National Wind Watch: Wind Energy News » Wind Concerns group issuing warnings

Middlesex Lambton Wind Action Group wants people in Lambton Shores to be aware of what they’re facing as industrial wind turbines begin to dot the landscape.

The group is holding a public meeting Thurs. Feb. 16 at the Grand Bend Public School to talk about the effects of turbines on human health, real estate values and local wildlife.

Lambton Shores will soon be a hotbed for wind energy. The largest project by NextEra Energy will put 92 turbines near the Lake Huron shoreline around Forest, Thedford, and Arkona.

Under the Green Energy Act, municipalities have very little control of the power projects. Groups like the Middlesex Lambton Wind Action have filed appeals to stop some of the projects in the province, so far without success.

So Muriel Allingham of the local Wind Action Group wants to prepare people for some of the possible problems associated with the turbines.

Allingham says the scope of the industrial wind farms which are coming to Lambton Shores is “unbelievable. The amount of focus on Lambton Shores is quite heavy and its going to completely change the landscape,” she says.

But she says, so far, there hasn’t been a large outcry against them.

“We do believe there are a lot of people that aren’t aware of the possible effects,” says Allingham. “A lot of times, people don’t really want to know until it affects them.

“Once people start realizing how close these things are coming, how many are coming, then they will want to know how it is going to affect them.”

Aside from the much debated health affects of the low-frequency noise associated with the turbines, Allingham says there is a real concern that property value in the lakeshore community will fall. “Some homes up in the Ripley area (where one of the province’s first industrial wind farms was established) and in other areas already in the shadow of the turbines people are seeing somewhere in the area of 30 and 40 per cent decrease in their property values,” she says.

The meeting at Grand Bend Public School on Gill Road starts at 7 p.m.