Turbine project reports ‘incomplete’: council
Administrator | Sep 26, 2012 | Comments 47
Prince Edward County council confirmed its objections and matters to be addressed with the 29-turbine White Pines Wind project proposed for Athol and South Marysburgh.
Councillors meeting Tuesday night agreed the “Final Report Heritage Assessment, White Pines Wind Project” by Stantec Consulting Ltd., was “incomplete until a revised heritage report(s) are received.”
Council also passed an amending motion stating “The White Pines project does not have the support of this council.” The decision came in a review of a Municipal Consultation Form (MCF), in which council commented on the project. The MCF is part of the Renewal Energy Approvals process that includes both municipal and public consultation. Besides such subjects as roads and decommissioning, council had expressed in the MCF its concerns about noise emissions and the adequacy of setbacks in protecting the health of project residents.
Councillor Alec Lunn proposed a motion, seconded by councillor Heather Campbell, to amend the MCF with a preamble indicating council’s lack of support. Ten of the 14 councillors in attendance voted in favour of the amendment.
Council also reviewed a report by Janice Gibbins, chair of the Prince Edward Heritage Advisory Committee and summary of concerns.
Council requests the Ontario Ministry of the Environment to ensure matters of concern identified in the Engineering Development and Works Commission report are addressed prior to, or as a condition of, any renewable energy approval for the project.
Council seeks additional approvals, permits and authorizations and a pre-development agreement for costs associated with project review, approval, construction, operation and decommissioning – including a security of $200,000 standby letter of credit for each turbine to ensure it is properly removed when no longer supplying electricity to the grid.
Wpd Canada is proposing to develop, construct and operate 29 turbines in a study area approximately 105 square kilometres generally bounded by Brummell Road/Bond Road to the north; Lighthall Road to the west; Gravelly Bay Road to the east and Lake Ontario to the south. The site plan also includes a northern study area intended to locate the interconnection line connecting the project to a substation to be built near the Picton Transformer Station.
The Ontario Green Energy and Green Economy Act was passed in May 2009 and decisions regarding renewable energy projects now rest with the province of Ontario. The Project was awarded an Ontario Feed-In-Tariff (FIT) contract with the Ontario Power Authority (OPA) in May, 2010.
Construction is proposed to begin within six to 12 months following the Renewable Energy Approval (REA) process.
Click here for the full reports, submissions, maps and matters to be addressed.
Filed Under: Local News
You are right on the money.The ill thought out plan will crash but not until the governments heels are on fire to the degree they have no choice to admit a failed plan or are defeated in an election.The present government shows no signs of backing off as we can compare with the natural gas cancellations in Oakville and Mississauga that have cost multiple millions. I think the CSG have become trapped in this mess. Naïvety is probably what has got them to where they presently are.
Mark, fortunately or unfortunately, depending on individual perspective, the County Sustainability Group could also be considered an easy target. They are the sacrificial lambs of this economic ideology. Regardless of the efficacy of wind or solar energy, we must recognize and acknowledge the power of the groups and organizations that have a vested interest in engaging and promoting these industries. For example, through my research I have to this point in time identified in Canada, 3,753 NGO’s, Corporations, Investment Firms, Manufacturers, Publishers, etc. etc. etc. which to degree receive and sometimes rely on tax dollars, subsidies, grants, associated with, or linked to Industrial Wind Turbine development. Combined, they have enormous economic power and political influence. It has been deftly interwoven into our economy and will be extremely difficult to unravel without causing unmendable damage to the fabric. Eventually the “Emperor” (economy) will be forced to find new clothes when the naked truth becomes too embarrassing , but until then the CSG provides a convenient vent for our outrage, as they were encouraged, designed, perhaps naively so, to do. In the interim our Municipal Council will be forced to deal with the ramifications of this, without adequate power or resources… I do not envy them this untenable position.
Slander or libel, most could not tell the difference or care! Let’s have the windies defend with some sense of fact what they are supporting to impose upon the County with the mounting evidence against their agenda. Waiting. And has the County Sustainability Group gone into hiding? Their defined “easy targets” in the County are curious.
Malcolm … my bad, it is indeed libel! What words would those be?
Mr. Norman, it’s libel, not slander. Judging by your last comment, there are a few words and phrases you need to look up before throwing around.
I find it most intriguing that the windies rarely if ever defend their industrial intrusion upon the landscape and are relatively silent on the mounting evidence that these industrial turbines do in fact inflict many harms upon the natural environment and to landowners.
Malcolm’s supposition regarding my mental state, reminded me of a statement by a real estate agent that might be of interest to some of you… I had forgotten about this statement in reference to a 93 acre parcel of land in South Marysburgh and dug it out of one of my research files: “Vacant land can be a bit of a hard sell, especially in a fairly remote area like the southern tip of Prince Edward County, and a bit of patience was required, but I’m happy to say that we now have a firm deal in place and it will be closing soon. The Buyers are a green energy power corporation, and they are building wind turbines in the area, so it’s a great fit.”
Malcolm… your statements “It looks like David Norman has run out of intelligent things to say and has resorted to insults and ad hominems. How immature.” is an ad hominem and subsequently in this context, an oxymoron. And as to your statement “While I realize that the nature of a comment shouldn’t distract one from the content, it does, however, raise questions about the mental state of the author and the author’s judgement.” My judgement here is that this comment represents an legally actionable slander. I would suggest that you vet your statements with John rather than Don, next time round. In addition, your concluding statement “I think most P.E.C. residents who are either ambivilent about wind turbines or are supportive of them are frightened to voice their opinion lest they become the target of a good old fashioned County witch hunt.” is a disingenuous attempt to obscure an indefensible position. I would have expected more in this 21st Century!
Good spotting. yes, I did post to another blog, inadvertently. Sorry, not a team player.
fed up… seems like your response here slipped through from the other blog of this nature. What say you and I team up and go looking for a “wind fall”. Not only would we cover both sides of the issue, but we could vet each others commentary for effect before publication. How about a, say… 60-40 split? Let’s negotiate!
Geez, I wish someone would pay me!
Ken… speaking of “cheese and crackers”, prior to their last community meeting I suggested to the folk at WPD that they buy up the remaining stock of the defunct Fifth Town cheese, throw in the crackers, and offer it up to the Public comers. I saw it as symbolic of their “cheesy” presentations which seem to be driving some folk “crackers”.
It looks like David Norman has run out of intelligent things to say and has resorted to insults and ad hominems. How immature. While I realize that the nature of a comment shouldn’t distract one from the content, it does, however, raise questions about the mental state of the author and the author’s judgement.
I think most P.E.C. residents who are either ambivilent about wind turbines or are supportive of them are frightened to voice their opinion lest they become the target of a good old fashioned County witch hunt.
Re: The rogue primate of Bloomfield’s last post…
The cheese has fallen off the cracker.
@Gary… speaking about “becoming distracted by trivialities”
I’ve actually gone through the outline for the “NEW! Emotion, Outrage and Public Participation” PR presentation being promoted by CanWEA and took the liberty of redesigning it from my personal perspective. I re-titled it “NEW! Emotion, Outrage and Pubic Participaction”. Under this heading I provide some tips for IWT industry presenters at public meetings:
1. Do not take to scratching your balls, if you have any, while trying to convey the green merits of IWTs. This may appear unhealthy to some.
2. Men, do not give members of the public the finger when they express outrage at your obvious personal shortcomings in regards to your attempt to dismiss the importance of size, of IWTs that is. Women, this applies when you promote that “bigger is better”.
3. While presenting information on the amazingly gratuitous FIT subsidies, refrain from the irresistible tendency to lunge your hips front to back while muttering “cha-ching”.
4. If a member of the public expresses outrage by stating “up yours”, resist the homophobic connotation by replying that “there’s nothing wrong with that”.
5. Avoid “slips of the tongue” such as referring to the politicians that enable your enterprise as your “ho’s or bitch’s”.
These are just a few I’ve come up with. Feel free to add or edit.
Following up on David Norman’s post on Oct 1, I think that it’s important for those opposed to uncontrolled wind energy development to maintain focus on the issues and avoid becoming distracted by trivialities from the other side.
From Quinte News. Good news if the government bothers to listen!
“No turbines in Important Bird Areas”
Tue, Oct 2nd, ’12 – 8:25 am
Opponents of wind turbines in Prince Edward County will like this news.
In a report to be released today, Ontario’s Environmental Commissioner Gord Miller says the province should not allow industrial wind turbines in so called “Important Bird Areas”.
The south shore of Prince Edward County is designated as an ” Important Bird Area”, and there are proposals to build wind turbines there.
Thousands of birds, of various species, use the County as a resting place on their migratory routes.
Commissioner Miller says the province should also not be putting wind turbines in the way of major migratory routes for bats.
Here is an interesting article in the Star this morning. I wonder what they would make of this in BC. http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/1265130–protect-wildlife-from-wind-turbines.
I guess that Ria is not aware of the 57 groups spread over 34 counties in Ontario that have been actively opposing wind turbine projects over the past three years.
Ria says “no where else in Canada do you see these signs let alone the world”. And she suggests she is informed. Lol
http://www.turbinesyndrome.com
Sorry, Fed Up. You’re right.
actually it’s from Dante’s Inferno. ;
And he/she can quote Milton too.
@ Earl… the pseudonymous character and commentary of “Ria” and similar others, is simply representative of the PR strategy now being used more extensively by pro Industrial Wind Turbine pundits, politicians and profiteers (the PPP). It is now supported and endorsed by PR firms who specialize in “social media” internet commentary on public participation issues of this nature. Organizations such as CanWEA actually recognize and sponsor PR firms to educate their members in this communication strategy. For example, a recent sponsorship/promotion by CanWea has a Pr firm introducing a component they’ve cleverly titled “!NEW! Emotion, Outrage and Public Participation”, of which there is a social media component. “Ria” comments are a natural, yet contrived, response to the evolution of this issue, usually represented by puerile sarcasm. And, they work remarkably well for their purposes… they reduce the debate/conversation to childishly arrogant trivia/minutia.
Some may find this kind of commentary annoying/irrelevant … as a researcher I welcome and in fact encourage it. I record and put to analysis each and every comment. I apply rated values, using statistically standardized language analysis software that looks at every linguistic characteristic from word affect and psychological indicators, to comprehension level and even the frequency and the idiosyncratic qualities of spelling errors. Why you might ask? My research is aimed at uncovering the heuristics of this issue as it is presented in this format, that can be identified and have utility as variables for analysis in a scientific context. Companies such as “facebook” and “google” have been attempting to develop this kind of analysis for quite some time. If you’re interested, I suggest you take a gander at the Carbon Capture website (http://ccs.carboncapturereport.org/) . While the analysis it presents is still quite unrefined and as such has no heuristic utility, it will give you some idea of my approach. You can even type in my identifier, “David Norman, Rogue Primate of Bloomfield” for a more specific reference.
ADIEU
Well said Ria but as feh up says you are wasting your time. These people seem to want to run the county there way. They don’t give a darn for the people that have lived here for a lifetime.If they don’t like it maybe they should move back where they came from.They could probably find something to complain about there
See what I mean, Ria? “Abandon hope all ye who enter here.”
fedup do you have a name–what are the torch and pitch fork crowd –maybe witches
well i guess your comments should be taken very seriously ? since your name does not appear
I suggest that if you do not want to hear negative comments about wind energy, do not bother to read this blog and just pay a increasingly high hydro bill
Oh wait! I think BC just called Fed Up, too.
Why wind is not a good idea for Ontario.
The big environmental reason for wind power is that it reduces CO2. For every MWh of clean wind power you prevent the CO2 that would have been released from generating the same MWh from coal. But we are phasing out coal so it would be natural gas. And you don’t get the full benefit because you have to run the gas turbines up and down to follow the intermittent wind so you only prevent the CO2 for approximately 0.7MWh. Which is still pretty good. Except in Ontario most of our electricity comes from Hydrolic, and Nuclear power. So when you displace these you get no CO2 benefit at all.
Currently we produce about 2% of our power from the 2000 MW of installed wind power and the plan is to install about another 9000MW which will allow us to produce over 15% of our electrical power from wind. So on a windy day in spring when power consumption is low we may need as little as 12000MW in Ontario. Spring is when the Nucs have outages so there’s probably only 8500MW of Nucs on. Even so because of the spring runoff we have enough power from the dames to supply 3500MW plus some extra that we have to spill and produce no power at all. So now through into the mix 9000 MW of wind that will be fluctuating and can die out to almost nothing over the course of a few hours. This amount of wind penetration has never been attempted on a grid with this much relatively inflexible Nuclear power and will probably destabilize our grid. We can export part of this problem, but in the spring we will get very little for the power. It is not uncommon at that time of year to actually pay someone to take it. All while doing nothing to reduce CO2.
But at other times of the year the wind will work and reduce CO2 released for from generating electricity. Except Ontario produces very little CO2 by generating electricity. Electricity production accounts for approximately 5% of our Carbon foot print. So even if we can find some way to accommodate these wind turbines we will probably reduce our CO2 by 1 or 2 percent. Don’t you think that there’s probably a less controversial, more cost effective way of reducing our CO2 hiding in that 95% that is produced by activity’s other than generating electricity? The Danish have a CO2 foot print which is about half the size as ours per capita. The Danes do this while generation most of their electricity from Coal. That’s why they produce over 6 times as much CO2 per MWh. Over 10 times once coal phase out is complete.
There’s some homework for you Ria.
Unfortunately, Ria, you have brought out the torch and pitch fork crowd again. Save your breath and your sanity.
@ David Norman: Very deft, sir. Very deft. Regrettably, I reckon that your comment’s pithiness will be entirely lost on “Ria”…
Ria… When I moved from Toronto to BC 30 years ago I was astonished to see the incredible amount of deforestation particularly of irreplaceable coastal stands, that had occurred in the space of 10 short years since my previous visit. I was even further astonished to discover that much of it was connected to a company which had ties to an acquaintance and Greenpeace founder. There were many signs and sincere BC folk protesting this environmental travesty. I too am environmentally conscious and understand wind energy. I choose to use critical thinking to evaluate its’ merits. Your comment is just too contrived to be taken seriously and obviously the product of a puerile strategy that attempts draw attention from the opposition commentary, since you are clearly unable to do this constructively. I suggest you link up with the local County Sustainability Group… you’ll find good company there.
Ria–another one with no last name
We have some very intelligent people who are on the executive of APPEC and CCSAGE
They have been doing their honework for 5 years and they know what they are talkingg about
Wind energy is not sustainable and the government is wasting. its money with the FIT program or I should say our money
I hear BC calling you Ria. You’re embarrassing us.
@ Ria,
Your assumptions are astounding.
facepalm
shakes head
walk away from the computer, walk away from the comp…..
Oh Ria….now you’ve done it!!
When we moved from BC to Ontario 5 years ago – we were astonished to see ANTI wind turbine signs on the lawns of Toronto residents let alone when you come to PEC there they are too!? You guys – have not travelled clearly you are misinformed. WE are environmentally conscious and totally understand wind energy – but somewhere along the way someone told you guys something that is utterly wrong! You have been misinformed – no where else in canada do you see these signs let alone the world – my goodness. And the reasons are not even viable reasons – its embarassing quite honestly. More birds get killed everytime an airplane takes off and you still see those in the air. Did any of the council members take an airplane trip lately? Not to mention how many birds DIE on a hydro WIRE every day. Please do your diligence for the sake the community members that support wind energy but don’t like to come face to face with any of the ANTI people because they are too much in your face. It turns out to be an argument so that is why the PRO people are not coming to these meetings they are totally baffled and afraid of the ANTI members. Its not rocket science quite honestly. But do your homework and then think again.
@ wevil. HUH.???
Gil that is only a very small percentage of the County
Thank you for listening to “The People” of the County!!!
you people all care more about windmills than you do about the young people in CAS care
That strong Picton representation you say Doris!
Probably Forester,Mariset, Short and Bev
Macdonald wasn,t there, Gale wasn,t there, Forrester,s tone and line of questioning told you how he was voting regardless of what he heard. I could not see around the corner to see the other two were.
Who voted against the amendment? I am pretty certain I could name three of them.
Kudos to Council for passing a motion against wind turbines for WPD