National Wind Watch: Wind Energy News » Council joins call for turbine moratorium

Meaford has joined Ontario farmers and other municipal councils to demand an immediate moratorium on industrial wind turbines.

The resolution goes beyond health concerns that Meaford noted in a similar resolution 15 months ago. This one calls for a halt to new turbines and a study of health concerns, setbacks, devaluation of property, destruction of wildlife habitat and “decimation of the rural landscape.”

“I couldn’t agree more on that one,” Deputymayor Harley Greenfield, who brought forward the resolution, told council Monday night.

Greenfield said the motion supported both Arran-Elderslie council and the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, as well as a long list of other Ontario municipal councils to join the call since Arran-Elderslie first circulated its resolution.

But Greenfield said approving it Monday had nothing to do with a political protest earlier that day.

In Toronto, about 80 municipal officials walked out on Premier Dalton McGuinty’s speech during the annual Ontario Good Roads Association/Rural Ontario Municipal Association conference.

They were protesting the Ontario Liberal wind policies and McGuinty’s refusing a moratorium.

“This doesn’t have anything to do with what went on in Toronto today,” Greenfield told council. “I don’t agree with walking out on people or walking out on issues.”

Meaford’s call for a moratorium is one more voice as part of growing opposition to wind turbines until the health and political issues are addressed, Greenfield said after the meeting.

Huron-Bruce Progressive Conservative MPP Lisa Thompson is expected to call for a moratorium next week. Thompson has tabled a private member’s bill was scheduled for debate at Queen’s Park March 8.