Editor:
Fairchild Television contacted me in June and in July their film crew came to the Ripley wind farm to shoot a feature about the negative affects of living near wind turbines.
Originally over 12 minutes I edited it so only the English parts remain. If I can get it translated I will post more of the video.
I wish to thank Sherona and her crew for making the trip from Toronto, also Fairchild Television for the original production.
Editor: Just wait until the wind farm is built. Then the real problems begin.
There is nothing green about the wind industry unless you count the cash. If anyone else tried to destroy the land and and flyways the greens would be having a fit.
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Wind farm chases couple from Wolfe Island
When Dawn and Dean Wallace moved to Wolfe Island 17 years ago, they fell in love with the peaceful, slow pace of life in the rural community.
It quickly became home and they planned to retire on the island.
That has all changed. The couple feels that construction of one of Canada’s largest wind-power projects has forced them out of the community and they’re in the process of moving off the island into a home they’ve bought northwest of Kingston in Camden East.
“It’s ironic that the very thing that’s supposed to be green has had such a negative impact on us,” said Dawn Wallace.
“It’s a green project without a green process.”
The couple lived at the corner of Baseline Road and 5th Line – at the heart of the construction zone – where dozens of trucks moved past their house daily on their way to and from a quarry that supplied stone to build the access roads and cement foundations for the wind turbines.
As a result, the Wallaces spent this past summer wearing earplugs and avoided spending time at home.
The noise and dust from dozens of trucks and heavy pieces of equipment moving past their property, at times starting as early as 4 a. m., made life almost unbearable.
They didn’t even cut their lawn until Thanksgiving weekend because of the dust.
“I have one word for it: hell,” said Wallace, a high school teacher.
The couple has documented the dust and noise by posting video footage on YouTube, which is available by searching the online site using the keywords Wolfe Island wind.
To get some relief from the noise and dust, they called the Township of Frontenac Islands, the Ministry of the Environment and the company building the wind plant, Canadian Hydro Developers Inc.
But the Wallaces say they got no relief. The trucks kept coming.
“It was very difficult to get help,” she said. “At the end of the day, it was unbearable and we got no support.”
That wasn’t completely a surprise for the Wallaces, who watched as tension grew in the community between those who supported the project and those who had concerns about the location of the wind turbines. Angry disagreements occurred at public meetings.
“[Opponents] had to endure such terrible, painful social pressures from certain members of the community for speaking out about certain aspects of the process,”Wallace said.
“What was once a community of solidarity that we contributed [to] and benefited from has become a community divided, which is very painful.”
It all became too much for the Wallaces, whose departure comes just as the project’s first turbines are being erected.
Mammoth and pre-eminent on the rural landscape, the 125-metre-high turbines are visible for miles along the western portion of the island. The giant machines tower high above what were once dormant farmers’ fields.
In the coming months, workers will be using giant cranes to erect a total of 86 turbines along the western side of the island. The project is anticipated to be up and running by April 1, 2009.
By Jennifer Pritchett
Whig-Standard Environmental Reporter
The Kingston Whig-Standard for full story
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Proposed Wolfe Island Cement Factory 20m from Lake Ontario
link to construction phase
Wolfe Island Wind Turbines: Life on the Front Lines
Wind turbine noise – Suncor wind farm Ripley
Editor:
As happy as I am to see this article show up in a “Mainstream Canadian Newspaper”, I still have to ask-why has it taken so long to expose the scam that is the wind industry?
Hell, Enron started this scam years ago. Google- Enron, Al Gore, Maurice Strong and Bill Clinton. Like the media never noticed what was going on.
I’ve noticed the Globe and Mail reading my blog lately ‘site tracker’ and that’s good. But, why does it take so long to get a story out. People have been sending the mainstream papers this same information for years. Why have they remained silent for so long?
Billions of taxpayer dollars have been wasted, landscapes ruined and peoples lives destroyed, while the media sat on the information.
I called the head office of CanWea two years ago this coming Nov. I told them the wind scam would be shut down within two years. I still believe it is possible.
It’s time for journalists to shake the cobwebs from their brains, remember the journalist oath and get back to doing what they are supposed to do- inform the public of the truth.
Leave the lies and bullshit to the politicians and industry.
As J. Lennon said “Just give me the truth”
Anyway, I thank Mr. Reynolds for this story. Good work-even if it’s years late.
NEIL REYNOLDS
OTTAWA — Republican presidential candidate
Senator John McCain travelled to Oregon in mid-May to deliver the
definitive climate change speech of his campaign. He spoke in Portland,
at the U.S. headquarters of Vestas Wind Systems AS, a Danish company
that markets wind turbines around the world. He started on a
self-deprecating note. “Today is a kind of test run for this company,”
he said. “They’ve got wind technicians here, wind studies and all these
wind turbines. But there’s no wind. So now I know why they asked me to
come and give a speech.”
It was perhaps his most perceptive statement of the day. Five
sentences later, Mr. McCain made perhaps his least perceptive. “Wind,”
he said, “is a predictable source of energy.”
Really? Define predictable. Wind turbines operate occasionally with
remarkable efficiency at 100 per cent capacity. More often, they
operate with 20 per cent capacity. Once in a while, they operate with
subzero capacity – taking electricity from the grid to keep themselves
running until they get hit again by a restless wind.
British energy consultant Hugh Sharman, based in Denmark, documented
wind power’s capacity for subzero performance in a report published by
Civil Engineering magazine in 2005. With more wind power per capita
than any other country, Denmark (population 5.4 million) is the world’s
showroom nation for this highly fashionable form of renewable energy.
Why, then, does Denmark export almost all of its wind power – at a
revenue loss? Why, then, does Denmark still operate all of its
conventional coal-fired power plants? In a phrase, Mr. Sharman says,
the reason is Denmark’s “wildly fluctuating wind power.”
It turns out that Denmark’s vast array of turbines often produce
minimal electricity when demand is high, maximum electricity when
demand is low. Basing his analysis on data from a single year (2002),
Mr. Sharman reported that wind power produced less than 1 per cent of
the country’s electricity supply on 54 different days. On one of these
54 days, the wind turbines took more power from the grid than they
produced. (Wind turbines consume considerable electricity whether winds
are blowing or not blowing.)
British author and energy analyst Tony Lodge makes the same point in
a report by the Centre for Policy Studies, a London think tank. “Not a
single conventional power plant has been closed in the period that
Danish wind farms have been developed,” he says. “Because of the
intermittency and variability of the wind, conventional power plants
have had to be kept running at full capacity to meet the actual demand
for electricity and to provide backup.”
Mr. Lodge says it is not practical to turn coal-fired plants off and
on as winds rise and fall – because ramping them up consumes more fuel
(and emits more carbon dioxide) than running them at a constant rate.
Thus Denmark relies almost exclusively on coal-fired plants for its own
consumption and exports its wind power at whatever off-peak price it
can get.
Only 3.3 per cent of Denmark’s wind power gets “accepted” on the
grid for domestic consumption. In 2003, Denmark exported 84 per cent of
its wind-generated electricity at money-losing rates. And CO{-2}? In
2006, Denmark produced 36 per cent more carbon emissions than the year
before.
Messrs. McCain, Dion and Pickens notwithstanding, winds do not blow
predictably. Without an energy storage battery the size of Mount
Everest, most wind-powered electricity will be wasted and will almost
certainly increase a country’s carbon emissions – albeit inadvertently.
When your power plant operates at only 20 per cent capacity (or less),
you have to build four or five times as many plants as you need. For
reliable backup, you still need either coal, gas or nuclear power – all
of which are cheaper than wind.
The conclusion seems self-evident. Apparently it isn’t. Fortunately,
you can test wind power for yourself. Go outside on a hot and humid
day. Feel the breeze. Or don’t
Video of the Suncor wind farm at Ripley Ontario
Don’t want your countryside littered with wind turbines I suggest you get active and start writing and calling your respective Representatives.
Don’t call Carol Mitchell MPP for Huron Bruce.
She thinks wind turbines are majestic.
Enjoy the videos
