(C) ONTARIO FARMER
July 31, 2018
Report by Tom van Dusen
Finch, Ontario — Sitting demurely and speaking quietly, on July 24 the volunteer president of Wind Concerns Ontario blasted the provincial government approach to monitoring industrial wind turbines, accusing it of ignoring complaints about noise, health and other issues, or deferring them with no subsequent action.
Jane Wilson made her comments while presenting as a witness during an Environmental Review Tribunal hearing into the Nation Rise wind power project planned for Stormont County. The hearing is scheduled to continue through August 2.
Currently engaged in the approval process, the project is sponsored by EDP Renewables Canada and calls for installation of some 33 turbines in North Stormont farm country delivering a total of 100 megawatts of power that, opponents observe, the province doesn’t need.
Headed by local resident Margaret Benke, opponents were hopeful the new Doug Ford government would cancel Nation Rise just as it did the White Pines wind project in Prince Edward County. But that didn’t happen and opponents’ legal fees and other expenses are up to $20,000. Benke noted that, with Ford in place, Nation Rise isn’t likely to proceed and yet opposing residents are still on the hook for costs.
Government not enforcing the law
A registered nurse, Wilson said Wind Concerns represents a coalition of more than 30 community groups across Ontario.
She emphasized that the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change–renamed Environment, Conservation and Parks — has pledged to protect the environment and human health from any turbine side effects.
She cited former Environment Minister Glen Murray congratulating his officials for responding quickly to complaints and enforcing the law. However, Wilson’s review of incident reports obtained through Access to Information indicated the ministry doesn’t respond to all complaints and “does not, therefore, enforce the law.”
No answer to that
Total number of incident reports filed with the ministry between 2006 and 2016 was 4,574, Wilson told Maureen Cartier-Whitney, chair of the one-person panel. Records showed that in more than 50 per cent of formal complaints, there was no ministry response. Another 30 per cent were deferred. “In fact, only one percent received priority response.”
While he asked for some clarification, Paul McCulloch of the ministry’s Legal Services Branch, didn’t dispute Wilson’s basic facts. Representing EDP, lawyer . Grant Worden also offered no challenges to Wilson.
The repetitive nature of various complaints suggests, Wilson continue, that wind power developers are failing to live up to the terms of their approvals by allowing conditions triggering adverse effects including on health, to continue.
“Documented health effects include headache, sleep deprivation, annoyance, and ringing or pressure sensation in the head and ears. Most disturbing was the fact that these health effects were reported many times, and also among children.”
Wilson indicated that 39 per cent of 2006-2016 incident reports referred explicitly to sleep disturbance which is generally blamed for a myriad of diseases and disorders.
“Given the thousands of unresolved noise complaints in Ontario, and given Health Canada results of adverse health effects at distances of 550 metres to 1 km, it is reasonable to question whether the Nation Rise power project will not also engender community reports of excessive noise and adverse effects.”
contact@windconcernsontario.ca
To help support the appeal, which is bringing forward issues never presented to the ERT before, please send a cheque to Concerned Citizens of North Stormont, c/o Wind Concerns Ontario, PO Box 509, 250 Wellington main Street, Wellington ON K0K 3L0
2 Comments
Richard Mann
Will Huron County Health Unit acknowledge ongoing harm of wind turbines, and if so, will they order a halt to turbines? All of this is known, and complaints were made public in Jan 2016.
I include the first complaint below. There are 26 in total.
http://cmajblogs.com/health-canada-and-wind-turbines…/…
January 26, 2016 at 2:21 pm
Here is a list of 26 statements of adverse health impacts from Huron County.
Property 1
Living among the 18 Industrial Wind Turbines that are located within 3 km of our farm house has caused us many sleepless nights that interfere with our physical and mental well being. We suffer from ear aches, headaches, “swimming” in our head, foggy brains and the inability to think clearly. Many days after a sleepless night, we are not “alert” like we used to be. Is it causing our short term memory loss/ confusion? We become very agitated and irritable. We had a picture fall off our wall four times one extremely bad day this past summer. It was on the wall closest to the turbines. That picture or an identical one has hung on that wall for over six years. It has never fallen off before.
We listen to the sounds of tractor trailers sitting in front of our place that never seem to go anywhere, whooing and whining sounds that penetrate through the walls of our home and drive us crazy. There are the whomping and whooshing sounds. We are unable to open our windows at night, sit on our deck or back step due to the noises of these monsters. We have family who do not want to come here because they are getting headaches after being here for a brief time. Headaches that go away shortly after they leave here
Stan Thayer
Yes Richard I do believe that statement to be true.
You should sit down now!
Another type of disrupter is being used for crowd control and most people being adversely affected will never know.
The moniker, “Rail Cannon”, has been given to a device which digitally projects a concentrated burst of 2500 mhz energy into a person or crowd and it superheats all biological matter in the area of the target. It is not usually immediately deadly but has long lasting affects.
Microwave ovens for cooking operate at 2450mhz and of course the radiated energy is in the small oven cavity so it takes only seconds to warm a sugar muffin beyond boiling.
This is nothing new and has been used for decades similar to doppler for tracking airplanes or pings to locate submarines in any far away continent. The lower the frequency the more substantial penetration possible.
Many formulas have been perfected to apply any frequency to any penetration factor.
Find the formula for your situation, plug in the parameters and be amazed at how accurate it will be.
Enjoy!
Stan the power man