County News
Adventures in Wonderland
Environmental Review Tribunal members Heather Gibbs and Robert Wright listen to arguments made by lawyer Eric Gillespie.
Ostrander Appeal turns to industrial wind turbine impacts upon humans
After many, many hours of expert testimony from dozens of witnesses, the Environmental Review Tribunal examining the decision to approve an industrial wind turbine project at Ostrander Point is shifting gears this week, turning from plants and animals to humans.
For the better part of the last two months ERT panel members Robert Wright and Heather Gibbs have heard how nine 500-foot high turbines, the 40 truckloads of concrete needed to form the base to support each structure, the football field spinning wingspan of each turbine, as well as the road system needed to string these behemoths together will impact birds, bats, butterflies, turtles and indeed the very special alvar habitat that exists on this South Marysburgh shoreline. The have heard experts hired by the wind developer counter that while animals and birds will indeed be harmed by industrializing this bit of Crown land—the damage to the species involved will not be so great as to be irreversible.
That is the test. So great is the province’s desire to see industrial wind turbines spin across Ontario’s horizon—the full weight of the government, its ministries and it hired talent are employed to clear regulatory obstacles for developers. This means that in Demorestville, folks from the Ministry of Environment and those from the Ministry of Natural Resources are in the strangely contorted position of supporting the destruction of the animals and habitat it is their job to protect—as long as the damage may be reversed at some point time down the road.
The ERT panel has heard from Ministry of Natural Resources staff, one of whom is employed to count carcasses at the base of industrial wind turbines for three years after the machines are erected. If the kill rate exceeds a certain MNR-established threshold, more monitoring is prescribed.
Last week Gilead Power flew in University of California at Davis Researcher Fraser Shilling from Sacramento to testify that turtles are slower than motor vehicles. But, Shilling testified, if vehicle speeds on the road network linking industrial wind turbines at the Ostrander site are monitored and enforced the Blanding’s turtle should survive. Moreover if the developer creates an artificial habitat nearby to accommodate the turtles displaced by the massive turbine bases, it is “unlikely to suffer serious and irreversible harm.”
“The roads by themselves won’t be enough to fragment the Blanding’s habitat,” explained Shilling.
Though an expert in the restoring connectivity of natural systems bisected by roadways, Shilling has never worked in Ontario. Nor the Great Lakes. Nor an alvar habitat.
Under-cross examination Shilling acknowledged he didn’t know how many Blanding’s turtles populate Ostrander Point.
Prince Edward County Field Naturalists lawyer Eric Gillespie asked Shilling if only three Blanding’s turtles lived on the site and one was killed in the construction whether that would amount to “serious and irreversible harm.”
Shilling said it would.
Gillespie countered that Shilling was in no position to conclude that serious and irreversible harm was unlikely to be caused to these turtles without first knowing how many lived there.
This is how the hearing goes. Long debates about whether someone is qualified to testify about an extremely narrow aspect of the natural life systems that exist at Ostrander Point. Then some say the harm is irreversible other say it isn’t. No one says harm won’t occur as a result of this industrial development.
The test is much higher for PECFN than the developer. They must persuade Wright and Gibbs the harm will permanently alter the ability of the species or habitat. The developer only needs to show the harm is unlikely to be permanent.
TURBINES AND HUMANS
Today the hearing turns toward the risk the proposed industrial wind turbines pose to human health. This appeal has been taken up by APPEC (Alliance to Protect Prince Edward County).
The test is bit lower for APPEC in that it must prove serious harm to human health, but not necessarily irreversible harm.
“APPEC will present the latest acoustical, epidemiological and medical research, as well as the testimonies of Ontario wind victims,” writes Henri Garand, APPEC chair. “While previous ERT appeals featured a battle among experts, this time Ontario residents will recount the adverse health effects they personally experience when living next to wind turbines despite supposedly protective setbacks.”
The hearings continue this week at Sophiasburgh Town Hall in Demorestville. They are set to begin at 9:30 today, Thursday and Friday.
One thing that is typical of hearings like this is that oppositional factions appear or are created, which gives the impression that there are two opposing and correct views. Some of the internal conflicts within each side that challenge this correctness are things like: 1) People drive fossil fuel cars to hearings to advocate against wind energy and to protect turtles from roads; 2) Wind energy machines are designed and chosen to be big to make renewable electricity and money, which can make it challenging to reduce their ecological footprint; 3) Conserving alvar and turtle habitat is hard when wind projects are built on them, but it is also hard where there are towns, farms, and roads; 4) Wind turbines are loud and so is the persistent hum of global climate change from fossil fuel burning; 5) Some of the anti- witnesses would be happy if the renewable energy machines were built somewhere else, some of the pro- witnesses would not be happy if a turbine was planned for their backyard. Given these conflicts and the nature of the hearings, it would be worth the Province’s while to come up with a different process that provided better solutions.
@ Mike Barnard… this issue has indeed created many tangled webs of deceit and misfeasance. On your part the sources you present as “major, solid” sources of reference all receive funding directly or indirectly from political (Liberal Democrats) and Wind Industry aligned sources such as the Tides Foundation. In fact, a major source of funding for the “desmogblog” can be traced back to Tides via the Suzuki Foundation. This is all well and good if you apply the biased attributes to either side. Another example is that two of the “major” studies regarding real estate values in proximity to Industrial Wind Turbine developments were funded by the NREL and then “peer reviewed” internally by their own publications editors.
Even the corporate entity you are employed by, IBM, profits greatly from Industrial Wind Turbine development. Your views and representations can hardly be considered balanced and unbiased.
Wind farms don’t harm human health, anti-wind campaigners do. 17 major reviews world wide of all of the available research by credible, independent groups have cleared wind farms of health impacts. Meanwhile, studies in the UK, Australia and New Zealand point the finger at anti-wind lobbyists spreading health fears and jacking up stress. http://barnardonwind.wordpress.com/2013/02/17/wind-farms-dont-make-people-sick-so-why-the-complaints/
As for Mr. Garand, when asked he provides as sources for his information http://www.masterresource.org. Let’s look at that site, shall we?
Masterrource.org is a libertarian, fossil-fuel supported, climate-denialist blog. It is associated with the Cato Institute and the Heartland Institute, both of which are organizations promoting global-warming denialism and anti-renewables astroturfing. It’s principals worked for Enron and other fine-upstanding environmental organizations. It gets funding from the Koch Brothers and other mid-sized undiversified fossil fuel companies for its aid to them in continuing to be allowed to pollute and cause global warming.
http://checksandbalancesproject.org/tag/cato-institute/
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Robert_L._Bradley_Jr.
http://www.desmogblog.com/chip-knappenberger
Mr. Gillespie, as has been pointed out, loses and loses, yet keeps getting paid. Most recently, he and his clients were kicked out of court and their evidence dismissed, yet about one nanosecond later he issued a press release claiming victory in remarkable inversion of the truth.
http://www.pembina.org/blog/714
Ramball Deep? You have to be financed by the wind energy industry?
‘Junk science’ regarding human health? No one, including the provincial government and the Ontario wind energy industry, disagrees any more that IWTs do cause ‘noise annoyance’ to some living in proximity to IWTs.
WHO, Health Canada, and other bodies, both national and international, also agree that any continuous ‘noise annoyance’ can lead to negative health impacts which can also be accumulative. The cumulative effects can lead to heart problems including cardiac arrest and even death.
Anyone to claim it can never happen is the one who is ‘burying his/her head in the sand’.
The oil sands and burning coal have nothing to do with the debate.
There are no oil fired energy plants in Ontario? What do the oil sands have to do with wind energy?
Coal can be burned with up to 97% of the contaminants ‘scrubbed’ using existing technology. Not that it matters as Ontario’s decreasing energy requirements could have allowed all the coal plants to have been closed by 2007 without a single IWT being built.
I didn’t know there were any rubber tire burning energy plants in Ontario so can’t respond to that……………….. ? 🙂
The addition of a totally new and additional energy producer, wind(and solar for that matter so there are two) that can only exist through enormous subsidies and ever increasing hydro costs and by all the available evidence is uneconomical, unreliable, inefficient and with every material used in both 100% non-biodegradable and includes some of the most toxic man made materials around makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
Please do tell? Give me a single credible and proven benefit wind(or solar)power have ever contributed to the world’s energy needs?
Andrew Watts
Right on, Andrew Watts. Re. tire burning plants…Lafarge and other cement makers who are, by the way, the most polluting plants in the world want to save money by burning tires. We stopped the Bath cement plant from endangering our communities with dioxins thanks to an honest Environmental Review Tribunal. I say honest because the Ministry of Energy paid lawyers to fight us. Shame on them! hj
Who is afraid of the truth? Listen carefully to those who have lived next to the turbines. People do not abandoned their homes for trivial reasons. This will be the first full ERT where this evidence will be heard.
Using wind as a fuel doesn’t change the need to measure ALL power generating systems by the same standards. Wind energy fails by any measure.
The only adventure in wonderland here is Eric Gillespie! We have heard all of this nonsense over and over. This is not the first time the issues have been brought up and Mr. Gillespie has lost. In fact, what has he ever won other than releasing funds from unsuspecting NIMBYs who continue to bury their head in the sand.
Now we will hear all of the junk science regarding human health.
What about the oil sands in Alberta or the burning of coal and rubber tires for other industrial applications.
Oh – I forgot – these things are not in YOUR back yard.
Ramball
Ramball Deep should forget about his back yard and check his back pocket. These dangerous industrial wind turbines are sucking money out of everybody’s pockets. They are an intermittant source of energy that keeps the coal-fired generators going even when they are not needed. The electricity is not needed and can’t be stored so we pay millions to off-load our extra to the US. The resultant rise in our electricity costs push our industries south to cheaper climes. To add insult to injury our municipalities are muzzled by the Green Energy Act.
Read Jeremy Lifkin’s, The Third Industrial Revolution to learn how to make all our homes, businesses and factories independent micro producers of electricity. hj
So glad to hear that the truth about these things is coming out in this tribunal for all of Ontario to wake up and see the lies created by the Ministries of the Environment and Natural Resources to make information just “disappear” like they have been doing to falsify all our environmental protections. Shameful! The gullible people who have never questioned our government before are getting an eye-opener of how important it is to be informed and to use their democratic right to vote and take action.