People Fighting Harm from Windweasels, All Over the World

February 29, 2016 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Polish Ombudsman Fights to Secure Human Rights for Wind Farm Victims

February 29, 2016

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One of the myths pedalled by Australia’s self-appointed wind farm noise, sleep and health ‘expert’ (a former tobacco advertising guru) is that the known and obvious adverse health impacts from incessant turbine generated low-frequency noise and infrasound are a cooked-up “phenomenon”, exclusive to the English speaking world. Trouble with that little tale is that’s been scotched by the Danes:

Vestas’ Danish Victims Lay Out the FACTS

Denmark Calls Halt to More Wind Farm Harm

And the Germans:

German Medicos Demand Moratorium on New Wind Farms

And the Tawainese:

Winning Taiwanese Hearts and Minds?

And the Turks:

Turkish Court Shuts Down 50 Turbines: Yaylaköy Residents Delighted at 1st Chance to Sleep in Years

Now, Poles have made it clear that they too are sick and tired (quite literally) of being belted by incessant turbine generated low-frequency noise and infrasound; and the inevitable result of being unable to sleep in and enjoy their very own homes.

In contrast to Australia’s pathetic wind farm commissioner (who operates under direction of the wind industry stooges in Greg Hunt’s office), at least Poles have an Ombudsman gifted with grace and integrity enough to stand up for their (what should be inalienable) human rights.

Poland’s ombudsman stands up for the rights of residents living near wind farms
stopwiatrakom.eu
21 February 2016

How can we help people who have wind turbines above their homes?

Earlier this month Poland’s Commissioner for Human Rights (CHR) addressed this question to three competent Ministers, for the Environment, Infrastructure and Construction, and Health, demanding that the rights of people residing in the vicinity of wind farms be adequately protected.

The official website of Poland’s CHR explains (in English) that:

The Commissioner’s Office receives more and more letters from citizens complaining about a deterioration of their health due to the wind turbines’ influence, as well as about the wind farm locating and building procedures. During a meeting with dr. Bodnar, the residents of the Suwałki Region also expressed their concern about the safe placement of wind farms. The Commissioner has contacted the Minister of Environment, the Minister of Health and the Minister of Infrastructure and Construction on that matter. (https://www.rpo.gov.pl/en/content/rights-residents-living-near-wind-farms).

The page also includes links to a report on dr. Bodnar’s meeting with residents of the Suwalki region and to the three official intervention letters addressed to the Ministers for the Environment, Infrastructure and Construction, and Health.

Importantly, this is the second time that a Polish Ombudsman has intervened on behalf of the people affected by the untrammelled construction of wind farms in Poland.

In August 2014 the then Commissioner for Human Rights, professor Irena Lipowicz, wrote a letter to Polish Prime Minister demanding the introduction of proper setbacks from residences.

The letter stated that “since the current legislation does not provide for the minimum distances from residential areas to be observed in the siting of wind farms, there exists a risk of violation of the constitutional rights to the protection of health and to the legal protection of human life (Articles 68 and 38, respectively of the Constitution of Poland)”.

The 2014 letter further pointed out that:

As numerous scientific publications demonstrate, wind turbines unquestionably impact human health by emitting low frequency noise, infrasound, acoustic and optical impacts or pulsation […]

[Therefore,] the Commissioner for Human Rights asks for immediate action to be taken with a view to developing andSYSTEMATIZINGtechnical norms that may afford an adequate level of protection to the health of residents living in the area adjacent to wind farms.

This letter in Polish can be found here:http://www.brpo.gov.pl/pl/content/do-prezesa-rady-ministrow-ws- uregulowania-minimalnych-odleglosci-farm-wiatrowych-od-zabudowy

That letter sent to the Prime Minister Donald Tusk by Ombudsman Lipowicz in mid-2014 did not prompt the then coalition government of the Civic Platform and the Polish Peasant Party to take any significant steps to comprehensively address the regulation of siting wind farms in Poland. As a result, in early 2016 wind farms are still being built as close as 300 metres from human dwellings.

It is important to note that both Polish Ombudsmen, prof. Lipowicz in 2014 and dr. Bodnar at present, are appointees of the ruling coalition that lost power in the Fall 2015 to the Law and Justice Party.

Moreover, the Law and Justice Party opposed the appointment of Dr Bodnar in 2015 on the grounds that his leftist views are not representative of the Polish public opinion. This shows that the issue of wind farm regulations transcends any political or ideological divides in Poland.

It is also worth recalling that former Prime Minister Tusk is the current President-in-Office of the Council of the European Union.

Regional newspaper Współczesna.pl interviewed some of the residents whose plight prompted Ombudsman Bodnar to intervene with the government ministers.

One local resident, Elzbieta Pietrolaj, whose farm is surrounded by five wind turbines, one of which is located 450 metres from her home, said: “With the slightest breeze you can’t sleep a wink because of the booming noise.”

The newspaper explains that Ms Pietrolaj is ailing. “I am constantly nervous. In these conditions it is difficult to get better.” (source:http://www.wspolczesna.pl/wiadomosci/suwalki/art/9414563,wiatraki-na-suwalszczyznie-mieszkancy- wiatraki-zabraly-cisze-marzenia-i-spokoj,id,t.html).

We encourage international media to contact the office of Commissioner for Human Rights for further information:

Office of the Commissioner for Human Rights
Aleja Solidarności 77
00-090 Warszawa
Poland
phone (+ 48 22) 55 17 700
fax (+ 48 22) 827 64 53
biurorzecznika@brpo.gov.pl
Article authored by: stopwiatrakom.eu kontakt@stopwiatrakom.eu

Dr. Sarah Laurie’s Speech to Citizens in Falmouth, Fighting Back, Against the Windpushers!

February 28, 2016 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Thank you for the opportunity to contribute to your rally. I first wish to pay tribute to the long suffering residents of Falmouth USA, who lived or are still living near the wind turbines owned by the town. These people have made an incredible contribution to our knowledge of wind turbine acoustics, wind turbine adverse health impacts, and have shown true human courage and compassion for others in a similar situation – both in their own country and further afield.

We owe them, their acoustics and health professionals, and their supporters, a great debt of gratitude. Their lived experiences, which are now very much in the public domain, in part because of their determination to fight for their legal and human rights, are a window on the incredible suffering which excessive intrusive wind turbine noise can cause. These people are just like you and me but have had to suffer intolerably and disgracefully because of gross government regulatory failure and corporate bastardry, deceit and greed. They are simply trying to live their lives, free from the devastating adverse health effects resulting from what can only be described as an invasion of their home, resulting in acoustic trespass and noise nuisance, from pulsing infrasound and low frequency noise.

These frequencies have been known to be harmful for over thirty years since the seminal research work by Dr Neil Kelley and his team from NASA and other research organisations. Wind turbines are of course not the only source of this damaging sound energy, their body and brain don’t care what the source of the pulsing sound is – it is going to react anyway, at ever decreasing doses, until or unless they can remove themselves from that exposure. The only two options are turn off the noise OR move away. It is not humanly possible to go for long without good quality sleep and remain unharmed and as you all probably know, sleep deprivation from repeated sleep disturbance is the commonest problem reported by most residents living near industrial wind power facilities. This inevitably results in exhaustion, and consequently serious and predictable adverse physical and mental health effects. The Centre for Disease Control in America has recently stated the obvious – that insufficient sleep is a public health problem. Their website states the following: “Sleep is increasingly recognized as important to public health, with sleep insufficiency linked to motor vehicle crashes, industrial disasters, and medical and other occupational errors.1 Unintentionally falling asleep, nodding off while driving, and having difficulty performing daily tasks because of sleepiness all may contribute to these hazardous outcomes. Persons experiencing sleep insufficiency are also more likely to suffer from chronic diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, depression, and obesity, as well as from cancer, increased mortality, and reduced quality of life and productivity.”

So why are the most commonly reported symptoms of wind turbine neighbours, ignored by the American Health Authorities? Where are the public health physicians? Why has there not yet been even one detailed case study of one person, anywhere in the world, examining the full spectrum of acoustic exposures overnight, together with concurrent sleep study EEG and continuous heart rate monitoring? The Waubra Foundation has been calling for this precise research for the last five years. As you all no doubt know, US Acousticians Rob Rand and Steve Ambrose conducted the wonderful initial acoustic investigation in Falmouth, USA funded by the generosity of Bruce McPherson, which provided vitally important clues about the causes of the symptoms. This study is still of global importance, and is something which Falmouth residents should be very proud of.

Other acoustic investigators have followed, and made other significant contributions. But where are the medical and public health investigators? They seem to be in hiding; either ignoring important research evidence in the case of Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council “expert panel” with members who had documented conflicts of interest, or in the case of Health Canada, deliberately choosing study designs which do not directly investigate the problems in the best possible way. For example any doctor knows that you do not make clinical judgements about someone’s blood pressure with a single once off measurement, yet that is what this Health Canada team did – with no concurrent measurement of the acoustic exposure at the time. You must repeat the measurement. This is junk science, and Health Canada know it, and are trying to hide it by dribbling the study results out slowly and in small “bites”, restricting access to the raw data and other results, making it very difficult for others to critically evaluate their results. I applaud Falmouth Psychiatrist Dr William Hallstein for his professional integrity, courage, and honesty – advocating so strongly for his patients, to whom he owes a professional and ethical duty of care, which he clearly takes seriously. Others need to follow his example. I also applaud Dr Nina Pierpont for her research, and her courage and integrity, and her work with Falmouth residents, helping them expose their stories to the public. But where are their colleagues? Why the silence? 1 http://www.cdc.gov/features/dssleep/ The silence of too many professionals, or indeed even active collusion with noise polluters to hide or ignore the evidence of serious harm, has allowed this serious abuse of the legal and human rights of residents in Falmouth, and indeed all over the world, to occur, and to continue.

But why are the public servants responsible for environmental health, planning and noise pollution regulation, seemingly so complicit with the harmful abuse of the rights of citizens? Is it ignorance or incompetence? Is it pure corruption? Is it regulatory capture? Is it ideological zealotry – an attitude that leads to the concept that people who are noise impacted from wind turbine noise are somehow acceptable “collateral damage”. Is it fear of being ridiculed or ostracized by colleagues?

I am very glad that you are showing such open and public support for the impacted Falmouth residents today, and I join with you in demanding immediate change before any more damage is done to vulnerable citizens. There must be full spectrum acoustic measurements inside and outside people’s homes, with the complete cooperation of the wind turbine operators so that on off testing can be performed to determine the true contribution of the wind turbines to the soundscape, and so the symptom triggers can be properly identified. If the turbines are disturbing sleep, they must be turned off at night. If health is being adversely impacted, there needs to be a resolution – two alternatives being property buy outs with compensation for nuisance, or wind turbines being deconstructed and removed. There are precedents for both. Planning regulations and siting decisions must in future taken notice of empirical acoustic and health data and ensure there is sufficient buffer zone in order to protect people. It’s time people’s health, and their human rights are properly protected – in particular the right to attain the best possible physical and mental health. That fundamental human right to the best possible health specified in most United Nations Human Rights instruments, is not possible if people cannot sleep.

Sarah Laurie, CEO Waubra Foundation

Winweasels Will Say Anything, To Try To Protect Their Scam!

February 22, 2016 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Orwellian Eco-Fascist Ideology Ramming Wind Turbines Into Everyone Else’s Backyards

February 22, 2016 by stopthesethings

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Those that accuse community defenders of being nothing more than self-interested ‘NIMBYs’ are hardly what you’d call ‘disinterested observers’.

No, it’s their willful ignorance and lack of human empathy that gives them away – that and the fact that they will never, themselves, have to tolerate a ‘life’, suffering incessant turbine generated low-frequency noise and infrasound.

Reminiscent of the porcine ‘elite’ that ran Orwell’s Animal Farm (with one of its central themes the promised construction of a windmill that was said by its piggy-proponents to offer ‘free electricity’, a life of leisure and wealth for the lower orders) in his obsession to carpet your patch of paradise with hundreds of whirling Danish-Dervishes, the eco-fascist is always ready to line you up to make the sacrifices that they themselveswouldn’t tolerate for a second.

Some might call it ‘green hypocrisy’: STT calls it an inexcusable form of malevolence of the very worst kind – one, long on sanctimony, and short on either scientific or economic logic. Precisely the attributes exhibited by Orwell’s selfish and mean-spirited barnyard overlords.

These days, the characters drawn by George don’t grunt, they rant – and use self-affixed titles such as “Friends of Mother Earth”. Here’s a run-down on how these characters roll, from Virgina.

Van Velzer: Botetourt ignores the hazards of wind energy
The Roanoke Times
Bill Van Velzer
15 February 2016

On Jan. 26, Botetourt County’s Board of Supervisors gave its unanimous blessing to the construction of 25, 550-foot tall wind turbines on North Mountain.

This decision has brought cheers from local environmentalists who identify themselves as “friends of Mother Earth.” As with the siting of any industrial facility, the proposed Rocky Forge project is replete with enough technical minutiae that any complete understanding of its true environmental and human impact requires tremendous attention to hours of intense study.

For this reason, Rockbridge County’s Board of Supervisors requested of Botetourt County a reasonable 90-day delay period. This delay was denied while the project was allowed to proceed.

Wind does not respect arbitrary political boundaries; neither do the impacts that industrial wind facilities have on nearby residents and wildlife. So when one of the speakers referred to a need to push wind turbines into the view sheds of “the wealthy Rockbridge elites,” one wonders if there is another agenda at work that has little to do with the facts of this issue. Unfortunately, this seems to be the world we live in nowadays.

Indeed, it seems that discussions of wind energy fit into a larger political matrix. We must avoid this. This issue — when properly vetted — should transcend political ideology and rest on factual evidence. Each of us has a right to define our own quality of life. When someone insists that their emotionally-driven opinion is more important than my factual analysis, I have to begin wondering if I’m getting too close to a larger ideological vulnerability.

Having said this, there are legitimate issues concerning both Botetourt County’s rush to judgement and the larger assumptions about wind energy. From local to global, here is where we are:

First is the issue of “unconstitutional taking of private property.” In short, your right to enjoy your private property cannot trump my right to the enjoy mine. This is an essential ingredient of American jurisprudence, originating in English common law. It is at the heart of how we define fairness. Yet the precedent set by the Botetourt Board of Supervisors allows 550’-tall wind turbines 605 feet from a neighboring property line, and 820 feet a from a neighbor’s home.

Moreover, the 60dBA noise limit “restriction” is commensurate with sound at a busy urban intersection. North Mountain is clearly a rural environment with an ambient noise level at exactly half of this figure. Will these allowances not impact neighboring property values?

Of course, these issues have everything to do with whether or not prospective purchasers of your property — should you decide to sell — would want to hear this cacophony of noise, and see spinning blades from your deck or picture window at all hours and days of the year.

Infrasound belongs to the above argument, but really deserves space of its own. The wind industry denies its existence like tobacco companies used to deny any link between smoking and lung cancer.

Not surprisingly, Botetourt County doesn’t recognize infrasound, either. This cannot and will not continue, due to the rapidly accumulating evidence that infrasound’s wave pulses are a much greater health concern than is audible sound.

Infrasound deprives people of sleep, causes irritability and loss of concentration, and general anxiety. Don’t take my word for it — scores of YouTube videos have documented the abandonment of homes due to this unforgivable negligence on the part of local government officials.

Impact on wildlife is the flip side of human impact. Infrasound impacts animals in the same way that it impacts humans; the difference is that wildlife simply leaves impacted areas.

However for avian populations, the destruction is more graphic. For this reason, wind turbines have been called “Cuisinarts of the air.”

“Windustry” denies this, while claiming that cats, windows and cars take far more birds and bats than do wind turbines. This is beyond disingenuous. How many house cats kill an eagle, a hawk, an owl annually? None other than the American Bird Conservancy documents bird and bat deaths in the U.S. as 573,000 and 888,000 respectively, as of 2012.

The “kicker” here is that Botetourt County doesn’t require independent monitoring of bird and bat kills — even for resident eagle populations. Ditto for threatened and endangered bats. Is this prudent?

So while Rocky Forge supporters congratulate themselves, more deliberative minds ponder the future. Unbeknownst to most valley residents, Botetourt County’s master wind resource map identifies 11 ridges and mountains as potential industrial wind energy sites. I’ll leave the last assumption to you.
The Roanoke Times

Wind Contracts….Dancing with the Devil!

February 15, 2016 / 1957chev / 1 Comment

The Anatomy of a Wind Farm Contract – Part 2

Posted on February 15, 2016by Neil van Dokkum

noisy turbines

In my previous blog I explained how a typical wind farm contract consists of two divisible parts, an Option and a Lease. When looking at an Option, I came to the inescapable conclusion that by selling the wind farm developer an Option, the landowner essentially gave up any control over his own land for extended (potentially endless) periods, in return for often trifling sums of money.

In this blog I want to start looking at the second part of the contract – the Lease. This part forms the majority of the contract document, and we may need more than one blog to cover it all.

These contracts are about money, and clearly we need to know just how much a landowner can make, how quickly he or she can make it, and whether on a purely monetary basis it is a worthwhile exercise for a landowner to consider.

So let’s get down to the nitty-gritty. Once the wind farm is up and generating, what sort of money can a landowner make? Remember that as this is now a lease; the landowner is now the “Landlord”, and the wind farm developer is now the “Tenant”:

“… the Tenant from the Commencement Date for the Term YIELDING AND PAYING therefore to the Landlord during the first ten years of the Term the Rent of three per cent (3.0 %) of the Gross Operating Proceeds per annum and after the first ten years the Rent of three and a half per cent (3.5%) of the Gross Operating Proceeds subject to the provisions for review as hereinafter contained or €5,000.00 per Megawatt of capacityINSTALLED on the Premises or proportionately in respect of any part of a Megawatt of capacity so installed whichever of (i) or (ii) shall be the higher;

The first thing to realise is that the payments made by the developer (the Tenant) to the landowner (the Landlord) are now called ‘Rent’. As the term of contract in my contract is 25 years, what the landowner receives in cold cash is three percent of the Gross Operating Proceeds for ten years, and thereafter three-and-a-half percent of the Gross Operating Proceeds for fifteen years. However, 25 years is actually one of the shorter periods you will find on one of these contracts, so look very carefully at the definition of “Operating Period” when faced with one of these contracts.

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The first question obviously is: what is meant by ‘Gross Operating Proceeds’? Well, I am not a bookkeeper but I do remember my lessons which told me that “Gross” means all your money as you make it, whilst “Nett” means the money you have left after you have paid what you owe (your “take home”).
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Wind developers clearly speak a different language compared with the rest of us. Their definition of “Gross Operating Proceeds” is this:

“x-y:
Where x = the gross receipts (excluding VAT or any substituted or similar tax) from electricity sold by the Tenant and generated by the Wind Turbine(s) on the Premises excluding any together with the receipts if any that may arise from the sale of green credits or other similar environmental scheme and;
y = such costs as the Tenant may have to pay in respect of the electricity generated by the Wind Turbine(s) on the Premises but limited to (i) the costs and charges to join and remain a member of the Pooling and Settlement System, if any and; (ii) any non-capital costs or charges associated with the purchase from the Electricity Supply Board or any third party purchaser of electricity for the provision of auxiliary power to the Accommodation Works or the Wind Turbine(s) as certified from time to time by the Auditors Certificate and; (iii) any transmission, metering or distribution costs.”

Now that is a different meaning to the “gross” as ordinary people understand it.

“Gross = x-y”. What?

And then when looking at “x”, which is the amount of the so-called “gross receipts”, that is the money received by the developer for electricity actually sold by the developer. If the developer does not sell any electricity, or is forced to dump electricity, that means there is no receipt. And even these ‘receipts’ have deductions made from them, namely tax, green credits, and subsidy payments.

And once we reach the nett value of the “gross receipts”, we now have to subtract “y” from those. The value of “y” is essentially all and any operating costs, including the IWEA membership fees, and the cost of electricity to run the back-up power when the wind turbines are not generating their own electricity, which in winter is most of the time as the wind blows too hard and the turbines are shut down, whilst in summer there is little wind.

As there is no electricity sold, the landowner loses out. Of course, the developer does not lose out, as it is getting the subsidies (money paid by electricity customers in the form of the PSO Levy) and curtailment payments (money paid to the developer by the taxpayer for not generating). However, as these payments are not for electricity sold, the developer does not have to share that with the landowner. No wonder IWEA are always asking for increased subsidies, and no wonder, in countries other than Ireland, when the subsidies have been withdrawn, the “green” developers have vanished into thin air.

Wow! Is there anything left of this “gross” after that? And the landowner gets a measly 3% for the first ten years, at which stage the turbines are probably burnt out and need to be replaced (given what we now know about the life cycle of these giant turbines – you are lucky if you get ten years out of them – more likely three to six years), which in turn means massive operating costs = more money taken off the so-called “gross” amount.

I would guess that because of this creative bookkeeping, most landowners will be plumping for the €5000.00 per MWINSTALLED option.

Interestingly enough, the word INSTALLED” is not defined in the contract. If something is not specifically defined in a contract, it is given its ordinary meaning. I would suggest thatINSTALLED means up and running and connected to the grid (as opposed to ‘erected’), which might mean more delays before the landowner actually sees some of that cold hard cash.

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“… and where no turbines are installed on the Premises the following payments will be made:
10,000EURO per annum for a site sub-station and ancillary equipment;
5,000EURO per annum for a Grant of Deed of Right of Way and Wayleave;
2,500EURO per annum for a consent to erect turbines on neighbouring premises and where such consent is needed because of reduced distance to neighbouring boundaries only;
all of which payments shall be exclusive of any Value Added Tax which may from time to time be properly chargeable and charged thereon by the Landlord clear of all deductions save those required by law.”

This clause confused me. If these payment options do apply to the landowner that is actually hosting the wind farm, one would think that the host-landowner wouldMAKE MORE MONEY by not having the turbines built, as the Gross Operating Proceeds don’t seem to be enough to feed the dog, let alone make a nice living without all the hard work that constitutes farming (assuming that most landowners that host wind farms will be farmers or at least owners of rural land / farm land).

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However, It is doubtful that the wind developer is going to enter into the Lease before the wind farm is up and running – that is what the Option is for, and the developer will rather pay you your tenEURO (a year, hopefully) for the Option for as long as the developer can stretch that Option out.

One would imagine that the developer will only enter into the Lease with the landowner who is accommodating the actual wind farm when the wind farm is definitely going up, and the Option is exhausted. Otherwise the landowner will be strung along, essentially at the mercy of the developer.

I am therefore guessing that these other forms of payment are for landowners with land adjoining the wind farm premises. This might be the landowner hosting the wind farm, where their land is big enough to also take a sub-station, or where the wind farm is situated in the middle of the property, in which case a right of way might be necessary. I am guessing that this contract is a ‘one-size-fits-all’, and can accommodate those landowners who agree to have a wind farm built on their land, but can also be used to bind those landowners that own land adjoining the host property, assuming that they are willing to contract. Of course they might have no choice if their opposition to planning permission was fruitless, and the wind farm is now destroying their health and their livelihood. These secondary payments will only need to occur once the wind farm is built and operating, and not before.

€2500.00 per year as compensation for being driven crazy by the noise and flicker from the neighbouring wind farm? Count me out.

print money

The final sting in the tail concerning payment?

Well, going back to the assumption that theVAST majority of landowners that host wind farms will be farmers or owners of agricultural land, there is the issue of the effect on the zoning of that land.

After waiting for ten years, the Option is exhausted and the farmer is now looking to cash in on these larger payments of €5000.00 perINSTALLED MW.

Firstly, these payments are fully taxable as rental income, which cannot be set off against ordinary agricultural costs.

Secondly, there is the question of agricultural land tax-reliefs. Some lease agreements do say that the wind-farm company will compensate farmers for the loss of certain farm reliefs. These are usually written in such a way that they cover the farm reliefs that exist at the time of signing. They do not cover subsequent or amended farm reliefs that may be introduced in the future. Again, when we consider that I have seen wind farm lease agreements lasting 60 years, many farmers that have entered into these agreements with wind developers must now accept that the loss of future farm reliefs and payments, coupled with the fully taxable nature of the wind-farm payments that they will receive, will mean that they will be in a financially worse position than they are at the moment. Many struggling farmers grabbed the wind farm option with both hands (encouraged all the way by the IFA). Some of these stories might have very sad endings.

Thirdly, Revenue has made it clear that farmers may no longer qualify for the significant agricultural tax-relief on their lands should they wish to transfer their lands by gift or inheritance. A wind farm turns your land into an industrial site, which means that you are no longer a ‘farmer’ as defined byTAX LAW, and your lands may fail to satisfy the definition of ‘agricultural land’ under the capital acquisitions tax legislation.

While you might getTAX RELIEF as a business, this is a more restricted capital acquisitions tax relief, as the family home does not qualify for business relief. When we consider that most farms and homes are passed through generations of farming families, using the vehicle of the substantial agricultural reliefs available, farmers face a scary future prospect of not being able to afford to remain on their farms if these taxation reliefs are jeopardised. That means that unless the wind developer is paying you more money than you were getting when you qualified for all the agricultural tax relief that is currently available, you are making a nett loss. When the wind farm leaves, it will be a long time before you can have your land rezoned as agricultural land so as to restore those tax reliefs.

It is for that reason that I would plead with farmers to obtain good and sound legal advice before entering into one of these wind farm contracts.

All that glitters is most definitely not gold.

When Windweasel Lies Meet Reality!

February 10, 2016 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Wind Power Will Never Keep the Lights On: Propaganda Obscures Truth About Where Your Power Really Comes From

February 10, 2016 by stopthesethings

Claims and delivery are a gulf apart, when what’s put up by the wind and solar crowd is measured up against the hard cold facts that reside in ‘reality-land’.

With every new wind farm proposal we’re told how this operation would ‘power’ a hundred thousand homes (for ‘free’) – although these days it’s a line that accompanies moaning by wind power outfits about their inability to obtain power purchase agreements with retailers and, therefore, finance from banks to carry out their threats.

This story highlights the fact that talk about a wind and solar powered future is just that: ‘talk’.

The truth about our electricity supply is too hot to handle
The Australian (BusinessSpectator)
Keith Orchison
26 January 2016

How ordinary Australians are kept informed about arguably their most essential service, electricity supply, is a big issue for companies and competing lobbyists in a game where literally many billions of dollars are at stake.

If it is true that most Australians under 30 get their news from social media rather than newspapers or TV and radio — so claimed by Graham Richardson in a recent op-ed in The Australian — then what appears in the traditional media is no longer the dominant source of public information. (I’m from an era where too many PR types used to present their ‘success’ to their employers via column inches published in newspapers.)

We have had an example of the modern idiom in recent days with a minor hullabaloo about the promise of large-scale solar power based on the official commissioning of the two AGL Energy PV farms near Broken Hill, but not a syllable anywhere about the single biggest issue of the same moment for all electricity consumers: how supply has been sustained as a nasty heatwave baked the east coast.

That our community needs electricity big-time to cope with 40-degree temperatures and high humidity is beyond debate. For day after recent day, the east coast load neared or exceeded 30,000 megawatts, something it hasn’t done often in the past five years as prices (and, in the case of manufacturers, other factors too) pulled down demand.

That the delivery system, so often derided in the recent past as ‘gold-plated’, stood up well to the pressure is obvious. The dozen or so failures of supply (affecting 70,000 homes in one case) were attributable to big storms that ripped down houses and trees as well as poles and wires.

That the network operators have thrown emergency repair crews into the fray to bring back supply as quickly as possible has received little media mention. It’s a given — not that this will stop the networks getting kicked about their charges when the next revenue row arises.

For me, it is particularly notable and regrettable that what is wholly missing from mainstream media coverage is the breakdown of how the much-needed electrons have been generated.

This is not secret engineers’ business. The information is readily available — it’s just not passed on, even briefly, to the hot and sweaty public.

Take New South Wales as an example. It’s home to the largest number of consumers, whether we are talking households (just on three million, or roughly a third of the national total) or business (more than 400,000, also a third of the total).

NSW plus Victoria and Queensland account for roughly 90 per cent of national electricity customers, and on a typical midafternoon in January the trio’s consumers were getting some 73 per cent of their power (by committed capacity) from black and brown coal, with gas turbines accounting for another 11.8 per cent. Hydro-electric capacity (a critical resilience factor on high-demand days for NSW and Victoria) was contributing another 7.5 per cent.

In this situation, the green activists’ love children, wind and solar, accounted for 7.5 per cent of operating capacity, of which rooftop PVs met 5 per cent, a testament to the extra-ordinary emergence of household self-generation in response to public aggravation over retail power bill spikes and over-the-top political largesse (since cut back sharply), demonstrating how fast a fad can become a useful accessory in our affluent society.

Coming back to NSW specifically, at the peak of one of the heatwave days, the state’s generation load pushed past 12,200 megawatts at noon: met by almost 7,500 MW of black coal plant, 1,300 MW of gas plant, almost 2,500 MW of hydro-electric plant, 520 MW of wind power and nearly as much (428 MW) of rooftop solar plus 50 MW of large-scale solar. (The usefulness of rooftop solar, of course, fell away at dusk while, if anything, the heatwave’s grip was being felt more acutely by householders.)

It’s terribly easy to get tendentious about this stuff — you can find the types who do so hard at work all over the media space — but the real bottom line is twofold.

First, the biggest state in the Commonwealth (population, commercially, industrially, economically) would be stuffed without conventional power generation (coal, gas, hydro).

Second, replacing the coal elements of this reliable supply system is a great deal easier to talk about than to do.

Take the two Broken Hill solar farms, officially commissioned with federal and state ministers in attendance and lots of green trumpet blowing. Between them, their 155 megawatts of capacity is expected to produce 259,000 megawatt hours of electricity annually.

By comparison, AGL Energy’s 2,640 MW Bayswater black coal operation sends out 15,000 gigawatt hours a year.

One gigawatt hour is equal to a thousand megawatt hours.

It would take 58 sets of the Broken Hill solar twins to match Bayswater’s output. All the coal plants in the state deliver more than 50,000 GWh a year.

Without doubt, we are in a power transition period where new technology will play an increasing role. To what extent, over what time period and at what cost (in terms of capital outlays, taxpayer subsidies and consumer bills) is a very big question.

An even bigger one, perhaps, is just how much damage can be done to a supply system we take from granted via the posturing of ideologists and rent-seekers, the naivety of politicians and the energy illiteracy of the community?

More than 50 years ago I went to a high school that had as its motto ‘festina lente’ — Latin for “make haste slowly.” Perhaps it should be carved above the entry of our parliament houses and painted on the office walls of ministers (alongside ‘it’s the economy, stupid’).

Keith Orchison, director of consultancy Coolibah Pty Ltd and editor of OnPower, was chief executive of two national energy associations from 1980 to 2003. He was made a Member of the Order of Australia for services to the energy industry in 2004.
The Australian

Looking Forward to WindPushers being Held Accountable!

February 6, 2016 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Governments Lying About Wind Turbine Noise: Ignorance No Defence to Claims Worth $Millions

February 6, 2016 by stopthesethings

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As the number of cases launched against wind power outfits and the landholders who ‘host’ these things takes off, the government agencies that continue to run the wind industry line that the incessant turbine generated low-frequency noise and infrasound and the sleep deprivation it causes is all in the victims’ heads (a former tobacco advertising gurusaid so) – are setting themselves up for liability in the hundreds of $millions. And the kind of ignorance displayed in this little piece is no defence.

Ignoring harm of noise
Rutland Herald
Sandy Reider
24 January 2016

The Vermont Health Department and the Vermont Department of Public Service persist in reassuring us that there are no significant health effects related to industrial wind turbines under Vermont’s current noise standards.

Such a blanket statement is not only incorrect, it is a disservice to the Vermonters who are already experiencing adverse health effects, such as headaches, vertigo, nausea, anxiety, ringing in the ears and, most importantly, chronic repetitive sleep disruption. There is an ongoing academic debate about the mechanisms behind these effects (direct vs. indirect, the nocebo “its all in your head” effect, audible vs. inaudible infrasound), but little disagreement that some persons living too close to these large wind turbines are suffering, whatever the mechanism.

Critical methodological shortcomings plague many of the large-scale industry or government-sponsored studies that state agencies rely upon to establish protective sound levels:

Failure to measure the full sound spectrum, in particular ignoring the very low frequencies that are likely responsible for many of the reported adverse health effects.
They assume a constant sound pressure and tone, not at all like the impulsive sound produced by large turbines, which has its own distinct signature that differs from other environmental sources (planes, trains, automobiles, wind, leaves rustling).
Sound levels are often averaged over an hour, or longer, making it possible for periods of very loud intrusive sound to fall within an “acceptable” calculated level.
Measurements are usually not taken indoors, where the sound may be more intrusive due to the well-established resonance effects of low frequency sound.
Most importantly, the large studies fail to focus their investigations on those households that are most severely affected.

In spite of these research design limitations, a recently released large Health Canada study found that at wind turbine sound pressure levels greater than 35 dB(A), health-related complaints will increase, and at levels greater than 40 dB(A) a significant number of persons will be “highly annoyed” (meaning adverse health effects, especially sleep disturbance).

The current Public Service Board threshold of 45 dB(A) of audible sound through an open window, averaged over an hour, has actually never been proven safe or protective. Some studies recommend that audible sound should not exceed 35 dB(A), or 5 dB(A) above normal background sound levels. (This is crucial in rural areas where background noise is minimal, particularly at night). The level should be a maximum, not an hourly average. Above 35 dB(A) there are likely to be significantly more complaints, particularly difficulty sleeping.

Several recent small, well-designed, independent clinical studies (Ambrose & Rand, Nissenbaum, Pierpont, Schomer, Cooper, Thorne) that do take the aforementioned factors into consideration, all conclude that lower, more protective noise limits for these huge industrial wind installations are needed (for more details: docs.wind-watch.org/DRSANDYREIDER_042413.pdf).

To the benefit of the wind industry, and apparently to those agencies promoting large wind installations on our ridgelines here in Vermont, the issue of infrasound has thus far been successfully suppressed and ignored. Space does not permit a detailed discussion, but consider the following:

The World Health Organization has definitively established (2009) that inaudible very-low-frequency infrasound is a human health hazard, that it can disturb sleep, and increase heart rate and blood pressure, leading in susceptible individuals, to permanent effects such as hypertension and cardiovascular disease, even at sound levels below 30 dB(A).
In the mid 1980s, Neil Kelley and his team thoroughly documented significant adverse health effects resulting from inaudible, very-low-frequency sound produced by a large wind turbine in Boone, N.C. This scientifically rigorous NASA and Department of Energy-sponsored study, in cooperation with MIT and four other prestigious universities, as well as the wind industry, has been conveniently dismissed as irrelevant by current wind developers, even though the study’s conclusions have never been disputed, and even though we now know that the large turbines being installed today do indeed generate clinically significant amounts of infrasound.
Three more recent preliminary studies (Ambrose & Rand’s Falmouth, Mass., 2011; Schomer, Rand, et. al., Shirley project, Brown County, Wisconsin, 2012; Cooper, Bridgewater, Australia, 2014) of projects with large modern upwind turbines have replicated and confirmed Kelley’s findings; i.e., infrasound, not audible sound, is a major contributor to the health fallout from today’s industrial wind projects.

Taken together with the thousands of case reports from around the world (I personally have seen three families here in the Northeast Kingdom that have been forced to abandon their homes due to adverse health effects from nearby wind turbines), stricter full-spectrum noise standards for these large wind projects are urgently needed. However, Vermonters should not expect meaningful change until the governor, as well as his appointees in the Health and Public Service departments, recognize the importance of being more inclusive in their selection of scientific data, and until they demonstrate a genuine willingness to take the health complaints of the neighbors of these turbines seriously.

Dr. Sandy Reider is a physician who lives in Lyndonville.
Rutland Herald

The wind industry and its pet acoustic consultants are acutely aware of the true facts – viz, that the noise ‘rules’ they wrote together are meaningless (that was the objective, after all) and, in order to spear ever larger turbines ever closer to homes – and thereafter to operate with perceived impunity – have convinced the useful idiots in planning and health departments to the contrary.

But, as with most things in life, the facts have a funny way of bubbling to the surface. Any government that continues to run with the wind industry will find itself in the dock with the principal offenders in the not too distant future.

Germans Gear Up to Fight the Windweasels, Politically!

February 4, 2016 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

German Opposition to Wind Farms Spawns New Political Party

February 4, 2016 by stopthesethings

Remember all the guff about Germans loving wind power to bits?

And stories about how Germany is the wind power pioneer, and that its cheerful rural volk are 100% behind having thousands of these things speared all over their bucolic homeland?

No? We’ve forgotten them too.

German wind farm neighbours suffer from incessant turbine generated low-frequency noise and infrasound – just as they do all around the World:

Germans Driven from their Homes by Wind Turbine Generated Infrasound

So, it’s no surprise that there are more than 500 well-organised groups fighting back against ‘green’/left lunancy – in an effort to protect their homes, their health and their families.

What, to date, has been a reactionary force sprouting up in regions set upon by the wind industry, has now coalesced into a full-blown system of political opposition; and has just given rise to a political party aimed at bringing the great German wind power fraud to an end. Here’s another story you won’t see in the mainstream press from NoTricksZone.

Rapidly Evolving Protest: German Wind Energy Opponents Form Political Party In Response To A Deaf System
NoTricksZone
Pierre L. Gosselin
25 January 2016

Not a single one of Germany’s established political parties officially opposes the construction of wind parks despite all the proof of their inefficiency, hazard to health and wildlife, ugliness, and lack of economy.

As a consequence, a growing number of citizens are becoming fed up with a political system that has become deaf to the concerns of citizens. Some 10 years ago what once began as a huge welcome of “green and clean” wind energy, has since turned into fierce protest – and is now developing into organized political opposition.

North Germany’s online daily nordkurier.de here reports how in the state of Mecklenburg Western Pomerania citizen initiative groups against ugly wind parks are taking their protest activity to a whole new level: the formation of a political party to be on the ballot in September’s state elections. In summary environmentalist citizens have had it with the green-preaching parties who refuse to listen and have allowed themselves to be corrupted by Big Wind.

The name of the citizens’ initiative, which comprises some 50 smaller initiatives statewide, is called “Freier Horizont” (Free Horizon) and it plans to be on the ballot under the same name in this fall’s election.

Deaf political system

The reason the Freier Horizont is forming a political party? The nordkurier.de quotes initiative’s chairman Norbert Schumacher:

Currently there is no democratic party which rejects the uncontrolled expansion of wind power that people can elect.”

The hardest hit of course will be the region’s Green Party as disenchanted environmentalist realize that the Greens have long sold out to profiteering wind energy opportunists. The movement led by the Freier Horizont is taking on formidable dimensions. The nordkurier.de writes:

“Schumacher sees voter potential foremost in the countryside. At many places citizens have had the experience that there voices against wind turbines carry no weight with the deciding committees. Last year the protest group gathered more than 22,000 signatures in a short time in support of a citizens’ initiative calling for greater distances between turbines and homes and coastlines. The state parliament rejected the initiative.”

Initiative leaders tell the nordkurier.de that it was never their intention to form a party. However, elected officials simply just don’t listen anymore.
NoTricksZone

Wind Weasels Don’t Care Who They Destroy!!

February 2, 2016 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Mexican Wind Farm Madness: Wind Industry Crime & Corruption Crush an Ancient Culture

February 2, 2016 by stopthesethings

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Renata Bessi is a freelance journalist and contributor the Americas Program and Desinformémonos. She has published articles in Brazilian media: The Trecheiro newspaper magazine, Página 22, Repórter Brasil, Rede Brasil Atual, Brasil de Fato, Outras Palavras.

Santiago Navarro is an economist, a freelance journalist, photographer and contributor to the Americas Program, Desinformémonos and SubVersiones.

Together they have determined to expose the wind industry in Mexico for precisely what it is: despicable.

The dark side of clean energy in Mexico
Truthout
Santiago Navarro F. and Renata Bessi
29 January 2016

A palm hat worn down by time covers the face of Celestino Bortolo Teran, a 60-year-old Indigenous Zapotec man. He walks behind his ox team as they open furrows in the earth. A 17-year-old youth trails behind, sowing white, red and black corn, engaging in a ritual of ancient knowledge shared between local people and the earth.

Neither of the two notices the sound of our car as we arrive “because of the wind turbines,” Teran says. Just 50 meters away, a wind farm has been installed by the Spanish company Gas Natural Fenosa. It will generate, at least for the next three decades, what governments and energy companies have declared “clean energy.”

Along with this farm, 20 others have been set up, forming what has come to be known as the wind corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, located in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca. The corridor occupies a surface area of 17,867.8 hectares, across which 1,608 wind turbines have been installed. The secretary of tourism and economic development of Oaxaca claims that they will collectively generate 2,267.43 megawatts of energy.

The Tehuantepec Isthmus stretches just 200 kilometers from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean, making it the third narrowest strip of land connecting the Americas, after isthmuses in Nicaragua and Panama. In this area, mountains converge to create a geological tunnel, which funnels extremely high-speed winds between the two oceans. Energy investors have focused on the region after the government of Oaxaca claimed that it’s capable of producing 10,000 megawatts of wind energy in an area of 100,000 hectares.

“Before, I could hear all the animals living in the areas. Through their songs and sounds, I knew when it was going to rain or when it was the best time to plant,” Teran said with sadness and rage in his voice. “Now though, it seems the animals have left due to the wind turbines.”

What Teran does not know is whether the turbines, built in accordance with the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), as defined in the Kyoto Protocol, are generating alternative energy that will actually help to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of large corporations and industrialized countries. The main objective of these polluters is to prevent global temperatures from rising 2 degrees Celsius before 2100, according to the 21st Session of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), better known as the COP21, which concluded in December 2015. “I don’t know what climate change is and neither do I know about the COP. I only know that our ancestral lands are being covered by these turbines,” Teran said.

At the Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992, participating countries passed the UNFCCC in response to climate change. With this accord, states set out to maintain their greenhouse gas emissions at the levels reached in 1990. At the third Conference of the Parties (COP3), held in Japan in 1997, the Kyoto Protocol was approved by industrialized countries, with the aim of reducing national emissions to an average of 5 percent below the 1990 levels, between 2008 and 2012. In order to help reduce the costs of this reduction, three “flexibility mechanisms” were designed: emissions trading, joint implementation and the aforementioned Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), under which a large number of the wind farms in the Tehuantepec Isthmus have been constructed.

According to the Kyoto Protocol, these mechanisms are meant to permit industrialized countries and private companies to reduce their emissions by developing clean energy projects in other parts of the world where it is more economically viable, and later include these reductions into national quotas. The second period of engagement of the Protocol is 2013-2020. In this period, countries in the European Union (excluding Iceland) have agreed to a collective emission reduction of 20 percent with respect to 1990 emission levels.

The Clean Energy Extraction and Energy Transition Financing Law statesthat Mexico will install technology to generate 25,000 megawatts of clean energy by 2024. “Mexico has an obligation to limit the electrical energy generated by fossil fuels to sixty-five percent (from the current eighty percent) by 2024,” the law states.

Teran continues sowing his corn while we ask him about the benefits he’s gained from the wind corridor and, a bit irritated, he responds: “They have not provided me or anyone in my family a job, and I don’t want anything to do with these companies or the government; I just want them to leave me in peace on my land. To let me live as I did beforehand.”

Wind Farms for Sale

***

The US Department of Energy and the US Agency for International Development (USAID), with the justification to help accelerate the use of wind energy technologies in the state of Oaxaca, developed an atlas published in 2003, which mapped the wind potential in the state of Oaxaca. The mapping confirms that the isthmus is the region with the largest wind potential.

“This wind resource atlas is an important element of the Mexican strategy to ensure availability of the necessary information and to define specific renewable energy projects as well as tools access to financing and development support,” according to the atlas document.

The paper organizers say they will not share specific maps related to the respective areas of wind potential due to the confidentiality required in possible contracts signed between companies and the government of Mexico. Although more than a decade later, with the arrival of more parks in this territory, it has become clear which of these sites are mainly located on the shores of Laguna Superior.

For all the good intentions the United States had to cooperate with Mexico to invest in renewable energy, USAID made another document in 2009, called “Study of Export Potential Wind Energy of Mexico to the United States,” which confirms that the greatest potential of this energy is concentrated in the states of Oaxaca (2,600 megawatts) and Baja California (1,400 megawatts). In August 2015, the government of Mexico officially announced that the wind farm “Energía Sierra Juárez” in Baja California, the first wind project between Mexico and the United States, will export energy to California. And they are waiting for an interconnection to export the energy produced in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.

“This mapping is only one part of a series of mega-projects that are designed for this area,” said biologist and coastal ecology and fishery sciences professor and researcher Patricia Mora, of the Interdisciplinary Research Center for Integral Regional Development of Oaxaca (CIIDIR Oaxaca) based at the Instituto Politécnico Nacional.”Not only is it wind energy, but also oil and gas, and also mining, an infrastructure for the movement of goods. Therefore, this wind mapping is only a pretext to map the full potential of this whole geostrategic area, which functions as a type of catalog to offer it to businesses.”

The wind corridor was designed from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), signed in 1994 by Mexico, the United States and Canada, subsequently given continuity with the international agreement, Plan Puebla Panama (PPP), and now remade into Proyecto Mesoamerica. The project’s main objective was to “create favorable conditions for the flow of goods, oil, minerals and energy.”

“Clean energy is part of this context. It’s part of the continuity of the exponential economic growth of capital; it is not something alternative to it. It’s another link that is painted green,” Mora said.

Not-So-Clean Energy

To set the turbines, hundreds of tons of cement that interrupt water flows are used. “It is worth mentioning that they are using the cement company Cemex, who also has a wind farm in the Isthmus,” Mora said.

The population of Venta, where the first wind farm was built, was literally surrounded by turbines. Insufficient with the already installed complex, under the argument of self-sufficiency and with a capacity of 250 megawatts, the park called Eurus, built in 2009, was auctioned off with capital from the Spanish company Acciona and transnational construction materials company Cemex.

It seems that Cemex is the role model of the CDM, a clean and responsible company that has registered several projects this way. In its 2013 report, Cemex boasts of expanding their projects with the CDM model. “Six new initiatives were registered as CDM in 2013, which include four alternative fuel projects in Mexico and Panama and two wind farms located in Mexico, among those Eurus and Ventika.”

In 2015, the Eurus wind farm won the prize awarded by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB Infrastructure 360°) in the category of “Impact on Population and Leadership,” which recognizes outstanding sustainability practices in infrastructure investments in Latin America and Caribbean.

In February 2015, community activists from the organization Defenders of the Earth and Sea announced, “about 150 wind turbines owned by Acciona and located in the Eurus wind farm and Oaxaca III, have spilt oil, from the blades and main coil, which has polluted the ground and the water, affecting several farmers and ranches surrounding the area.”Both wind farms have 1,500-megawatt turbines, which need 400 liters of synthetic oil, while the 800-megawatt turbines only need 200 liters of oil per turbine per year.

The Costs of Clean Energy

***

The dominant development model in the production of electricity from wind power in the Tehuantepec Isthmus is stated as a formula in which everyone wins – the government, developers and industry. The model has been of self-supply, in which a private developer of wind power generates energy production contracts for a wide portfolio of industrial customers (Coca-Cola, Cemex, Walmart and Bimbo, for example) for a certain period. In this way, companies can set prices lower than the market for the long term, and separately they enjoy the financial benefits of carbon trading, which on one hand, allows them to continue polluting and, secondly, to speculate on the sale of these pollution permits to other companies. Developers can access financing schemes for “green” projects through organizations like the Inter-American Development Bank and the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the UN.

The communities are also presented as winners in these projects for the development of self-sufficiency and the income they receive from the lease of their land.

Why the Resistance?

***

In November of 2012, the consortium Mareña Renovables set out to build the largest wind farm in Latin America in the Barra de Santa Teresa, in San Dionisio del Mar, Oaxaca. The Barra is a strip of land between two lagoons that connects to the sea in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Here the Indigenous community of Binni Záa (Zapotec) and Ikojts (Huave), together with the community of Alvaro Obregon, opposed and blocked all access to this strip of land. In response, the state sent about 500 troops from the state police to unblock access, acting with extreme violence. The Indigenous community resisted until the government suspended construction of the wind park. In response to constant harassment and persecution,the Alvaro Obregon community created a community police force called “Binni Guiapa Guidxi” on February 9, 2013.

What was known as Mareña Renovables has changed its name and its form several times. The Spanish energy company, the Preneal Group, which had signed exploration contracts and obtained permits from the state government, sold the rights to the project for $89 million to FEMSA, a subsidiary of the Coca-Cola Company and the Macquarie Group, the largest investment bank in Australia. These companies quickly sold part of their stakes to Mitsubishi Corporation and Dutch pension fund PGGM, signing at the same time a power purchase agreement with FEMSA-Heineken for 20 years.

They also sought to speculate with the reduction of 825,707 tons of carbon dioxide a year, equivalent to the emissions of 161,903 cars.

“Mother Earth is sick; the disease is global warming. They want to profit with the same disease that they have caused to Mother Earth,” said Carlos Sanchez, a Zapotec activistwho participated in the resistance against the installation of the wind farm in Barra de Santa Teresa Park and the installation of a park by Gas Natural Fenosa in Juchitan de Zaragoza.”Under the pretext of reducing global warming, they come to our territories to control our forests, mountains, our sacred places and our water.”

Sanchez is also founder and member of the community radio station Totopo, created to report on mega-projects in the region of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. During an intermission of his radio programming, we asked Sanchez about what the Zapotec people know about the CDM. “It is a discourse between businessmen. They are labels exchanged between companies to justify their pollution and do not explain anything to Indigenous peoples,” he said.

“Could we, with our forests, also sell carbon credits, bypassing these companies? Who will buy?” Sanchez asked. “It is no coincidence that only those who understand these mechanisms are the only ones who benefit as employers and the state.”

He added, “We do not even benefit from the energy produced. If you walk by the communities you will notice what the clean development they have brought consists of, and I challenge one of the owners of the companies to see if they want to live in the midst of these turbines.”

Following the demonstrations made by Indigenous peoples on May 8, 2013, the secretary of tourism of the state of Oaxaca, José Zorrilla Diego, announced the cancellation of the proposed Renewable Mareña in the Barra de Santa Teresa. Shortly after the announcement of the cancellation, the state government said the project would continue in other areas of the isthmus.

Human Rights Violations and Perspectives

Community organization against the wind farm in the Barra de Santa Teresa was the first major resistance against the ways in which these companies are developing their projects on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Sanchez reports that, not coincidentally, it is in this period that the companies began hiring hit men, with the backing of the state.”We see gunmen escorted to the state police. Some of us have been persecuted with absurd lawsuits, accusing us of kidnapping, attacks on the roads, and damage to other people’s private property. The radio station has undergone several attempts at closing, with the invasion of the federal police and Navy,” Sanchez said.

Sanchez reports that since 2013, he does not go to public places. His mobility is restricted to the community. “We endorse the protection mechanism of the Ministry of Interior. But we have realized that their task of protection has been given to the state police, the same people who attacked us. I do not know whether they have come to protect me or arrest me. So I rejected this protection mechanism and started a small personal protection protocol,” Sanchez said. “The state supports the wind companies,” he added.

The Committee for the Integral Defense of Human Rights Gobixha (CódigoDH) Oaxaca demanded the immediate intervention of the federal and state governments to stop the wave of violence against supporters of the Popular Assembly of the People of Juchitan who have been victims of threats, harassment, persecution and attacks, including the murder of one of its members. This followed the conflict rooted in the construction of the Bii Hioxo wind farm, according to CódigoDH. But there was no response.

The company Gas Natural Fenosa rejects the accusations, ensuring, “While certain groups have filed several allegations regarding violations of human rights of communities affected by the project, Gas Natural Fenosa says they are unfounded, that they lack objective justification, and are incompatible with the commitments made by the company’s Human Rights Policy.”

New Strategy, New Park, Old Problems

***

It did not take long for the government’s 2013 promise – to relocate the project from the Barra de Santa Teresa toward another zone in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec – to take shape. In 2014, the company Mareña Renovables, now called Eolica del Sur (Southern Wind), found a new place to develop clean energy and contribute to the goals of reducing greenhouse gases in Laguna Superior.

In 2016, the project foresees the installation of 132 wind turbines of three megawatts each in an area of 5,332 hectares, avoiding the emission of 879,000 tons of greenhouse gases per year, according to the company.

An independent report released by researchers from different fields and universities points out various inconsistencies in the environmental impact study submitted by the company and approved by the Secretariat of Environmental and Natural Resources (SEMANART).

The first contradiction is in regards to the company that made the study. The company responsible is Especialistas Ambientales (Environmental Specialists). And according to the constitutive act of the company, it was possible to determine that the founding partner is the engineer Rodolfo Lacy Tamayo, current undersecretary of planning and environmental policy of the SEMANART.

The document warned that there are many inconsistencies with respect to the surface of Baja Espinoza Forest (Selva Baja Espinosa), which is to be cleared for the construction of this project. Evaluating the information available on the environmental impact statement’s (EIS) own field research, “our analysis shows that the developer intends to cut 100% of the tree surface without proposing any measure of compensation.”

“This is particularly worrying,” according to the document. “The Selva Baja Espinoza connecting the Priority Marine Regions: Continental Shelf Gulf of Tehuantepec, and Upper and Lower Laguna; and Terrestrial Priority Regions: Northern Sierras of Oaxaca Mixe and Zoque-La Selva Sepultura.”

According to Eduardo Centeno, director of the Eolica del Sur company, the EIS is submitted in accordance with Mexican law and contains mitigation measures and preventive measures for the environment, including reforestation.

Another concern of communities is in relation to water pollution in the lagoon and sea area as a result of the oil that will drain on the beaches – 300 liters per wind turbine. Biologist Genoveva Bernal of SEMANART explains that the institution responsible for approving the EIS says the park will not affect Laguna Superior at 3.9 kilometers. “With this distance, it will not have an impact,” Bernal said.

***

Alejandro Castaneira, professor and researcher at the National School of Anthropology and History, who participated in the creation of the report, says the SEMANART authorized an environmental impact study that was wrongly produced. “It is announced that parks are generating clean energy. Are we going to use clean energy to produce Coca-Cola and Lay’s chips while poverty continues?” Castaneira said.

A Far From Participatory Process

***

After the events of 2013, Eolica del Sur and the state convened for the first free, prior and informed consultation, under Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization for Indigenous peoples, 22 years since the arrival of the first wind farm in Isthmus of Tehuantepec. This consultation was initiated in November 2014, and completed in July 2015, and is regarded as an essential element for the project to become effective.

On the one hand, both the federal and state governments (as well as the company) claim that the consultation fulfilled its role, which justifies the project, since most of the participants approved. On the other hand, there is enormous pressure for the cancellation of the same consultation because of the irregularities.

At a press conference, Bettina Cruz Velázquez, a member of the Assembly of Indigenous Peoples of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Defense of Land and Territory, said that the consultation was carried out after local and federal permits and approvals of land use had already been given by authorities. This shows the federal government’s decision to strip Binni Záa(Zapotec) of its territory. “The consultation is a simulation. They do not respect international standards,” Cruz Velázquez said.

A petition for relief was filed for the 1,166 Indigenous Binni Záa in order to protect Indigenous rights and defend their territory against the wind project. On September 30, 2015, the judge issued an order to suspend all licenses, permits, goods, approvals, licenses and land use changes granted by federal and local authorities, until the final judgment is issued.

“The state allows these projects on the one hand, allowing all the state and federal agencies to expedite permits,” said lawyer Ricardo Lagines Garsa, adviser to the community. “Yet Indigenous peoples are not aware of these legal proceedings, so that they can actually participate in decisions. The whole isthmus territory has been divided between companies [due to] the lack of awareness of the peasant and Indigenous communities who live here.”

Who Benefits From “Clean” Energy?

According to documents from the Commission for Dialogue with the Indigenous Peoples of Mexico, international experience has shown that remuneration paid by energy companies erecting wind farms on leased land oscillates between 1 and 5 percent of the gross income of the energy produced by the turbines. “However, the case of Mexico is drastically different if you take into account the much lower value compared to international standards: here, remuneration is between .025 and 1.53% [of gross income].”

The Tepeyac Human Rights Center states that “because there is no organization that regulates the value of land in Mexico, energy companies pay landowners far less than the actual value, which can provoke tension in communities in which wind farms are set up.”

The criteria that have been used to justify the implementation of wind parks in Mexico as a means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, as well as total energy production, are insufficient to determine the benefits, risks and broader implications of wind energy production, according to the Commission for Dialogue with the Indigenous Peoples of Mexico. “The criteria ignore or underestimate the complexity and cognitivist and ethical uncertainty of the risks and impacts created by wind parks on a large scale,” the commission stated. “They cannot be seen as a viable energy alternative if they continue to reproduce and deepen socioeconomic and environmental inequalities between countries and between social groups within individual countries.”
Truthout

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Vermonters Stand Up Against the Windpushers!

January 30, 2016 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Vermonters in Full-Scale Open Rebellion Against Planned Wind Turbine Roll-Out

January 30, 2016 by stopthesethings 1 Comment

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Vermont is the place where dreams of peace and tranquility come true. Rolling waves of verdant hills, interspersed with fertile valleys and filled with a tenacious band that endure bitter winters and short bursts of what those in America’s North-East think passes for ‘Summer’: that’s Vermont.

But the element that’s brewed to the surface in the Green Mountain State– and that’s now reached boiling point – is unbridled anger.

Vermonters are set upon by the same cowardly, callous and criminal chancers found all around the Globe – that appear from nowhere – like flesh-craving zombies – slobbering at the thought of massive and (seemingly) endless subsidies.

While their so-called political betters dance to their back-handing benefactors’ tune, the communities set upon have risen to the point of a full-scale, open rebellion. The following pieces tell the story of a mass movement of Vermonters venting fury and of a few politicians gifted with grace (rather than beguiled by wind industry ‘grease’) who’ve decided to put a halt to the most ludicrous energy ‘policy’ ever imagined.

Vermont’s energy siting struggle hits crescendo
Michael Bielawski and Bruce Parker
Vermont Watchdog
21 January 2016

MONTPELIER, Vt. — What started as a letter from Rutland regarding a lack of local control over renewable energy siting has culminated in an 86-town strong “Vermont energy rebellion.”

On Wednesday, more than 100 protesters gathered at the Statehouse to demand local control for energy siting.

Leading the demonstration were state Sen. John Rodgers, D-Essex/Orleans; Karen Horn, policy director for the Vermont League of Cities and Towns; and Don Chioffi, a member of the Rutland Selectboard. Together they argued the energy project siting process as it now stands oversteps the will of ratepayers.

“I would like to acknowledge those here today whose homes and lives have been sacrificed by our state’s energy policy, those of you who have been encroached upon and bullied by energy developers, and those of you who have lost not only property values but the health of your families to industrial wind plants. The process that we use to site energy in Vermont is broken and it’s long past time to fix it,” Rodgers said, opening the event.

According to Rodgers, renewable energy developers, with rubber-stamp support from the Public Service Board, have been given unrestrained power over land use in Vermont to the detriment of cities, towns and the environment, adding that the process had become “anti-environmental and anti-democratic.”

His two-part solution was also the largest applause line of the day: “First, I propose that we ban the development of industrial wind in Vermont. … Second, I propose that we require land use decisions related to energy generation to go through Act 250.”

To that end, Rodgers is sponsoring S210 and a slew of of other bills to ban industrial wind and subject the Public Service Board’s energy development certification process to stipulations found in Vermont’s strict land use and development law.

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Other community leaders, including Chioffi, offered comments about the problem.

“You may as well throw selectboards and planning boards out the window if you are going to operate the state this way. They are being treated as if they are nonexistent and useless,” Choiffi told Vermont Watchdog. “… There has never been a solar projected rejected by this Public Service Board — there’s the proof in the pudding.”

Mark Whitworth, board member of Energize Vermont, a pro-renewable energy group, attended the event to protest the manner in which renewable energy projects are being implemented.

“They’re industrializing wildlife habitat, they are fragmenting forests,” Whitworth said. “They are developing our ridgelines, which is going to result in a loss of flood resiliency, and they’re converting farm land for meager energy production — so we are jeopardizing our food security. We think that these guys are just worsening the very problems that they claim they are helping us to avoid.”

Vermonters from across the state traveled to the Statehouse to have their voices heard as well.

“There aren’t any constraints on where they put them up or how big they are,” said Rachael Carr, of St. Albans. “If they don’t get some legislation to put some restrictions on these projects, it’s going to be too late.”

****

Her young son, Alex Carr, added an imaginative twist on the problem: “I’m here to protect the state from these huge monsters,” he said. “People think they are good, but they are not.”

Giselle Chevallay, a Newark resident dressed up as a displaced Vermont bear, said, “We want to help make sure we are more careful about our siting choices, whether it’s solar, wind, nuclear, hydro or anything.”

Given such urgency and backing by 86 towns, Rutland’s 2014 letter seems almost prophetic: “We are attempting, through this resolution, to form a coalition of Vermont communities which will support reasonable legislation to restore local community input to the regulatory process when addressing the issue of solar citing in our state.”

Whitworth explained what it means for a town to be part of the rebellion.

“These towns have either signed onto the Rutland resolution or they’ve adopted town plans which have explicit language regarding energy citing or certain energy technology,” Whitworth said, adding that his town of Newark has a town plan that says industrial wind turbines are inappropriate.

Currently, energy projects are exempt from Act 250 requirements. These requirements include adhering to regional municipal plans not unlike those of Newark. Rodgers’ bills attempt to make energy development subject to the same requirements other commercial developers face.

The plan is certain to hit resistance, largely because of the money involved. Chioffi said public money, including federal subsidies of 30 percent and state subsidies of about 8 percent, is what drives these projects. He argues that a 40 percent up-front return is also fueling the green energy rush.

“The best kept secret in the world is that these are really, really big cash cows,” he said. “There’s a lot of money to be made in these things. I’ve always been told if you ever want to get to the bottom of any argument on this kind of stuff, follow the money.”

Whitworth said the state’s renewable portfolio standards — which require every municipality to periodically increase its percentage of renewable energy sources — is another driving force. “It really lit a fire under this,” Whitworth said.

He added that while there are no current calls to freeze or repeal Vermont’s RPS, he thinks if legislators don’t respond to the pushback from communities, that will change. At least four of 29 states with such standards have halted or repealed them.

When asked about the status of Vermont’s RPS, Rodgers expressed concern about the economics of renewable energy. “There are a huge number of manufacture and installation jobs with solar today — I think it’s like 16,000 jobs,” he said. “The problem is, after the construction, we have basically set up a pipeline of our cash out of state because most of the owners of the big installations are out-of-state people or corporations.

“So it’s basically taking the tax credits out of state and the ratepayer money out of state. If we were building more on Vermonter’s homes and businesses, the tax credits and savings would stay more in Vermont” Rodgers said.
Vermont Watchdog

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Energy Critics Make Strongest Statehouse Push
Terri Hallenbeck
Seven Days
20 January 2016

The makeshift wind turbine erected in front of the Statehouse, emblazoned with the governor’s last name, was the first hint. Then there were the sign-bearing protesters flanking the Statehouse doors.

Inside, in the halls of the Statehouse, the cafeteria and committee rooms, scores more were dressed in bright green vests to highlight their presence and emphasize the danger they feel.

Wednesday brought the biggest show of force yet by Vermonters upset with the state’s siting process for energy projects. What has in recent years been a relatively small group of wind opponents has grown into a legion of people worried about wind and solar, including town leaders from across the state.

“Now, it’s being taken more seriously,” LuAnn Therrien said of the opposition. Therrien has spent years speaking against the Sheffield wind project, which she said drove her family out of town.

The proliferation of solar projects around Vermont has changed the volume of the opposition, said Mark Whitworth, who is with the organization Energize Vermont. The group has long opposed decisions about the siting of wind projects, and it now finds new friends opposed to suggested solar sites. “That is what really has lit a fire under this energy rebellion. When it was wind in the Kingdom, it was pretty easy for people in other parts of the state to ignore it,” Whitworth said.

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Wind and solar siting opponents filled the Senate chamber. Now, many town officials are also fired up. The Vermont League of Cities and Towns, not exactly a rebellious organization, joined in Wednesday’s event. Nearly a dozen local officials testified to legislative committees about how their towns have spent thousands of dollars and still feel powerless during the process to determine renewable energy sites.

“We’ve been inundated with solar,” Russ Hodgkins, Westminster town manager, told the House Natural Resources and Energy Committee on Wednesday. He said his town supports renewable energy, but the locations chosen so far are taking prime agriculture and industrial sites out of the economy. “There’s not one of them that’s in a great location.”

Whether this growing throng of rebels will get their way is another matter. While they are railing against what they consider poorly sited projects, Gov. Peter Shumlin has been touting the growth of renewable energy and the jobs it brings.

Wednesday’s events — hours of meetings with the Senate and House Natural Resources and Energy committees and a noontime press conference and rally — were organized by Sen. John Rodgers (D-Essex/Orleans), author of a bill calling for a ban on industrial wind projects.

“In 1968, Vermont passed a landmark anti-billboard law,” Rodgers told those gathered for the press conference. The “billboard ban is what inspired me to do what I’ve known to be right for years, and that is introduce S. 210, to ban industrial wind from Vermont.”

Prospects for a ban seem as weak this year as in previous years, however. “We’ll listen, but I think the problem with that proposal is we have an orderly development process,” said Sen. Chris Bray (D-Addison), chair of the Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee.

Bray insists, though, that he’s working on changes that will help, at least on the solar front. “That is the most urgent need we are responding to,” Bray said.

His committee is putting together a bill — S.230 — that he hopes will offer incentives to build solar projects in specific locations and direct the Public Service Board to consider town plans in approving projects. Changes coming to the state’s net metering regulations will also likely slow down the proliferation of solar projects, he said.

Bray’s House counterpart, Rep. Tony Klein (D-East Montpelier), said he’ll await the Senate’s bill, but he agreed changes to energy-project siting should be made this year, even if there is not yet agreement on what those should be. He said, “There’s a pretty clear message that towns do not think they’re being heard.”
Seven Days

This video pulls together reports on the uprising from Burlington Free Press and NewsChannel 5.

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Vermonters rally at Statehouse for new rules governing wind projects – Sen. Rodgers sponsors bill to ban more industrial-scale turbines
Stewart Ledbetter
WPTZ-News Channel 5
21 January 2016

MONTPELIER, Vt. — More than 100 Vermonters turned out Wednesday at the Statehouse to demand changes in the law governing the siting of industrial-scale energy projects.

At noon, the noisy crowd jammed into the Statehouse gallery to cheer Sen. John Rodgers, the Essex-Orleans Democrat who has introduced Senate Bill 210.

“This rebellion has spread to dozens of towns across Vermont and I believe it will continue to spread,” Rodgers told the crowd. “We won’t achieve our energy goals in the face of this rebellion. And I offer a solution. First, I propose we ban industrial wind in Vermont.”

The crowd erupted in applause.

Rodgers said Vermonters resent a system which allows wind developers who stand to earn millions from turbines to hire lawyers to argue their case before the Vermont Public Service Board — while citizens most impacted and the towns that host the projects have little voice and no veto power.

S. 210 would make a second key change, shifting permitting for renewable energy projects from the PSB to district environmental commissions and the development review process known as ACT 250. Supporters think Act 250 would provide citizens a far better shake.

Anthony Iarrapino, spokesman for Swanton Wind, a proposed turbine project in Franklin County, said the criticism was unfounded.

“If you look at the polls and the success of the projects we have (in Vermont) the majority of Vermonters understand how important wind is to our economy and getting us to clean energy goals,” he said.

Paul Burns, executive director of the Vermont Public Interest Research Group, said the state’s goal of securing 90 percent of its energy from renewable sources will mean Vermonters have to get used to seeing turbines on mountaintops and large solar arrays in farm fields.

S. 210 has been referred to the Senate Natural Resources Committee for consideration.
WPTZ.com

Funny about all that!

That Vermonters are furious about the destruction of their thriving and healthy communities in ‘exchange’ for a wholly weather dependent power source; that’s intermittent and unreliable, requiring 100% of it’s capacity to be backed-up 100% of the time by conventional power generators; that, accordingly, has NO commercial value (save the massive power consumer and/or taxpayer subsidies it attracts); kills millions of birds and bats; and, with the incessant low-frequency noise and infrasound it generates, drives people mad in their homes, or drives them out of them altogether, is hardly a surprise.

What the wind industry hates most are facts. And anyone with the temerity to present them is targeted in a style and with a zeal that would have made the East German Stasi proud. Here’s just another example of the wind industry’s standard tactics.

AG’S Office investigating complaints against Annette Smith, anti-wind advocate
Mike Polhamus
VT Digger.org
23 January 2016

The state attorney general’s office has opened an investigation into criminal complaints against a prominent champion of Vermonters who are adversely affected by renewable development.

The attorney general’s office is investigating whether Annette Smith, executive director of Vermonters for a Clean Environment, has practiced law without a license — a charge with penalties left entirely to the court’s discretion.

Smith says the complaints that prompted the AG’s investigation are politically motivated.

Attorneys who have argued against Smith’s clients say she gives bad advice, unconstrained by the sanctions licensed attorneys would incur for similar behavior.

Smith says the AG’s investigation “is very intimidating.”

“I don’t know what to do. I think our work’s being shut down,” Smith said. “I believe this has the potential to shut down my organization of 16 years. It clearly falls under the definition of harassment.”

Residents who live near planned and existing renewable projects have claimed she’s their only advocate.

Smith said she represents people who too frequently have nowhere else to turn. Renewable energy developers hire talented attorneys against whom landowners near project sites have no other way of successfully representing themselves.

Many of these cases involve people who can’t afford a lawyer, and who didn’t want to become involved in legal proceedings to protect their interests, she said. Lawyers know it’s impossible to fight renewable energy developers, Smith said, and won’t take on affected landowners’ cases anyway.

“Anybody who does this with a lawyer has wasted tens of thousands of dollars,” she said. “The reason I’m doing this is so people have a voice without bankrupting themselves.”

The attorney general’s office would not offer comment on the case.

“There is a matter under investigation by the criminal division, and we can’t comment on it further, and we never comment on ongoing criminal investigation,” said John Treadwell, Chief of the Criminal Division at the AG’s office.

Practicing law without a license is a charge that has rarely been prosecuted in Vermont, Treadwell said. It carries potentially severe penalties. “It is punished as criminal contempt of the Vermont Supreme Court, and is potentially punishable by fine or imprisonment or both, in the court’s discretion,” Treadwell said.

“In the court’s discretion,” Treadwell said, means there are no maximum defined penalties.

Assistant Attorney General Zachary Chen named five cases in a letter notifying Smith of the investigation, and two attorneys were involved in both cases. Smith said one of them had previously accused her of practicing law without a license. Both have given Smith reason to believe they’ve sought to instigate an investigation against her, she said.

Joslyn Wilschek is one of the attorneys, and in a previous Public Service Board hearing she told hearing officers that Smith had been in that instance practicing law without a license.

Non-lawyers aid participants in legal and other proceedings all the time to good effect, Wilschek said, but Smith represents herself as having training that she actually lacks.

“She gives legal advice to landowners, and she drafts their filings to the Public Service Board, and I think it’s a real disservice, because she puts herself out there as having the knowledge of a lawyer, when she doesn’t,” Wilschek said.

Wilschek said she didn’t file a complaint against Smith with the AG’s office, but said she supports it and said that if asked, and if her clients consented, she’d testify Smith had done what she’s been accused of. Wilschek said her remarks reflect only her personal observation, and not her clients or their positions.

Based on what she’s seen, such charges have no basis in political motives, Wilschek said. “I disagree with people all the time — that’s what a lawyer does — but when someone does something this egregious, it’s not political, it’s protecting the public,” she said. “When you see someone putting themselves out there like a lawyer, it’s a real disservice to people who don’t understand the training a lawyer needs.”

People who Smith has assisted say they have no other effective advocate, and say they’re shut out of the hearing process for renewable projects by the excessive legality of the proceedings.

“What she does is she provides citizens — normal, everyday citizens in the state of Vermont — with a possibility of having any chance at participating in the Public Service Board process,” said Christine Lang.

Lang, with her husband and with Smith’s assistance, is attempting to persuade the Public Service Board to assess penalities on prospective wind developer Travis Belisle for constructing a meteorological tower without a permit. The met tower is a precursor to the wind turbine development project, and she says a permit filed with the board would have given the public advance notice.

State agencies and developers are well-represented by lawyers at Public Service Board hearings, while ordinary citizens are shut out of the process, Lang said.

“I think it’s a witch hunt to distract her from the work she’s trying to do to help citizens, because she’s the only one out there who’s helping citizens,” Lang said. “Does that make sense I should have to have an attorney to participate in what is supposed to be a public process?

“This is why this entire process is completely broken,” she said. “It is a developer-run process run by the developers and their lawyers, and they are getting everything they want, and they are going to destroy this state.”

Leslie Cadwell, another attorney who has represented wind developer David Blittersdorf, says Smith has led her clients to bad ends. Cadwell participated in a case against Smith that complaints with the AG’s office have highlighted as representative of Smith’s alleged illegal behavior.

“As a result of Annette’s participation in a case she was involved with before the Public Service Board, the town of Irasburg has violated open meetings law twice, and has admitted it,” Cadwell said.

Professional ethical standards lawyers abide by prohibit this kind of behavior, Cadwell said.

“If Annette wants to represent people in the Public Service Board process, or advise people about how to participate in the Public Service Board process, she ought to go to law school,” Cadwell said. “Or, in Vermont, she can actually do a four-year clerk program where she can learn how to be a lawyer and understand how to ethically represent her clients in courts.”

Vermont is one of few states that allows lawyers to work as clerks in lieu of law school as a means of studying to become an attorney, Cadwell said.

Cadwell said that she did not file complaints against Smith with the attorney general’s office.
VT Digger

What utter bunkum.

Annette Smith has absolutely no case to answer. She hasn’t represented herself to be legally qualified to practice law (to those she represents or anyone else); hasn’t raised a fee for her services; and hasn’t pretended to have qualifications that she does not possess.

Instead, all she has done, is to have given collective advice to, and advocated for and on behalf of, people who simply cannot afford legal representation; and done so in ‘Mickey Mouse’ hearings before an administrative planning panel (the Public Service Board); which has no Curial authority – and all the Judicial formality of the process required to obtain a driver’s licence at the DMV.

Planning panels and tribunals (indeed, Supreme and High Courts) hear self-presented plaintiffs, applicants and defendants on a routine and regular basis. It’s now so common as to be unremarkable – especially in planning cases.

In Australia, and other common law jurisdictions, otherwise unrepresented litigants are entitled to have what’s called a ‘McKenzie friend‘ represent them in courts of law.

The McKenzie friend openly gives legal advice and assistance in and out of court; and does not need to be legally qualified to do so. The crucial point is that litigants in person are entitled to have assistance, lay or professional, unless there are exceptional circumstances. Provided the McKenzie friend does not represent themselves to be legally qualified to practice law and doesn’t charge for their time (although charging for time is permitted in England and Wales), there can be no complaint from the court hearing the case, other parties or their lawyers about them giving advice, assistance and otherwise advocating for the litigants they help to present their cases.

Given the fact that there is no obligation on litigants, in any forum, to retain and pay for the services of a qualified lawyer, the charge against Annette Smith is pure, unadulterated nonsense; and is nothing more than the usual bullying, stand-over tactics employed by the wind industry and its parasites – tactics that see its goons beating up on pensioners, disabled farmers and middle-aged mothers.

The ridiculous nature of the developer instigated trumped-up charge against Annette Smith was noticed by another famous American community defender, Erin Brockovich – who has endorsed a crowd funding page for Annette’s legal defence costs on her facebook page – Erin Brockovich – noting that:

The head of Vermonters for a Clean Environment, Annette Smith, is under criminal investigation by the Vermont Attorney General’s office for alleged “unauthorized practice of law”. Whoever could have imagined helping people have a voice in regulatory proceedings would lead to this; it is obviously politically motivated. I am outraged. The charge is highly unusual; if there is prosecution, it would be tried at the Vermont Supreme Court. This hasn’t happened since 1962 and only five times in the history of Vermont. The legal community in Vermont is scratching their heads, outraged, and various things in between. A gofundme page was set up yesterday to help with her legal fees https://www.gofundme.com/74kx663w

With its ham-fisted attempt to crush Annette Smith and the communities she helps to defend, the wind industry can expect nothing but fury and revenge in Vermont, from here on. Let’s call it the beginning of a ‘revolution’.

Wind Turbine Torture….Denied, and Ignored by Authorities!

January 25, 2016 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Group says wind farm causing health issues

Credit: Sharon Roznik, USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin | January 24, 2016 | www.fdlreporter.com/ ~~

Joan Lagerman likens the sound to “shoes in a clothes dryer,” or “someone shutting a dumpster lid over and over.”

The Malone woman is among a group of residents who are suffering from a variety of ailments they believe are caused from living in the shadow of wind turbines.

On certain days, when the blades are coated in ice, the noise is so bad it shakes the walls of her home.

Calling themselves Concerned Citizens of Fond du Lac County, the group plans to attend the next meeting of the Fond du Lac County Health Department at 6:30 p.m. on Feb. 2 to voice health concerns they say are caused by the whirl of the seven-ton blades.

Their main goal is to shut down the turbines at night so residents can get some sleep.

Blue Sky Green Field is a WE Energies, 88-turbine wind farm set on 10,600 acres, spread between the townships of Calumet and Marshfield in Fond du Lac County, not far from the east shore of Lake Winnebago. Lagerman and her neighbors are surrounded by the 44 towering turbines spinning in Marshfield.

The wind farm generates energy for the southeastern Wisconsin power grid, producing enough for service to 35,000 homes, according to WE Energies.

Choking back tears, Lagerman, 55, said Thursday she can’t take it anymore – the constant headaches, insomnia, hypertension and anxiety that came on after the wind farm was erected in 2008.

“Doctors can’t find what is causing my health problems, but I can tell you when I leave home, they all go away,” Lagerman said.

Just down the road, Elizabeth Ebertz, 73, lives in quiet agony in her home. From her west window, six turbines are visible, and from a south window five can be seen.

She said sleep is the biggest problem, and uses phrases like low frequency noise and infrared sound – both associated with wind turbines and sleep disturbance, according to a report by the World Health Organization.

“Most of the time when I wake up, I am nauseous with a severe headache and pain in my ears,” Ebertz said, hardly able to get the words out. “I have lived here all my life and it has turned into a living hell.”

But Brian Manthey, a spokesperson for WE Energies, said that, over the years, they have been getting complaints from the same handful of people. The rest of the citizens living among 88 turbines seem to be content. Some, he said, are even asking for waivers to build closer to the turbines than setback requirements of 1,000 feet allow. (More recent updates now require a distance of 1,250 feet from a residence).

The company sees no need to shut down the turbines, he said. A sound study completed in 2008 indicates the noise output is at or below permitted levels. As for studies on wind turbines and health problems, there have not been any peer-reviewed science studies that show any link, Manthey said.

“For the most part, we have very successful relationships with neighbors in the area,” he said. “And if there is a problem, ice build-up or a lightning strike, we address the issue.”

But resident Larry Lamont, 75, said WE Energies doesn’t consider that, when trees are leafless in winter, or there is heavy moisture content, the noise is overbearing. The hum from transformers is constant, and it’s compounded by the dozens of turbines in the area.

“They don’t take into consideration that while they may be monitoring noise output, they aren’t adding them all up together,” he said.

The group has appeared before town boards and state legislators to voice their concerns. Back in 2008, some farmers in the area requested that there be a citizen vote, but the town board went ahead and approved the wind farm, Lamont said.

When WE Energies first approached families living in the area in 2008, Bernie and Rose Petrie, like most people, thought green energy would be a good thing. About 55 landowners leased land or easements to the energy company to erect wind turbines, with one turbine taking up about a half an acre and co-existing with crop production and dairy farming.

Looking back, allowing wind farms to the area was a huge mistake, said 55-year-old Rose Petrie.

The couple is living on a family farm that dates back to 1928. Moving is not an option for them and for others annoyed by the whoosh of turbines.

“Roots run deep around here,” Rose Petrie said, “and before the wind turbines came, our lives were peace and quiet.”

How to Attend

Concerned Citizens of Fond du Lac County is asking residents concerned about the health impact of wind turbines to attend the next meeting of the Fond du Lac County Board of Health at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 2 in Room H at the City County Government Center, 160 S. Macy St.

Source: Sharon Roznik, USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin | January 24, 2016 | www.fdlreporter.com/

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