Ontario Farmer © Copyright 2008, Sun Media Corporation
Landowners are starting to ask some tough questions about the real benefits of windpower
Tuesday, November 11, 2008, BY FRANCES ANDERSON, ONTARIO FARMER
The citizens of Ontario are being “greenwashed”, sold on government policy to erect windmills willy nilly across the province – more than 640 in the past five years – without full accounting of the costs.
That’s the charge by Wind Concerns Ontario (WCO), a newly formed coalition of citizens action groups, organized recently in Barrie.
”Because it’s a green policy, many people in Ontario agree with it, without knowing…all the facts. I was one of them,” says Beth Harrington, a volunteer spokesperson for WCO.
Harrington got involved with WCO because she has property in Prince Edward County, which juts into Lake Ontario about two hours east of Toronto. There are six proposals for industrial wind power plants there.
”My particular concern is that they want to put a wind factory in an internationally recognized bird path,” said Harrington. Her biggest concern, however, is that wind energy is neither a safe nor realistic alternative.
These projects are promoted in terms of their ability to supply electricity to a given number of homes, but these claims are misleading, says Harrington. “Turbines can turn at a pace that would power this number of homes, but…wind doesn’t blow all the time, and it (the electricity) can’t be stored. In Europe, (Germany) they haven’t retired one coal-fired plant yet because they need the coal-fired plants to modulate electricity.”
”It’s not reliable. It’s not practical…so why put people’s health, their safety, their sanity and the rural landscape on the line for that?” asks Harrington. “We want to debate this.”
Colette McLean, who farms near Harrow, in the southwestern part of the province, is a member of the Essex County Wind Action Group. She has been investigating the impact of wind turbines ever since AIM Power Gen began leasing land in the Municipality of the Town of Essex.
McLean’s research lead the couple to decline the offer to “host” a wind turbine, but they expect to be impacted by turbines less than 600 metres away on the adjacent farm.
“It’s a very politically incorrect thing to be against wind energy,” says MacLean, who is calm and kindly spoken. “We’re sucking up greenwashing without doing the critical thinking.”
”I’ve heard the mayor talk about “free” energy – but it’s not free! It’s twice the going rate of what the average Ontarian pays,” said MacLean, referring to the Ontario Power Authority’s Renewable Energy Standard Offer Program (RESOP) which pays 11 cents/kWh. “And it’s a 20 year contract!” she notes. “Have we ever, in agriculture, had a 20-year contract with a stabilized price?”
”These guys (developers) are getting big payouts. They can depreciate 50 per cent of the capital expenditures.”
Turbines don’t generate tax windfalls either. The province has capped their value at $40,000/MW for tax purposes, so a $3 million structure will be valued at $66,000 and pay perhaps $2,000 a year in taxes, depending on the mil rate – much less than a $3 million home.
DEVELOPERS HAVE to complete an environmental screening report for every wind farm 2MW or greater. It’s a checklist developed by the Ministry of the Environment (MOE) to identify potential environmental affects and outline measures to mitigate or manage them.
The screening process is “proponent lead” explains MOE spokesperson Kate Jordan. This means the developer does the work, then provides it to various agencies and the public for “review”.
”The company did the screening and tried to pass that off as an environmental assessment,” said McLean. Two of the four major migratory paths for birds in North American cross the area, so it’s environmentally sensitive. She appealed to MOE for the “screening” to be “elevated” to a full assessment, but the request was denied.
There have been 19 requests to the MOE for full environmental assessment of wind farms, said Jordan. None have been granted.
MOE also requires a certificate of approval for noise, and that’s generally what determines how far wind turbines are set back from “sensitive receptors” like people’s homes.
But measuring for the noise that people can hear is not good enough, says Roger Watt, a seasonal resident of Ashfield Colborne Wawanosh, who lives about five kilometres upwind of the EPCOR’s Kingsbridge I wind project and has studied the issue.
MOE’s measure of sound discounts the low frequency vibrations that people can’t hear. “That’s the stuff that walls don’t stop,” said Watt. It can cause resonance in rooms in some houses, and some people can feel the vibration in their bodies, especially their chests.
These vibrations have been implicated in noise-related illness. “There are people all over the world starting to look at this,” said Watt. But so far, MOE’s guidelines ignore it.
NOISE AND VIBRATION are not the only reason for setbacks. Conditions within the land lease agreement itself suggest that, for safety reasons, people shouldn’t be within 400 metres of wind turbines. The challenge, says McLean is “I work my farm. We have students that come in and detassel (seed) corn.”
”I talked to Mike Crawley (the developer) across the kitchen table and asked him about lightening strikes, thrown blades and structural collapse. He said ‘You’ve got to put it in context…it’s no different than a tree falling’.”
”How do you equate a tree falling to a 400 ft turbine with a 67 tonne nacelle at the top?” asks McLean.
Bill Palmer, an engineer with a specialization in risk assessment, has attempted to calculate the risk. “You need a reasonable body of data,” he says, and data on failure tends to be scarce because it’s confidential or commercially sensitive.
However a study in the Netherlands, based on 43,000 turbines hours logged in Denmark, Germany and Holland, identified failure rates.
Ontario which has logged 615 turbines years up to September, has recorded two “blade failures”: one at the Port Burwell wind farm in April 2007, and one at the Prince wind farm (near Sault Ste. Marie) in January 2008. This equates to a rate five times greater than the Netherlands study, said Palmer – possibly because the turbines are taller.
“We’ve seen blade pieces travel up to 500 m (in Denmark). I have trouble, as a risk guy, saying that it’s safe to site the thing 50 metres from a lot line, when there’s one failure in 200 turbine years.”
JOAN MORRIS, who is a partner in a dairy farm southeast of Woodstock in Oxford County, has different health concerns related to wind turbines. She’s part of the Oxford Wind Action group that formed after they got notice that a German company, ProWind is developing a wind energy project less than a kilometre from their dairy operation.
“We were concerned first of all because of stray voltage. Now my concerns would include the effects on the community itself, and potential health issues, says Morris, whose training is in epidemiology and health sciences.
Research from Portugal documents vibroacoustic disease (VAD) caused by wind turbines in certain people, said Morris. It affects the cardiovascular system and can have a number of symptoms from mood disorders to respiratory function and fatigue.
Morris’s concern about health impact is increased by anecdotal reports of illness related to wind turbines in Ontario. She doesn’t discount personal experience because, she says, “everything in public health starts as a case report.”
DAVID COLLING has seen the effects first-hand. He lives within five miles of the Ripley wind farm in Huron Kinloss Township and tests for electrical pollution as part of the livestock nutrition services he offers through Bio-Ag Consultants and Distributors Inc.
So, when some neighbours with electrical collection lines near their homes started to get sick, they called Colling and he found “high frequency electrical pollution” in their houses.
”This high frequency electrical pollution seems to be co-related with health issues,” Colling told Ontario Farmer. “We had four ladies move out”. The line was buried and three have been able to return, though they still report ringing in their ears and sleeplessness.
”There are 30 residences within 1.5 kilometres in our situation – and two dairy farms,” said Morris, “As much as people may or may not be against turbines or an individual developer, this is way too close to people’s homes – and too many homes.”
In the medical field, “you have to prove that something is safe before it can go on the market,” said Morris. She’d like wind power developers to have to meet the same standards.
”Wind Concerns Ontario is in favour of environmentally sound solutions to our energy demands and environmental challenges,” it emphasizes in a press release. Its members just don’t believe that wind energy passes the test of being safe and cost-effective.
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