To the Loyalist Township

As a resident and farmer in Essex County living with 24 Industrial wind turbines surrounding my home and farm, I can attest to the incessant presence and ruination of my environment as a result of so called “environmentally friendly wind energy”.

Simply put, it’s not pretty!! Nor is it nice to live with!!

View from my backdoor (first turbine is 600 from back door,  furthest turbine is 1.5 km from back door)  All  three turbines are 200 metres from my property line)

And for the last 5 years, a day doesn’t go by without the feeling of loss and depression all because my  gov’t officials were too short sighted to assess fairly and critically the value of wind energy.

If you believe that health issues are not the concern that many residents are being vilified and denigrated over, despite the many reports being conveyed  www.illwind.org worldwide,  then you should at least understand the mounting evidence that shows the true cost of wind is continually being under estimated.

Note this independent study from the University of  Utah. Despite being an American study, similarities to the Ontario FIT program and GEA policies can easily be made.

“The true cost of wind power, however, is what consumers and society as a whole pay both to purchase wind-generated electricity and also to subsidize the wind energy industry through taxes and government debt. The true cost includes both traditional cost accounting and the seen and unseen costs of policies that seek to artificially bolster renewable energy development and production. When examined more closely, many claims about wind energy are found to be indefensible.”

http://www.strata.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Full-Report-True-Cost-of-Wind1.pdf

I always find it very alarming that claims by the wind industry seem to always go unchallenged such as those surrounding the idea that wind energy will address  the issues we face in dealing with Global warming or Climate Change;   yet  ignore the FACT that wind development exists entirely due to the very lucrative artificial subsidies wind energy is receiving.  Forget the fact that the cost benefit of wind has never been investigated or shown to:

1)         Reduce our use of fossil fuels

2)         Reduce GHG emissions

3)         Provide reliable generation for a modern grid

4)         reduce costs because back-up (fossil fuel) generation is always needed to counter when the wind does not blow or sun does not shine

5)         provide new “green” jobs without atrophying jobs in other sectors because electricity prices must increase to support wind energy’s business case

6)         provide a safe, and  healthy environment for people or wildlife

You can read a good synopsis of wind energy problems here:

http://wind-power-problems.org/

In closing I can only hope and pray that Loyalist Council will not be swayed by the so-called “Community Benefit Funds” wind developers so  effortlessly like to vaunt to small communities, since this amounts to nothing more than a “bribe” that  can never replace the loss of property rights, property values, health, well-being, and wildlife that makes our communities precious & vibrant.

Colette McLean

Essex County area resident

519 738-3356

Note  that Essex Council agreed to a paltry $1500 per turbine/yr for ten years as their Community Fund and were given the choice of either accepting this money with a favourable vote or not receive this fund if they decided to vote against the project. Either way, the developer assured them that the GEA allowed them to go ahead with their project since they had already received their Ministry approval.  Needless to say council voted to receive the funds.