County News
Coming up for air
Receptor 254.
Ostrander Point appeal nears the end of the appellants witnesses
It is an ominous contrivance in a process already laden with Orwellian overtones. Each of the witnesses reporting the damage industrial wind turbines have wrought upon their health and well being has now been reduced to a number at the Environmental Review Tribunal examining the approval of a nine-turbine project at Ostrander Point.
Stephana Johnston is Receptor 254. The 82-year-old former teacher can’t live in her home in Norfolk County since industrial turbines were erected around her property. Nor can she sell it. No one even comes to look.
Ed Kenney is Receptor 547. He suffers from ringing in his ears and has trouble sleeping since an array of industrial wind turbines began spinning around his Wolfe Island home. After several complaints, the Ministry of Environment said it would conduct sound tests on nearby turbines. Ed Kenney has never been advised of the results of the tests.
Nicole Horton and her family have spent $80,000 to reduce the noise and vibration from industrial wind turbines that surround their Chatham-Kent home. She considered herself a healthy person before the wind turbines arrived. She now experiences headaches, heart palpitations, internal body vibrations, fatigue, loss of concentration and memory, swollen and dry eyes, and body rashes that left permanent scarring. Her husband has had sleeplessness and periods of moodiness. Her two children have complained of headaches, back and joint pain, swollen eyes, and nausea.
Her dream home is now a nightmare, Horton reported to the ERT panel. Neither the Ministry of Environment nor the wind energy developer has responded to her health concerns. She dreams of walking away from her home.
The review panel composed of Robert Wright and Heather Gibbs has now heard from 11 witnesses from across the province who say that wind turbines have damaged their health. They represent a diverse cross section of the province in terms of age, background and previous medical conditions. The common feature they share is that they all now live amid 40-storey industrial wind turbines.
This week the panel is hearing from expert medical witnesses Dr. Robert McMurtry and Dr. Sarah Laurie.
In a fairly typically unbalanced way, the reporter yet again ignores the cross-examination. It found that many of the people testifying had very serious pre-existing conditions that they have been encouraged to misattribute to wind energy. These included obesity, type 1 diabetes, obesity-related high blood pressure and inflammatory arthritis. Medical histories were introduced showing treatment for these conditions before wind farms were on the horizon.
The real story here is that anti-wind opponents are encouraging people with serious ailments which require root-cause treatment to blame wind turbines, then encouraging them to testify, increasing the negative cycle.
The reporter is part of this negative cycle, based on the continuing imbalance of his reporting.
Mike Barnard… your comment is an egregious distortion of the “cross-examination”. The statements of inference or intent to attribute “pre-existing medical conditions” to the presence of Industrial Wind Turbines were made by the lawyers defending the Ostrander Industrial Wind Turbine development in an attempt to invalidate and/or lessen the evidentiary status of those personally effected. This is of course “fairly typical” of your “unbalanced”understanding and perceptions.