Pushing back

Johanna McCarthy (left) organized the Milford rally in which scores of participants joined hands to form a wall to protect Mt. Tabor’s heritage and cultural value from being diminished by industrial wind turbines.

Milford rally an expression of community resolve

The fight to resist the invasion of industrial wind development in Prince Edward County and the reckless oppression of the Green Energy Act is typically conducted around kitchen tables by ones and twos. On occasion, the action moves to a meeting hall where we sit in a huddled mass as lawyers wrestle the issues in mind-numbing detail. Rarely do the folks on the front line gather together in one place just to have a good time— to rejoice in another day free from the scourge of industrial wind turbines and to rally support for the fight ahead.

The folks in Milford remedied this on Sunday— hosting a warm celebration that included words of inspiration, food and music. Hundreds gathered at Mount Tabor in Milford. They joined hands to encircle the former church.

MPP Todd Smith told the crowd he had recently returned from Huron County in western Ontario, a community he says was “ripped apart” by industrial wind turbines. He described lifelong friendships ruined, family members who no longer speak to each other.

Worse, he told the gathering at Milford “we don’t need the power.” Smith explained that the current capacity of Ontario’s electricity system is about 34,000 megawatts. But on the hottest day of the year, when air conditioning was running full tilt, the province used just 28,000 megawatts.

He urged the Liberal government to stop ignoring its own experts, and to stop sidestepping its own environmental safeguards in its obsession to blight Ontario’s rural horizons with industrial wind turbines.

SNUBBED
Mayor Robert Quaiff says he is getting the stiff arm at Queen’s Park. In Toronto for a regional municipality conference, Quaiff says he was snubbed by the minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, Jeff Leal. Then, after Environment Minister Glen Murray had promised to meet with him, Murray backed out—saying that the matter were before an Environmental Review Tribunal.

Rebuffed, he reached out to another minister on a different topic. When was the County going to get its second ferry back at Glenora? And why not build another to be on standby when one goes in for repair? Transportation minister Stephen Del Duca advised Quaiff a new ferry would trigger an environmental assessment to understand and mitigate the potential impact on the environment.

Quaiff noted the incongruity of this requirement, since the developer of 26 industrial wind turbines is constructing a new wharf and dock— along with a ready-mix concrete plant—on the island to accommodate the development, without proving that it will do no harm to human, plant or animal life.

“It’s all covered under the blanket Green Energy Act,” said Quaiff. “I wish I could borrow that blanket.”

Nevertheless, Quaiff received warm words of encouragement from many other municipalities attending the conference.

“Whatever you are doing, keep doing it,” recounted Quaiff.

South Marysburgh councillor Steve Ferguson encouraged the massed crowd to continue the fight. He pointed to the Ostrander Point hearing in which the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry’s expert on species at risk testified that he had advised against granting the developer a permit to ‘harm, harass and kill’ the Blanding’s turtle. Ferguson suggested this was the first crack in the dam. “The Ontario government has underestimated the resolve of the people of Prince Edward County,” said Ferguson.

Prince Edward County Field Naturalists chair Myrna Wood told the gathering that 217 species populated Ontario’s endangered species list. She described how passenger pigeons, now extinct, once thrived in this region.

“The key factor is habitat loss, due to human development,” said Wood. “It is time to preserve. We have a responsibility to stop the loss of natural habitat. No more extinctions.