Tilting at wind farms

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This article was published 24/08/2009 (5969 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

WOLFE ISLAND, Ont. — This bucolic spot in the St. Lawrence River is only 25 minutes away from Kingston, if you take Capt. Brian Johnson’s ferry, the Wolfe Islander III.

Capt. Johnson, whose family has lived on the island for five generations, has been at the ferry’s helm for 20 years. In the past, he transported farmers, ranchers, birders and tourists with an uncertain grasp of Canadian history who thought the island was connected with Gen. James Wolfe and his 1759 victory on the plains outside Québec City.

Now, he has some new travellers — people who maintain the 86 wind turbines that now dominate the flat island that’s only 35 kilometres long and 10 wide, with its church steeples that were once its tallest structures. Also on board: Angry environmentalists who argue the turbines are a menace to songbirds and human health.

It’s another Canadian example of how one group of environmentalists, who hate wind turbines and other green methods of producing power, battle another group who say they are crucial if Canada is going to control climate change.

So far, the wind turbine advocates are winning, and their foes look a bit like Cervantes’ Don Quixote tilting at windmills.

One reason is that the anti-turbine people don’t have any good evidence that the whompf, whompf sound of the turbines is bad for your health. There’s anecdotal evidence, much of it collected by Nina Pierpont, a vociferous New York state physician, who has discovered “wind turbine syndrome.” On the other hand, few problems have been reported in Spain, Denmark and the U.K. that get up to 25 per cent of their power from the wind.

Researchers from Kingston’s Queen’s University have just started a study on wind turbines and human health that’s expected to take at least three years. By that time some of us will be deaf, or happily living with wind-generated power.

“I don’t like the look of them,” is another complaint. But George Smitherman, Ontario’s minister of energy and infrastructure (known as “Furious George” because of his testy temperament), says he’s not putting up with any “not in my backyard” complaints. He’s under pressure because Ontario is committed to closing all its coal-fired plants by 2014.

A Manitoba group has come up with a unique complaint: A project is affected by a native land dispute. The province wants to put an $800-million wind farm at St. Joseph in southern Manitoba, near aboriginal leader Terry Nelson’s reserve. He says the wind farm will be on traditional land, and he wants money.

The wind farm, the province’s second, would be built by Australian mega-firm Babcock and Brown and Alberta-based Bow-Ark energy. At 300 megawatts, it would be one of Canada’s largest.

Initially, the argument that turbine blades chop up song birds got some traction on Wolfe Island. About 20 per cent of the world’s bobolinks, a prairie songbird that makes a 20,000-kilometre annual migration, nest there. But recent studies at Quebec wind farms found few bird carcasses.

A more serious challenge to wind power may be economic. Ontario, a major power market, is up to its arm pits in power now, mostly because of the global recession. Experts say a power crunch isn’t likely until after 2015, if it happens at all. Conservation measures are having an impact. In addition, more power is coming from new, gas-fired stations, refurbished nuclear plants and wind farms. The province recently postponed purchasing a large, new nuclear generating plant.

In Manitoba, the provincial auditor general and the Public Utilities Board are investigating whether high-flying Manitoba Hydro is taking too many financial risks in developing power. Hydro’s president, Bob Brennan, says all is well and points to a $298-million profit in 2008-2009 from the corporation’s gas and electricity sectors.

Meanwhile, the people of Wolfe Island are not taking any risks. Their historical society is putting up a life-size, $60,000 sculpture of Gen. Wolfe to help keep those history-befuddled tourists coming.

Tom Ford is managing editor of The Issues Network.