July 3, 2014
Ontario

Residents fight $380-million wind farm project

PAUL MORDEN | QMI AGENCY | July 3rd, 2014 | www.sunnewsnetwork.ca

A group of southern Ontario residents plans to appeal the province’s approval of a $380-million wind farm for which two First Nations own a 50% stake.

Aamjiwnaang First Nation and Bkejwanong First Nation are partners in the 40-turbine Grand Bend Wind project being developed by Toronto-based Northland Power.

Patti Kellar, who lives in Bluewater, Ont., located on the southeastern shore of Lake Huron, said between the Grand Bend project and NextEra Energy’s proposed Goshen Wind project, nine wind turbines are planned for within 2 km of her home.

“There’s a lot of negatives and they haven’t proven to me that they’ve done any good,” Kellar said. “I think that the propaganda that has been used to sell this idea of it being free, clean, green is just hogwash.”

The province approved the Grand Bend project late last month.

Gordon Potts, director of business development with Northland Power, said the company will wait to see what happens during the appeal period before beginning construction.

Construction is generally allowed to begin on wind projects that have been appealed to the province’s environmental review tribunal, but that’s not Northland’s policy, Potts said.

“We would typically wait for the appeals to be resolved before we would spend the big bucks,” he said.
Construction, once it begins, is expected to take 15 months to complete, he said.

Planning for the Grand Bend project began in 2003.

“It took a long time because the process is thorough and no stone is left unturned, and no natural feature is left unstudied,” Potts said.

The provincial approval says the project must be built and operational within three years.

URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2014/07/03/residents-fight-380-million-wind-farm-project/