Posts Tagged ‘Toronto Hydro Wind Farm’
Is George Smitherman Familiar With the Environment?
While both Premier McGuinty and Minister Smitherman have softened their ‘absurd’ rhetoric since unleashing a very public backlash on themselves across the Province, Minister Smitherman still doesn’t seem to get it. They’ve backed down from flinging insults at Scarborough residents, but still don’t seem prepared to recognize the environmental concerns Scarborough’s residents have.
Smitherman’s latest comments represent the fundamental lack of understanding the Premier and he seem to have regarding Scarborough’s concerns. It’s not about our homes, it’s about preserving the environment from untold degradation. Perhaps if either of them or their staff cared to read or reply to a single letter Guildwood residents sent them before dismissing us as ‘NIMBY’ they would know this.
Smitherman again took aim at opponents of a proposed Toronto Hydro project to put a string of wind turbines in Lake Ontario two to four kilometres off the Scarborough Bluffs, saying they are far enough away from homes not to be “impactful.”
“People are raising questions,” he said in a nod to area residents concerned about the impact turbines could have on human health, migratory birds and other natural concerns.
“We have done a lot of work looking at the evidence … we’re always reviewing the literature,” Smitherman added, suggesting polluted air from coal-fired electricity plants poses health dangers that outweigh concerns about wind turbines. Toronto Star, February 20th 2009
It is important that the Minister is now prepared to recognize there is a human health impact worth considering, but why can’t he recognize there is an environmental impact too?
This isn’t a balancing act. The environment should never be a balancing act. I get for political reasons comparing wind to coal makes for a decent talking point, but it isn’t a coal power plant that currently has the potential to release harmful substances into Toronto’s drinking water, cause untold damage to the shoreline or to bird, bat and fish populations. It is a wind turbine project that will not require a single ‘iota’ of provincial environmental review whatsoever. Nothing. Once they have the anemometer application from Natural Resources as far as the Government is concerned it’s officially ‘go time’. (You could already suggest the Government has decided it is ‘go’ time, considering Toronto Hydro Energy Services has stalled their application and the Premier and his Deputy have already come out swinging in favour of the application they have yet to received.)
Can Smitherman seriously ignore the fact that the proposal calls for the installation of 18 000 tonnes of massive structures in the lake, stirring up all kinds of unstudied lake bed sediment upstream from where 45% of Toronto’s water is sucked out of the lake? All of this disturbed debris, like the sand that created the Beach and the Toronto Islands will naturally drift towards the waterworks, where it has the potential to get sucked into the City’s fresh water supply. There will be no environmental review first so we won’t even know what we’re sending down current. Although should it be a problem, the good people at Toronto Water will tell us about it when the release their annual report monitoring the dozens of contaminants in our water they monitor.
As for his coal reference, at least to me it appears the Minister is giving folks the choice between getting their toxic Mercury fix between the air we breathe and the water Toronto drinks. Lake Ontario’s fish are inedible due to high mercury levels, and like other heavy metals that don’t dissolve in water they concentrate in lake bed sediment on the bottom with other harmful materials like PCBs. Construction will undoubtedly displace massive amounts of lake bed sediment.
Smitherman appears ready to ignore the fact that the Scarborough Bluffs is the most sensitive portion of shoreline anywhere on Lake Ontario and this project if ‘forced’ (the Premier’s word) on the community would be the world’s closest project of it’s size. Most European countries say one needs a minimum distance from shore of 5KM for nature conservation reasons. Germany thinks 20KM is necessary. Greenpeace Europe agrees that offshore plants need to respect this minimum distance, European wind energy associations do too. They also acknowledge the importance of full environmental assessments. So why can’t Minister Smitherman and Joyce McLean (the past President of Canada’s Wind Energy Association) take the advice of Denmark, Germany, Greenpeace Europe (McLean is also the former Greenpeace Canada Chairperson, and a former Great Lakes Campaigner for Greenpeace), and the wind industry. Do they seriously believe that they know something that the industry, governments and environmental lobby in Europe don’t?
Joyce McLean has no credibility left on this after the series of misleading statements, dirty tricks, and a demonstrated inability to appreciate any of the environmental, viability or economic concerns residents have put forth. (Once again, I am fully prepared to back up this claim if challenged.) Does the Minister really want to cast his lot in with her and hope for a different outcome?
In it’s current form this bill is not a “green” anything. It’s a fraud of a bill. It is bill cloaked in a label, written by industry insiders with a vested financial interest, introduced by a guy whose chosen to attack folks who object to the fact that not a single Provincial environmental review of any sort is required to construct 60 objects as tall as the Royal York with each weighing the equivalent of 6 subway cars each and anchored up to 90 metres deep on an unstudied sand bar. It is madness that the Province believes no environmental study whatsoever is required.
If he is serious about passing a true Green Energy Act he would recognize that set backs are necessary for environmental protection as well. He would recognize that there is a legitimate need to do a thorough environmental assessment before approving any project that has the potential to release heavy metals and PCBs into Toronto’s drinking water or have any negative environmental impact. He needs to recognize that the Scarborough Bluffs are unstable by their nature, and the construction and heavy pounding that is required to anchor a wind turbine 90 metres into a sandbar could cause erosion and further destabilize the cliffs. He needs to recognize that provincial legislation exempts wind projects from any environmental review. The provincial government just doesn’t care what kind of impact these things have.
I’m not an expert. But based on the current legislation, this blog and my attempt to use other studies and data to educate my audience, is the closest thing to an environmental study that will come out of this proposed project if Minister Smitherman doesn’t find the guts to tell the wind industry that they too need to follow the rules and actually care about the environmental impact their projects have.
The Premier and the Minister need to wake up before they risk damaging the amazing shoreline that is the Scarborough Bluffs because they were either too stubborn to admit they are wrong or not strong enough to stand up and show the leadership needed to protect the cliffs from a moneyed interest that doesn’t appear to care. They need to ask themselves before Monday when they introduce the bill why they wouldn’t want to adopt well recognized international standards for shoreline nature conservation and why the Scarborough Bluffs, which are far more delicate than other shorelines in the world, needs to have literally the closest project of it’s size anywhere in the world? And if so, why does it need to be the closest project of it’s kind in the world and the only one without any environmental review?
Finally – if anyone in a position of responsibility wants to contact me in either the Premier’s office or the Minister’s Office to discuss internationally recognized shoreline set backs for all offshore wind projects, or internationally recognized full environmental reviews, I would be more than happy to share this and can be reached at john.laforet@laforet.ca anytime today or over the weekend.
14 Comments »When Life Imitates the Simpsons… An Inconvenient Truth…
You know those people who can equate virtually everything that happens in life to an episode of the Simpsons? I haven’t really been able to find many situations in my life that tie neatly into episodes of the Simpsons, but one episode came to mind last night as I was getting ready to go to bed. Sure enough someone had already found and uploaded the portion of the specific episode I was thinking about to youtube. The cultural phenomenon that is the Simpsons has resulted in books, a legion of devoted fans and detailed Wikipedia entries of each show during it’s twenty season run.
There is more reading to do, but take a look at this clip from ‘Marge Vs. Monorail’ and think about what has been my topic of choice over the last two weeks.
Below is the plot summary of Marge vs. the Monorail – followed by my thoughts. This is from the Marge vs. the Monorail article found on Wikipedia.
“After being caught dumping nuclear waste in the city park by the EPA, Mr. Burns is fined three million dollars. A town meeting is immediately held so that the citizens can decide what to spend the money on and Marge suggests using it to fix up Main Street, which is in a bad condition. The town shows enthusiasm for this idea and is about to vote for it when suddenly a whistle is heard and a silver-tongued, fast talking gentleman named Lyle Lanley suggests the town construct a city monorail. He leads them in a song, which convinces the town to buy the monorail.
Even though Lanley succeeds in winning over the entire town, including skeptical Lisa, Marge is unhappy with the purchase, believing that the monorail is unsafe. While watching TV, Homer sees an advertisement that suggests he become a monorail conductor and Homer, claiming it to be a lifelong dream, immediately agrees. After a three week course described by Lanley as “intensive”, Homer is named the monorail conductor. Still feeling uneasy about the monorail, Marge decides to visit Lyle Lanley and discovers a notebook that reveals Lanley’s true intentions of running off with bags of money while everyone else falls victim to a faulty monorail. Marge immediately drives to North Haverbrook, which Lanley mentioned was a previous purchaser of one of his monorails. Once she arrives, Marge discovers that the town is in ruins, and that those still living there deny that they ever had a monorail, despite the fact that the town is covered in advertisements for it. While exploring, she meets Sebastian Cobb, the man who designed Lanley’s monorail. He explains that Lanley cut costs everywhere when building it, and that the entire thing is a scam.
At the maiden voyage of the monorail, the entire town has come out, including Leonard Nimoy. Lanley grabs his money and jumps in a taxi, which takes him to the airport. The monorail leaves just before Marge and Cobb arrive. At first things run smoothly, but the controls malfunction, causing the monorail to accelerate dangerously. Meanwhile, Lanley’s flight makes a brief unscheduled stop in North Haverbrook, where Lanley is immediately attacked by a group of locals. Back in Springfield, Cobb tells Homer that in order to stop the train, he needs to find an anchor. Homer grabs the giant “M” from the side of the Monorail and uses it as an anchor. Eventually, it latches onto a giant doughnut, stopping the monorail and saving its passengers. Everyone thanks Homer for saving the town, while Leonard Nimoy claims his “work here is done”, and beams up.”
Is life imitating the Simpsons? As with all things found in cartoons the scenario is more extreme, but to me at least, as sad as it is, I know after re-watching this clip and thinking about just how the current process goes for wind energy projects in Ontario goes; I found similarities. Although, Jack Simpson and Joyce McLean didn’t exactly sing and dance – well they did, but only when it came to answering direct questions. The community certainly was not in a singing or dancing mood though, at least not at the meeting that wasn’t stacked by paid supporters of their cause.
In the last two days I’ve received emails from folks who live in communities in Ontario at different stages of the wind project process. One individual wrote to tell me about the negative health implications having several turbines within sight of her home, some under 500 metres away, and another to tell me about her municipal government shutting residents like her, who could see three massive turbines installed within 600 metres of her home, out of the discussion of possible negative health effects. I’ve been thinking about how devastating each of those situations must be, and how frustrating it must be to watch again and again as various levels of your government fail to protect you from people who simply would rather deny the health impacts of their product than properly investigate it (I will also be writing more extensively about each).
The individuals in favour of these projects will point to all kinds of other health impacts. I’ve seen arguments as silly as “Do you have a microwave?” (good thing they didn’t ask me this one) a question one proponent of wind power, tried to use to suggest someone couldn’t be too worried about their health if they’d eat “radiated” food. I doubt tobacco companies were quick to recognize the correlation between smoking and cancer, the folks who brought us lead paint, pipes and gasoline, likely challenged the correlation between their products and the health impacts lead poisoning has, just like the guys who dumped heavy metals into our great lakes probably took some time to appreciate the devastating effects they were having on it’s ecosystem. The folks who build and install wind turbines appear to be no different. They just ‘make believe’ the health impacts away.
One of the annoying differences between the proponents of wind projects who just don’t care about human impact is that at least with Nuclear power (two words that can easily make these folks blow a gasket) there are very serious safety precautions and not a single incident in Ontario of a major accident. I’m not defending nuclear, I’m just saying, if a guy wanted to throw one of those up within 50 metres of someone’s home, you better believe the government would have my back and not allow it to happen. So – why is it that the self righteous folks behind Ontario’s wind industry won’t also follow minimum safety precautions to protect human health? They can say incidence levels are low, and that’s fine, incidence levels of health impacts from wind power are hundreds of times higher than the incidence of nuclear meltdowns in Ontario and yet they still have standards to follow, so why can’t the wind generators have some standards too? I’m not saying don’t build wind turbines, I’m just saying do it right. Engage communities, research and follow legitimate health guidelines, consider the efficiency of the project, the economics of a project and most important, the environmental impacts of a project. Why is this so hard? Environment, economics and efficiency – three really great places to start when examining any public policy relating to physical assets or infrastructure. Nothing should ever happen that impacts a community without it’s residents being engaged, and their well being looked out for.
The arguments above could be described as “inconvenient truths” of wind power projects in the Province of Ontario.
As Al Gore said in the movie of that very title “This is really not a political issue, so much as it is a moral issue”.
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