May 26, 2012
Ontario

STOP hits the beach in fight against CAW turbine

By Sarah Sloan, Assistant Editor, Shoreline Beacon | www.shorelinebeacon.com 25 May 2012

Saugeen Turbine Operation Policy (STOP) is continuing ahead with it plans to halt operation of the wind turbine at the CAW Family Education Centre in Port Elgin. In the group’s latest effort Saturday, two information kiosks were set up at the Main Beach in Port Elgin and on the beach at Goble’s Grove for people to learn “why the turbines must be stopped now.”

Over the past several months, STOP has held formal protests, well attended town hall meeting and numerous other endeavours in an effort to get the CAW to reconsider its stance on having a wind turbine so close to so many people.

Wayne McGrath, a member of STOP and the organizer of Saturday’s kiosks said the information booths were another chance for people, particularly those visiting over the long weekend, to get engaged.

“They’re being told one story, and they have no reason not to believe it. They hear the government say these things are great… it’s not such a nice story,” he said.

“We hope people will come around take our flyers, take them home and check out the available websites.”

Paul Kuster, who was helping McGrath man the booth at the Main Beach said the event is another educational process to disseminate the information and to counterbalance what they’ve been told through other media outlets.

“We’re looking at the beginning of the long weekend, the beginning of summer, and you get a lot of people up from the city,” he said “So far I have been presently surprised with the amount of people who have stopped by and shown interest.”

Such as Jennifer Summers of Toronto, who has a cottage in Gobles Grove and came to the kiosk for more information. She said erecting a turbine at the CAW is ridiculous.

“When you hear about [turbines] on the farm lands and you hear about the health effects there, and to have one right here near all of our cottages it just doesn’t seem right that [The CAW] were able to do it,” she said. “It’s outrageous. We have four family cottages up here and we are all outraged and been signing petitions so I thought I should come down here to support [STOP].”

There were many people who stopped by the booth because they just do not know enough about turbines and are looking to get answers.

“This is more awareness and education of the wind turbine, not only the CAW wind turbine in town, but also the ones across Ontario,” said Kuster.

“There are those who just have that visceral gut feeling that [turbines] are not the right thing, sometimes they don’t know why so we’ve given them an interest in terms of talking points to use such as the health effects, the economics of it… the bat and bird kills, the sort of environmental impacts of a wind turbine.”

According to Kuster, even though people figure turbines are green, they are not when you look at what goes into developing them, so Saturday’s event was to give people information that turbines are not as they are advertised.

[rest of article available at source]

URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2012/05/26/stop-hits-the-beach-in-fight-against-caw-turbine/