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Pilots rally behind family
LAKESHORE – A $30-million wind turbine project is on a collision course with Spitfire fighter pilot Jerry Billing — one of Canada’s most famous wartime aviators and postwar test pilot.
Despite Billing’s fame as a much-decorated pilot and honorary citizen of France, Lakeshore planners and Toronto-based wind farm developer Gengrowth never knew about his private airstrip, which has been been there for 40 years. Lakeshore is poised to approve a rezoning for Gengrowth’s Naylor Sideroad wind farm on Monday that could render the airstrip unusable by area pilots, who are rallying to the support of the Billing family.
Billing’s son Erik, who also flies, said Tuesday the family only learned a few weeks ago from a neighbour how close the five turbines would be to their airstrip and hangar on Lakeshore Road 211.
“I think it’s incredible they’ve been studying this for two years and not know we’re here.”
He said his 88-year-old father — shot down three times during the war and who escaped from behind enemy lines — is worried over the threat to his airstrip.
Billing said his father, who is ailing and no longer flies Spitfires but does fly other aircraft, paid for the airstrip’s land with a wartime pension, then built his house alongside.
Federal guidelines suggest the airstrip should get 2.5 kilometres of clearance from the ends of its airstrip to permit unobstructed takeoffs and landings, he said.
But Billing said most of the turbines appear to be within the 2.5-kilometre zone, according to measurements done by the Windsor Flying Club’s Perry Burford.
The 120-metre high turbines are too close and would make takeoffs and landings unsafe in most wind conditions, said Billing, a laid-off Ford of Canada worker.
Billing has been frantically contacting every government agency — local, provincial and federal — on his father’s behalf that might have anything to do with the project. He said he just gets passed from one to another.
Despite two years of planning and review with town and county officials, Gengrowth president Paul Merkur said the company was never told about the Billing airstrip.
“It was really a surprise to us,” Merkur said Tuesday. He said the company has retained an aviation consultant to see if there’s a way to keep the Billing airstrip operational and continue the wind turbine project.
Billing said one of the options suggested by Gengrowth was creating a new airstrip on a neighbour’s field and having their aircraft taxi a kilometre or more on the ground to reach it. “That’s just impossible,” he said.
He said it would be unsafe for small aircraft to taxi that far on the ground, even if neighbours allowed it.
Merkur said the company is willing to look for other solutions.
Lakeshore planning consultant Tom Storey, who is based in Chatham-Kent, said he knew a little bit about Billing the pilot, but not his airstrip.
It’s not unusual for small airstrips, which are not registered with Transport Canada, to escape notice until late in the planning process with wind turbine projects, Storey said.
County planner Bill King said only airstrips registered with Transport Canada were included on a map put together by the Jones Consulting Group during a year-long study for the county’s alternative energy bylaw amendment.
The notification process to the public through direct mailings and media announcements is supposed to raise wind turbine issues that should be directed to town officials to resolve, King said.
Billing said his family and neighbours didn’t pay much attention to the Gengrowth project until one of its turbines moved much closer because of an objection from Essex about its proximity to the town’s residential boundary.
“I don’t know how they’re going to work this one out,” said Lakeshore Coun. Dan Diemer of Monday’s planning meeting.
“The airstrip was there first,” said Diemer. “The site plan will have to be based on making the Billings happy.”
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