Recently there has been a lot of he said/ she said concerning the wind energy and its attempted foothold in our community. But the most blatant report of ignorance came in the form of a story about council members visiting a working wind farm in Port Burwell.
My first question was, at whose request did this little field trip occur?
Jay Wilgar from Aim was mentioned and I was contacted the day after the article ran in the paper. He was offering to take us on a tour as well. Seems one of the councillors suggested that those opposed to the industrial wind turbines should take a trip with Jay.
I think there are some points that need to be clarified.
First of all, I am not a NIMBY (not in my backyard). If that was my status, I’m sure I would have been deemed that a long time ago.
Secondly, unlike the council members that decided to visit Port Burwell, we have made multiple trips there.
The day the story was printed in the Chatham Daily News, Greg Foster and I had just returned from a visit to Goderich to talk to various farmers that are living through the hell that we are trying to avoid.
We have spoken to them at great length on the phone as well.
All of this we have paid out of our own pockets, not using tax dollars, and only in an effort to be more informed ourselves.
Just to get clear, considering that Port Alma’s industrial wind project is underway, Feb. 11, municipal council was gearing up to rezone land in Chatham-Kent for yet more industrial wind towers, but with opposition, this was delayed until last night.
If they were to vote on this on Feb. 11, and they were just visiting a real working farm and saying we should all do the same, does that mean that Port Alma was initially to be passed without even the formality of visiting a “real” working wind farm?
Just last week I got one of those random phone calls, you know the one where the person explains, “You have just won an all expense paid trip to Disney, and in order to take advantage of your free trip, you must pay for X,Y, Z on your Visa today and must take a tour of our brand new condominiums, (what they really want you to buy).” It all sounds delightful until you read the fine print and get your Visa bill with all of the charges on it.
Folks, once you read the fine print and we all get the bill, maybe you will see why all of the hours we have spent digging into this – I mean days and hours – that maybe we should all submit a bill to C-K, as it seems we have done much more homework.
Thanks, but no thanks. We did take the trips; we have talked to people all over North America.
To that end, I invite you all to watch the documentary “ENRON – The Smartest Guys in the Room.” Does anyone remember ENRON? You will have your eyes opened to this “green ” energy. I guess they do call dollars greenbacks.
Kim Iles
Chatham
26 March 2008
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2008/03/26/wary-of-wind-energys-costs/