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Posts from the ‘Victim Statements’ Category

Nov 19

abandoned

“Proximity to neighbour’s wind installations means we can never build a home on our property”

Hans Janzen — Toronto Sun — November 17, 2012

How does one man’s dream of becoming known as the “Green Premier” become a nightmare for much of rural Ontario?

It’s called the Green Energy Act. It takes away the rights of individual landowners and municipalities to protect themselves from the placement of industrial wind turbines in their jurisdictions.

The mandate of the act is to harness the “free energy” of the wind. The concept sounds great, but the reality is much different.

It’s anything but free, given the rising evidence of health issues, bird and bat kills, lost property values and unsustainable electricity rates.

These wind farms do not get built without massive government subsidies from our already near-bankrupt government.

In 2004, my family and I purchased a 32.6-acre parcel of farmland in the Township of West Lincoln. It fulfilled our lifelong dream of owning a farm. Our land produces soybeans, wheat and corn. In 2007, we built a barn and we are continuing to improve the farm for future endeavours. We have not yet built a house on our site.

In 2011, we received a letter from a local wind developer looking for landowners willing to lease their farm land for the installation of industrial wind turbines.

We naively believed people in our area would not lease their land to these corporations, but money talks.

The leases for the land pay $50,000 per year per turbine for 20 years.

Our neighbour leased her agricultural land to the wind developer for the installation of two, three-megawatt industrial turbines, one of which is to be located about 70 metres (230 ft) from our property line. The turbine is to be about 500 metres (1640 feet) from our existing building and 440 metres (1440 feet) from our planned home site, despite the province’s 550 metre (1805 feet) setback rule.

If we build our house anywhere on our property, we would be accepting this turbine has been placed too close to a receptor, the fancy term for people who are affected by these devices. We are not receptors. We are people.

(To continue reading, click here)

Nov 3

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Ontario playwright to tackle wind power debate — looking for local input

Daniel R. Pearce — Simcoe Reformer — November 1, 2012

One of the hottest, most controversial, most divisive issues to hit rural Ontario in many years — wind turbines — will get its own play.

It’s a couple of years away from hitting the boards and for now is in the development stage.

But accomplished playwright Leanna Brodie is busy doing research across the province for the piece she will eventually write in a joint project among three rural summer theatres in Ontario, including Lighthouse Theatre in Port Dover, that are smack in the middle of this broiling controversy.

Brodie is in the process of interviewing everybody: pro-wind people, anti-wind people, wind industry people, people trying to rent their land out for turbines, people trying to stop turbines from going up next to them, politicians stuck in the middle of everything, and anyone with an opinion on the topic.

Brodie says she is engaging in what is called “documentary theatre.” It can take many forms, like the show American writer Anna Deavere Smith did about the Rodney King riots in which she interviewed more than 200 people and then played all the parts, including Charlton Heston and King’s aunt.

The form this play will take is undetermined at this point and will depend on what Brodie finds and how she can adapt it to the personality of the three theatres she is writing for. “You respond to the material in front of you as a sculptor responds to the stone in front of them,” Brodie explains.

So far, she has talked to people from all sides of this debate and while they have differing and conflicting points of view, they all have one thing in common: they are furiously angry and willing to express it.

…..

Brodie, who is working under both a Canada Council and Arts Council of Ontario grants, was in Norfolk County in September and started talking to people then. She will be back in Port Dover next summer for about four months to do more research.

Brodie says she wants to talk to as many people as possible and welcomes anyone with any experience or opinion on the matter to contact her. She can be reached at: leannabrodie@gmail.com.

(To read full article with further details, click here)

May 24

vaccum wind 2
4 Comments

The Other Victims of McGuinty’s Green Energy $$$ Vaccuum

From Crux of the Matter

McGuinty government refuses OHIP for blind 2-yr-old Liam Reid US treatment

Of course, officials at the Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP) say they can’t talk about an individual case due to privacy laws.

Well, fortunately I have no such limitations, given the family has already spoken to reporter Caroline Alphonso at the Globe and Mail.

As Alphonso reports, Liam Reid is two years old and will be fully blind by the time he is four if he doesn’t continue to get treatment by a world renowned surgeon in Michigan — treatment that is not available in Ontario.  And, indeed, Alphonso provides plenty of evidence that the treatment really is not available in Ontario. (H/T NNW)

Anyway, the family has been attending the Michigan clinic for nearly three years now but has run out of money because OHIP refuses to contribute anything towards their costs. Why? Because the McGuinty government is cutting expenses.

Now, normally, one could understand the cut backs, given the size of the Ontario deficit. But, why is the McGuinty government cutting back on health care – be it the out-of-province funding the Reid family needs, or the closure of the Thistletown Regional Centre — when they continue to spend billions of dollars on subsides for wind energy that are costing us far more than we take in?

 (To continue reading, click here)
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This little boy is another victim of useless wind power.  Not enough money for his treatment, but more than enough to build another turbine, and another, and another.

By the way, if you live in Ontario, are you aware that Xrays are no longer covered by Ohip.  Unless the reason that the doctor wants the xray is because of cancer, you are out of luck. Haul out your wallets, folks.  We’re getting screwed again.  Wasn’t that what we’re paying that extra Health tax for each year when we do our tax return?  To help preserve services?

And who are the ones who most needs xrays?  The elderly would definitely be one group.  We all know as we get older things get more fragile and break more easily.  Well now, they will have to pay for their xrays.

So every time you drive by a wind turbine, you can say to yourself, “There’s the treatment for Liam Reid standing in that field doing absolutely nothing.”  ”There’s 10,000 xrays standing there motionless.”

The lunacy is showing no signs of letting up.  We’ve sacrificed eagles and other endangered species, bats, families, and now we can add little children in need of medical care to that ever growing list of wind victims.  Where and when does it end?

If you are feeling as helpless as the rest of us, maybe think about joining Ontario Neighbours United.  It’s just in the organization stages, but we’re gathering people from across Ontario who want to join our energy, our anger, our rage, our passions and our funds to fight this most despised government in the history of Ontario.

To learn more, click here

Donna Quixote

Mar 17

2 Comments

The Saga of the Falmouth Wind One Turbine….Cape Cod


The Falmouth Wind One turbine in Cape Cod

(Editor’s note:  Neil Andersen lives 1,320 feet (402 meters) from Wind One.  The turbine is 262 feet tall from the ground to the hub.  Total height to blade tip is just under 400 feet.  Interestingly, Neil is the owner of a solar energy company and an avid supporter of green energy.)

“You Can’t Be Forcing These On People”

In his series, The Falmouth Experience: The Trouble With One Town’s Wind Turbine, WGBH radio reporter Sean Corcoran spoke to Neil Andersen, a Falmouth resident who says the nearby wind turbine has had catastrophic effects on his health. Here’s more of their conversation, plus a series of photos of the log Andersen and his wife keep of the noise and its effects on them.

Neil Andersen: We knew there was a turbine going over there, we were not notified of any meetings or any type of concerns. In other words, there was no input from this residence.

I am an energy conservationist, I’ve had my own passive solar building company for 35 years. I was actually looking forward to that turbine being erected there. Although when it went up it was quite astounding the size of it.

I was proud looking at it from this viewpoint until it started turning. And it is dangerous, Sean. Headaches. Loss of sleep. And the ringing in my ears is constant. Never goes away. That started probably in May. It’s a constant reminder of that thing. I can look at it all day long, and it does not bother me. It’s quite majestic. But it’s way too close.

Sean Corcoran: How long after it started to spin did you start feeling some sort of symptoms?

Myself, it took me about a month and a half, maybe two months, to manifest all the symptoms. First it was the pressure in the head. The ears popping for no reason at all. Trying to get the water out of your ears and there was no water there. My wife, the first day, she feels it and notices it, and she feels it and notices it every day.

People talk about the noise, it gets loud. It gets jet-engine loud from this point right here. But the noise is the minimum component of that turbine. There is a pressure involved that gets into your ear, like you’re climbing at altitude in an airplane and your ears pop.

And there is a low-frequency pulse that particularly drives me crazy and some of the neighbors around here. It is a once-per-second low-frequency pulse, and it messes up your vestibular organs in your inner ear. And gives you a sense of off-balance and vertigo.

We both have signs of these symptoms. Headaches. My wife gets headaches three or four times a week, she wakes up with a headache. She’s actually sleeping in a back bedroom right now with earplugs and a white noise machine trying to mask the sound. But it is really not doing any good because the sound just comes right through the windows, right through the insulation, right through the earplugs. And the pulse is right there.

Can you hear it right now?

You don’t hear it. It’s inaudible. There’s testimony from all over the country of the same thing, people complaining about the turbines. Denmark, Australia, Canada, the United States. But there is really no peer-reviewed medical info, which I hear all the time. Prove it, they’re saying. Prove it. Come down here and hear it yourself if you want.

And do you take that as people calling you a liar or people calling you a fool?

I’m not sure. I think they just don’t want to believe it. It’s so ironic, here I have to try to get that thing knocked down. Basically it’s a good principle, anything that can wean us off the number-two fuel, heating oil, and that type of thing is good for us, but it has to be done correctly. In this case it certainly wasn’t.

They look at us as being the bad aspect of this. But the people in the wind industry, you cannot turn a blind eye to this. You know about it.

I’m sorry we don’t have doctors that have come to prove it. I welcome anybody to come down here with their testing equipment and test what this thing does, but I will tell you, it does hurt the wind industry. And I know there are properly-sited wind projects out there that are getting knocked down because of this. But that’s okay too.

I think everybody should just stop for awhile and figure this out. You can’t just be forcing these on people.

The Andersens decided to keep a calendar to document the turbine’s noise and its effects on them. They let us photograph parts of their log:

Link to article

Feb 19

Shadow flicker of wind farm proves to be intrusive

Journal Star — Nick Vlahos — February 18, 2012

Bill Preller remembers the disco era of the 1970s. But it appears he’d rather don a lime-green leisure suit than deal with the occasional nightclub-like effect wind turbines have had on his residence.

“It’s a strobe light. It’s on and off in the middle of the afternoon,” Preller said about the shadows cast by rotating turbine blades from the White Oak Wind Energy Center in McLean County.  None of the turbines are on Preller’s property. The closest are about 1,500 feet from the foundation of his house, a distance determined by McLean County zoning officials.

Most of the time, those turbines don’t appear to cause Preller many problems. But starting in early November, the stretch between 3 and 4 p.m. each day for about four months sometimes isn’t much of a happy hour. That’s because of the shadow flicker of the turbines.

“‘Flicker’ is a euphemism,” said Preller, who is self-employed. “I can’t see my computer screen. I can’t read. I bought heavy, thick blinds, but it doesn’t matter. It comes right through.  ”We are shut out from doing our work for 45 minutes in the middle of the afternoon.”

Leisure activities also can be affected. In testimony Preller gave last month to the Woodford County Zoning Board of Appeals, he said shadow flicker and noise from the rotating turbines forced a premature end to his family’s Christmas celebration last year.

“When two boxers get in the ring and beat each other up, that’s their business,” Preller said. “When a boxer comes and beats me up, that’s assault. That’s not fair.”

Revisions to the Woodford County ordinance would set back a typical turbine at least 1,600 feet from residences whose owners aren’t part of a wind farm. In Preller’s case, the 1,500-foot distance might not be enough at times.

“If we can hear the turbines in our bedroom and if they wake us up at night, you can argue that’s not an adequate setback from a pure quality-of-living standpoint,” he said.

Preller said each wind-farm circumstance is different, and perhaps other families located near developments find turbines less intrusive.

“We don’t want to be overly dramatic,” Preller said. “But we do want to be accurate about the intrusiveness of this in our lives.

“Is it disruptive? On some days, yes, it is.”