PC MPP says province hid report on wind turbine health effects

A Progressive Conservative MPP is accusing the province of knowing about the adverse health effects of wind turbines as far back as 2009.

Through documents she obtained via a freedom of information request, Huron-Bruce MPP Lisa Thompson says she’s learned of one homeowner who complained about excessive noise from nearby turbines making it difficult for them to sleep.

 “It is 1 a.m. I can’t take much more of this. I don’t know what is going on but I have the worst headache in the world right now,” reads one of them. The ministry eventually closed the file, saying it couldn’t verify claims of excessive noise.

Another document shows that the ministry backed down from a turbine company after the company agreed to reduce overnight operations of 24 turbines due to complaints from neighbours.

Heather Johnston lives in Belwood, northeast of Fergus. She agrees with Thompson that wind turbines present health concerns and the Liberals hid reports saying so from the public.

“If you don't sleep, you’re not well, and they just don’t seem to care about the people that have to live near these things,” Johnston tells CTV.

“The [ministry] is being guided on how they go through these processes, and to tell you the truth, I’m a little dismayed that the ombudsman’s office hasn't done anything about this.”

Four new 500-foot-high turbines are slated to be built in Belwood in the near future. Another project comprised of 30 turbines has been taken off the table, but Johnston says she believes it’s only a temporary stop and the 30 turbines will be built eventually.

Environment Minister Jim Bradley didn’t respond to a request for comment from CTV, but a ministry statement says priority is placed on ensuring turbines are built in a way that protects human health and the environment.

Thompson says she wants more answers out of Bradley, but can’t get them while the legislature remains prorogued.

I’m not against wind if carefully sited to minimize bird and bat deaths, which hasn’t always been the case, but because wind is also “like burning $20 bills to generate electricity,” this is a case of deception by omission.

The wind tax credit was just extended for another year. First enacted by the Energy Policy Act twenty years ago, it has been extended four, make that five, times. Every honest estimate I’ve seen suggests that this credit costs taxpayers roughly a billion dollars a year, for a total of roughly $20 billion and counting.

$20 billion is roughly the price tag of three conventional nuclear power plants, capable of producing about a third of present wind capability just from the extra cost of building wind.  52/19 = 3/x, x = 1.1,  (104 reactors, average of 2 reactors/power plant, 19% of electrical energy from nuclear, 3% from wind, $6.7 billion per nuclear power plant).

If wind is economically viable (cheaper than fossil fuels), why do proponents always insist that the industry will collapse if it loses that credit? And wind can only scale so far before it becomes prohibitively expensive to compensate for its intermittency. We need other low carbon sources of energy to compliment it, and nuclear should be one of them. It may be more expensive than fossil fuels in the short run, but obviously, so is the “wind-enhanced combined cycle natural gas power plant.”