Skepticism greets plan for turbines
Residents at the first open house for a proposal to put wind turbines in Lake Erie left with more questions than answers Wednesday night.
“You have no hard facts on your boards,” said Patty Janisse, a Kingsville lakefront resident, after seeing a series of posters.
A steady stream of people came to the Leamington Lebanese Club Wednesday night for an open house hosted by SouthPoint Wind. The company is proposing to put up at least 15 turbines: five turbines in three 1.3-kilometre long wind farms in Lake Erie in a 30-megawatt project.
Maps at the open house showed the turbines would be 1.77 kilometres southwest of the Kingsville dock but didn’t include the minimum distance to the shore. The map for the line of turbines in Leamington showed they would be 1.2 kilometres south of the Leamington dock. The information presented Wednesday said the closest turbine would be 7.35 kilometres from Point Pelee.
There was no map of the turbines for the Union area between Leamington and Kingsville.
SouthPoint Wind issued e-mails this week saying it would not comment at the open house or by phone.
At one poster on birds that spoke of nearby breeding black terns and bald eagles, Dennis Davey who lives on Point Pelee Drive in Leamington said “This is a joke.”
“I live on the water. In the fall the water is black with cormorants and Canada geese and then you’ve got the songbirds that go through there.”
Davey said he couldn’t believe someone would put turbines near a park that’s known worldwide for migrating birds.
The SouthPoint Wind material said the large distances between the wind farms would minimize the disturbance of flight paths.
Gord Meuser, a spokesman for the group Citizens Against Lake Erie Wind Turbines, said he’d like to see how the company would address potential negatives. Once SouthPoint Wind finishes its environmental screening report, the public will get more information, but will have 30 days to comment. Meuser said that’s not enough time.
Leamington deputy mayor Rob Schmidt said he wanted to know the exact location of turbines. He said they should be farther out in the lake if allowed. “You don’t have anything to block that view.”
Schmidt said the water is the only natural part left in the municipality other than Point Pelee and the town tries to use the water, its lakefront parks and marina to promote Leamington. “They’re not going to stay overnight to see wind turbines,” he said of tourism.
Kingsville deputy mayor Katherine Gunning echoed the comments of others, saying she wasn’t against wind farms on land but is opposed to them on the lake.
Gunning said she’s concerned about the Union Water System intake and the impact on sand movement.
She said there’s no return to the municipality and she doesn’t think there will be many permanent jobs.
Although there were two posters on green jobs, no specific number of jobs was available.
Sharon Hill
9 July 2009
Tags: Wind power, Wind energy
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