookfield project, said wind energy has been poorly planned by the province. Taxpayers are heavily subsidizing the development of wind energy without any proof that a single fossil fuel plant will be able to be closed, he said.
Kennette would have preferred Lakeshore to host a smaller 10-turbine wind farm on a trial basis for a year or more before having to deal with a project as large as Brookfield’s.
© The Windsor Star 2008
Filed under: Ontario Wind Farms, Problems Wind Energy, Renewable energy, Truth about wind, Wind farms, environment, environmental fraud, greenwashing, rural communities, wind turbines
