Article on wind protest receives comment 

Re: Wes Keller’s article on the local wind protest.

Residents of Dufferin County have very good reason to react loudly to news of new wind farms being proposed in their areas. The evidence to date warrants concern. Industrial scale turbines and the substations are causing health problems across our province and around the world.

Our Minister of the Environment John Wilkinson claims that his ministry has made decisions based on the best available science. Anyone attending information meetings know that his ministry and wind developers hold up Dr. Arlene King’s (Chief Medical Officer of Health) contradictory literature review as some sort of supporting statement that wind turbines do not cause harm to our health. Dr. King has not completed a health study. She chose not to speak with even 1 of the many victims right here in Ontario prior to releasing her review. This seems odd behaviour for a top physician who is investigating a public health problem.

Even Dr. Hazel Lynn (MOH Grey-Bruce) and Dr. Ray Copes (OAHPP), who consulted with Dr. King as she prepared her review, questioned her final release.

“The whole section that a couple of us really wanted in there on community health and community disruption went. It’s not in there. I suspect politically she can’t criticize another ministry, so I was a little disappointed,” Lynn said.

“I think it’s a fair comment that there is other material that could have been in the report and wasn’t,” said Dr. Ray Copes, the director of environmental and occupational health at the Ontario Agency for Health Protection and Promotion and another member of the committee that reviewed drafts of the report. Copes said there are “really important and quite legitimate” questions about wind farms that he and Lynn thought should be discussed, but “I guess the CMOH’s report wasn’t the place for it.” http://www.owensoundsuntimes. com/ArticleDis play.aspx?e=2610031

Coincidentally, the group of Doctors Mr. Keller referred to that CanWEA (registered lobby group that advocates for the wind industry) sponsored to do their literature review did not conduct a health study or speak to any of the affected either.

The Society for Wind Vigilance held The First International Symposium on the Global Wind Industry and Adverse Health Effects in Picton in October. This was not a Wind Concerns Ontario sponsored panel as Mr. Keller writes. The Society is an international federation of physicians and other professionals. These physicians are doing everything on their own hook and are not sponsored by anyone. They have spent thousands of hours and have travelled thousands of miles because they know what is happening is harming families globally. These professionals have spoken to the residents who have been affected. I encourage Mr. Keller and others to view the proceedings of the symposium at www.windvigilance.com

I know the distress of families who have been forced to leave their homes. Some have lived in their homes for decades and some for generations. Others built brand new custom homes and have had to leave them. For what purpose would any family take on a 2nd place to live, paying rent and utilities while their own home sits empty waiting for help? They leave because they are ill.

Minister Wilkinson needs to review the health symposium information immediately and he needs to address the rampant problems in the province. The current setbacks are simply not adequate to protect the health of Ontario families.

Barbara Ashbee

RR1 Orangeville

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I read Wes Keller’s article in the November 25th Orangeville Citizen regarding the turbine project planned for Whittington which is just north of the town of Orangeville and I take exception to several of Mr. Keller’s smug remarks. Mr. Keller, who has covered the wind turbine issue for over 10 years, knows quite well that once one or two or three turbines go up in an area, there will be many more to follow as witnessed north of us in Shelburne and Melancthon where there are over 130 of the behemoths’.

In his article he writes that a “relatively minor installation” “oddly, perhaps, is turning into a major issue”.

There is nothing odd or minor about this issue especially when people’s health, wealth and democratic rights are put into jeopardy because of Premier McGuintys’ Green Energy Act.

When taxpaying home owners in Ontario can no longer sway or have a say at the local, municipal or provincial level about something as obtrusive as 500 foot wind turbines being erected in their backyard or in their community, then I say we are all living under a dictatorship!

Mr. Keller writes that Betsy Collin and her milliondollar residence would fall under the shadow of the three turbines but ‘oddly’, fails to mention anything about the more than thirty home owners in the same area that will also be directly affected, some more so than others, and who’s homes are certainly worth a lot less than a million-dollars and certainly will be worth a lot less once these turbines go up. He fails to mention anything about the local homeowners that have had their homes up for sale and cannot sell their homes because of the ‘prospect’ that three wind turbines will be built in their area.

Mr. Keller writes that findings from reports from a seven-member panel of ‘experts’ concluded that “sounds or vibrations emitted from wind turbines have no adverse effect on human health” but he fails to mention anything in the article about the ‘real’ local people already living under the shadow of wind turbines whose lives have been changed dramatically due to health effects.

Maybe Mr. Keller remembers when ‘experts’ deemed cigarettes safe and not a cause of cancer.

Mr. Keller, there is nothing ‘odd’ at all when local concerned citizens fight for their right to be heard and fight for their rights to be represented.

The only ‘odd’ thing in your article is that as a reporter, you did not include local interviews and facts relating to a very serious local issue that will most certainly affect all of us-you included, in the months and years to come.

Mark Champagne

Amaranth