National Wind Watch: Wind Energy News » Wind turbine sound report is invalid

The Province of Ontario sent out a media release Friday stating “Expert Report Confirms No Direct Health Effects From Wind Turbines.” [Click here for analysis.]

Conducted by private engineers, the province states that because of what it learned from this individual report, wind turbine sounds pose “no direct health risk.” We are not relieved in the slightest.

The document is laden with information, much of it dated and taken from international sources, to outline the impact wind turbines have on people, according to what other studies have shown. What about what’s happening here?

Not one part of this study references the present-day experiences of those in the Municipality of Kincardine, Huron-Kinloss and Huron-Bruce, or the other areas of Ontario, who have dealt with the impacts of sound from existing wind turbines. They are the ones who have been screaming for “independent studies” and this is what we get, a “literature review?”

In this case, the document only works to prove what Dalton McGuinty’s Liberal government wanted it to.

As it says under the headline of the media release ” Safe, Reliable Energy Part of McGuinty Government’s Clean Energy Plan” revealing the bias in the Liberal government that funded this study in the first place.

If he thinks this is an end-all report that will shush up the NIMBY’s he so often refers to, there’s no doubt this “holey” report will just be used to stoke the fires of the wind opposition this holiday season. The fact that Huron-Bruce, now Ontario’s hotbed of current and proposed wind generation (and opposition), was not included in this report should make it invalid and irrelevant to the province and our specific geography. Many other international studies have concluded the complete opposite and outline the impacts wind turbine sound has on people further than the 550-metre regulation, not to mention the impact turbines have on property values, along with shadow flicker and visual pollution.

For those who are dealing with health impacts from noise associated with turbines, this is a lump of coal in their stocking care of the McGuinty government. In response to this, these taxpayers, whom he’s blatantly dismissing with this report, will be itching to leave a lump of something dirtier on his doorstep in time for Christmas.