Industrial wind turbines? Not "green" and not about "community"!
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Des
Éoliennes Industrielles? Ni « vertes » ni à
consonance « Communautaire »
EDEN MUIR, FRELIGHSBURG, 2010/02/17.
Even though it has been re-branded as a green community project,
there is nothing "green" about the proposed Bedford-area "wind farm" and
it has precious little to do with "community."
Rather, it's all about money. It is a massive industrial enterprise, a $60-million
"mega" project that would forever change
the landscape, the skyline and the culture of the farm-based Eastern Townships communities
of Bedford, Stanbridge Station and Pike River, and surrounding areas.
This is a site where the Montreal plain meets the first folds of the Appalachian foothills, where two
centuries of hardworking farmers have picked stones, installed drainage tiles, and plowed and fertilized
the land to create a prime agricultural zone. This is where the wind-plant promoters
(multi-national energy corporation
S. M. International and a small group of local farmers who would pocket substantial rent money)
would stick their
massive wind skyscrapers that rival the height of many downtown Montreal towers.
On these fertile fields they would dump thousands of truck loads of crushed stone to build up a network
of kilometers of access roads wide enough to handle the long delivery trailers and oversized construction
cranes. They would scrape off the topsoil, disrupt the drainage and excavate giant round pits
to be filled with reinforced
concrete to serve as permanent foundations for the towers.
Then, if these developers had their way, the towers would arrive on huge trucks, be lifted into the
air by giant cranes, and be bolted to the foundation pads. Later, the turbine rotors
would begin to spin, creating that distinctive
whooshing, thumping sound that would be audible to all the local residents, some living only 500 meters away.
Then, if the
well-documented experience of hundreds of wind farms around the world is any guide,
the health problems would arise, including insomnia,
stress, vertigo, and other malaises that appear to relate to the low-frequency sound waves generated by the turbines.
And, as at other sites around the world, residents would find themselves unable to sell their homes, except at a big discount,
if they are in the vicinity of the turbines.
However, some revenue would begin to flow, if there is adequate wind at the altitude of these sky needles.
There would be
land-rental income for the small handful of farmer/promoters, and a token annual
contribution to the municipality. Most of the rest of the revenue would vanish from this region and the sporadic
electrical power would flow into the grid to boost the surplus electricity that Québec exports.
The unpredictability
of the wind means that we cannot count on it being there when we need it
most, for example, when we use it to heat our homes in the dead of winter.
Since the turbines can only generate power when the air speed is within certain
speed limits, not too slow and not too fast,
they typically achieve less than 30% efficiency.
Therefore, wind turbines cannot easily replace other power sources and there
is much less "green" benefit than suggested by the wind-farm promoters.
Rather than cutting down on greenhouse gas emissions, some experts point out
that the opposite can happen: near Calgary, for example, wind farm power
generation was so unreliable that they had to build a
huge new natural-gas-fired plant
to make the Alberta electric grid less vulnerable to disruption.
Not a single coal-fired plant has ever
been decommissioned because of a wind farm replacing it -- instead, the wind farms perpetuate the
myth that we can forever multiply our demand for power rather than facing the hard truths
about necessary reduction and conservation.
Besides, Québec is the richest place in the world in terms
of clean, reliable hydro-electricity, so why the rush to cover
the fertile fields of southern Québec with giant industrial wind turbines?
Is it just a cynical compulsion by Québec politicians to jump on a green bandwagon?
Could it have something to do with
the Stanbridge Station site straddling an existing Hydro-Québec power
line and servitude that leads directly to the United States,
permitting easy export of this surplus power?
If so, should the Eastern Townships become
an industrial zone just to keep the air conditioners running
in New York and Boston?
If this proposed wind plant were built, the rest of the surrounding community would ultimately be
left with nothing but a handful of maintenance jobs and a forest of
spinning turbines visible from all over the county.
If the government agencies, and we the citizens, allow this project to go
through, a dangerous precedent would be set for converting Québec's protected Green Zone land to use as an
industrial power plant.
If it is not stopped, this project would spawn a host of similar proposals for sites across
the farming communities of southern Québec.
Industrial mega-projects may have there place elsewhere
in Québec, but
certainly not in prime agro-touristic areas such as ours (the western gateway of La Route des Vins)
and not in the vicinity of our historic villages and farmhouses.
The submission of the proposal to Hydro-Québec and the review processes will be occurring over the next few months--we
must all pay attention and make our objections clear, otherwise we may wake up to find that we have
allowed the historic and beautiful Eastern Townships countryside to be turned into an industrial zone.
