Company plans meeting for Durham-area wind turbine project
The self-described “largest owner of wind-energy projects in North America” wants to put up 12 generating turbines between Durham and Priceville and isn’t likely to back down in the face of local opposition.
NextEra Energy Resources of Florida has set up a Canadian subsidiary, NextEra Energy Canada, which is proposing a wind farm capable of producing 18 megawatts of electricity in an area along County Rd. 4 bounded roughly by the Artemesia-Glenelg Townline and Camp Oliver Road on the east and west and on the north and south by Concession Rds. 4 and 22.
“Our goal is to file our application for this project sometime in the spring of 2010 and depending upon approval, we would like to be in a position to build this project sometime in the latter part of 2010,” NextEra spokesman Steven Stengel said in an interview from Florida.
The company has scheduled a public meeting about the proposal for Dec. 7 from 5 to 8 p.m. at the Durham Community Centre on Saddler St. W.
“Essentially what will happen at that meeting is we will have information related to the project itself — how many megawatts, where its located, how it will interconnect, how we go about building a project like this,” Stengel said.
“These public information meetings are required and that is, I think, expressly for the purpose of ensuring that the community has an opportunity to come out and learn about the project and ask questions and raise concerns, if there are any.”
Stengel said NextEra is aware that there is local opposition to wind farms and that the company is now looking at putting its turbines in a smaller area than originally envisioned.
“We’re not a company that develops a project and leaves town. We’re there for 20, 30 years, our employees live in the community, we work in the community and it’s in our best interest as well as the community’s that we do the right thing . . . We take the time to site projects appropriately because we understand that people have concerns about aesthetics and other things,” he said.
Asked if the company has ever abandoned a project because of local opposition, Stengel said “No. There have been other reasons why we’ve abandoned projects, but not because of local opposition.”
However, he said, “We couldn’t do what we do if we didn’t do it the right way. What I mean by that is people talk and if we didn’t do what we said we would do, or we did it poorly, we couldn’t continue to grow and provide renewable wind power. We’re very proud of our reputation, we work very hard at it, we do the right things from a development perspective.”
Asked if the company had already arranged leases for land on which to put up turbines, Stengel said: “Developing a wind project is a dynamic process. We’ve been talking to landowners for some time, we continue to talk to landowners . . . that’s an ongoing process that starts in the development stage and carries out through the life of the project.”
Getting approval for a wind farm in Ontario is a “fairly prescriptive process,” he said. “We’re moving along, we’re making progress, but there’s still plenty of work to do.”
The Sun Times
14 November 2009
Tags: Wind power, Wind energy
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