January 17, 2013
Ontario

Public meetings set on rail corridor power line

By WES KELLER, Freelance Reporter | Orangeville Citizen | 2013-01-17 | www.citizen.on.ca

Dufferin County council has scheduled a public information session for Jan. 31 to review the findings of independent consultants with respect to the proposed 230 kV transmission line on the railway corridor from the 49-turbine facility proposed by Dufferin Wind Power (DWP) to the Orangeville transformer substation for connection to the provincial grid.

The county is in the unusual position of having intervener status in DWP’s application to the Ontario Energy Board (OEB) for permission to build a power line, and also having to participate in the Ministry of Environment’s Renewable Energy Approval (REA) process although it has no interest in the proposal to create a wind farm.

County CAO Sonya Pritchard explained in an interview that the two things go hand-inhand. And, in a report to the council, she said jurisdiction of the OEB is limited to matters of “price, reliability and quality of service, so some of the issues that are relevant to the County and the community will not be of any real concern to the Board.”

She said the county’s lawyers responded to the OEB application with questions about “the form of the agreement proposed by DWPI, liability and risk issues” – generally issues that would concern the Board.

The REA response, to be mulled by the council on Feb. 7 and submitted to meet the Feb. 10 deadline, would deal with other issues of concern to the council and the community.

Meantime, ahead of the Jan. 31 council presentation, a group calling itself Wind Resistance of Melancthon has scheduled a public meeting for Jan. 30 in opposition to the DWP proposal. It says it will present materials supporting “property devaluation, health effects of turbines and a transmission line from the turbines through Shelburne, and dirty electricity.”

But something called “BigCityLib” has posted a blog in which it quotes a Wolfe Island court finding that the proximity of turbines has not affected property values there.

Whatever the truth, widespread opposition to wind farms has not abated. Antiwind activist Lorrie Gillis of Grey Highlands was urging people to attend a Nextera meeting in Durham to voice opposition to its proposed East Durham wind farm on Tuesday night, and had organized three buses to protest at the Liberal leadership election at the Toronto Convention Centre on Jan. 26.

“Response has been very good to going to Toronto Jan. 26 to protest Liberals at the Convention Center! In only one day there are THREE buses pledged to go and others planning to meet us there by their own means,” she said in a recent post.

In other areas, the Township of Wainfleet in the Niagara Region is facing a lawsuit over its adoption of a bylaw calling for moratorium on the construction of wind turbine farms in the township and also a twokilometre setback from residential properties on the turbines.

Neighbouring West Lincoln Township council on Monday sat until 12:45 a.m. Tuesday to entertain a motion to demand a 2-km setback there. But, after a five and a half hour raucous debate, the motion was withdrawn, according to Amanda Moore in Niagara This Week.

Withdrawal was because such a bylaw would have no force or effect, and there was apparently a fear of litigation similar to that in Wainfleet.

Mayor Doug Joyner is quoted as saying, “We may not like it, I don’t like it, but the Green Energy Act is an act of royal assent. When it comes to this bylaw, and let’s not kid ourselves, we all heard it here tonight … a two-kilometre setback [requirement] is illegal.

“The province did what they did, they took away, stripped away the powers of municipalities in Ontario. The only one who can cancel this is the provincial government. Take your collective energy and go to Queen’s Park. It’s not that I don’t want to hear you or see you. You have to go the province. They are the people who can change this for you.”

Back in Dufferin, the county’s Jan. 31 presentation is at 7 p.m. in Centre Dufferin Recreation Complex. The preceding Wind Resistance meeting is at 7 p.m. in the Shelburne Royal Canadian Legion.