October 30, 2014
Australia, Letters

Farmers at wind turbine meeting were not biased

By Margo Rees | The Courier | Oct. 30, 2014 | www.thecourier.com.au

One of the many wonderful things about the privilege of living in Australia is the right to free speech. I could not disagree with Mr Aitken’s opinion (Letters, October 28) any more if I tried.

The heartfelt testimonies from two farmers whose lives have been completely changed due to the placing of wind turbines close to their homes caused us incredible sadness for both their families.

To quote Mr Aitken: “Even though they were not experts in any of these fields, they were taken as being experts due to personal experience”.

What better teaching tool than life experience is there?

The ‘evidence’ these two, honest, decent men produced is what they and their families have had to live through.

One farmer’s family has farmed their land for many generations and was quite excited and, in fact, promoted the wind turbines coming to their area.

Their stress caused through illness shocking headaches, nausea and a general feeling of being unwell has taken away the quality of life they enjoyed before the blades started rotating.

The other farmer spoke about the difficulty they had in selling their loved and beautifully restored homestead, due to the close proximity of the wind turbines to the house.

To quote Mr Aitken again: “Not experts in the field of real estate”. I think I would classify that particular farmer as an ‘expert in real estate’ as far as his own property is concerned, because he and his wife suffered a massive loss on the value of their property when they were finally able to sell it. Far from the “information session being very misleading” these men told it like it is and not with what I would call “biased information” just with a completely honest, factual account of the devastating effect caused by wind turbines for themselves and families on their hard-working lives.

Wherever there is money to be made, there is self-interest.

URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2014/10/30/farmers-at-wind-turbine-meeting-were-not-biased/