Thank you Anne Murray for your support!
Thank you to the hundreds of others who have also voiced their support in trying to preserve this beautiful, peaceful area.
Maybe some of the media interest spurred by Ms Murray’s comments will help AWPC (and their subsidiary Cobequid Area Wind Farms [CAWF]) to finally understand that there is considerable opposition to this proposed project. There is no small voice of just a few people here, the entire Shore is in opposition.
I will say this again until I am blue in the face – we are NOT OPPOSED TO GREEN ENERGY!!
However, these projects have to be located in a responsible manner. They have to go where the local people will not be disturbed or made sick by these behemoths.
On Elmira, PEI two homes have just been abandoned by their owners because they were being made sick by the new turbines that went up earlier this year. These turbines are the same Vestas turbines used in Pubnico and proposed for the Gulf Shore. Their doctor recommended that they spend as little time as possible at home. They were experiencing headaches, ringing in their ears, dizziness and disturbed sleep. This has happened to people who were 1km from the turbines. This is a farm of currently 10 turbines. There are more planned. They were able to move away because they could afford to do it. Their neighbours are not able to afford to move away.
As we know, the d’Entremonts abandoned their home in Pubnico for the same reasons some time ago.
And AWPC/CAWP wants to bring 27 of the same industrial sized machines to within 500m of our homes (or 0m from a property line)!
The idea of someone coming into my neighbourhood, uninvited and unwanted, deliberately erecting industrial sized (400′) machines that will make us sick is unconscionable!! We will not be railroaded.
As one comment on an earlier posting says: this opposition will not end. There will just be more and more of us.
The longer this project is proposed, the more difficult questions for the industry in general are being raised – this is bad media for the industry. The sooner the plug is pulled on this particular project the better it will be for for the wind energy industry in general.
It is all very well to suggest going to Pubnico to view the turbines (which some of our group has done and agree they are noisy) – what about coming up here to the Shore and admire it for its beauty and tranquility?
It would be a very inefficient use of gasoline to drive 5 hours one way just to look at some turbines in Pubnico when we could drive 1.5 hours to Elmira and look at the same machines! Let’s be energy efficient here!
Charles told us himself at the Pugwash Chamber of Commerce meeting, NS Power can only use the power from about 200 turbines. This is because wind energy cannot, currently, be stored. When the wind dies there is thus a chance of power brown (or even black) outs. This can be mitigated somewhat by spreading the turbines around the province. There are 41 turbines of various sizes producing nearly 60 MW. Seems to me there are remote, unpopulated spots on the Cobequids and Cape Breton not far from transmission lines that could easily accommodate the turbines we need.
The Request For Proposals made March 12th for 130 MW power is not just for wind energy projects but for all renewable energy including biomass, land fill gas, tidal and hydro.
There is a queue for wind energy projects. This project is currently 9th in the queue, behind at least three 100MW proposals. AWPC can jump the queue if they are “ready” before their competition. Being ninth just means that eight other projects put their applications in earlier.
To be “ready” they have to have a project that will satisfy NS Power that there is public support for it.
Ha!
10 July 2007
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2007/07/11/media-noise/