There could be several dozen wind turbines in Wellington County if all applications are approved, but county council is taking steps to prevent that.
The county planning committee received a report from senior policy planner Mark Bolzon this month, and it came to the May 27 county council meeting.
Bolzon said the turbines proposed to date for Wellington County could generate up to 265 megawatts of power. The number of turbines on the low end of the proposal would be 113, and it could reach as high as 167.
Bolzon said in his report, “The only formal consultation with municipal government is a municipal consultation form that is very narrow in scope.
Further, he said, the peer review for normal planning has been ignored.
“In a normal planning application, technical reports are often peer reviewed and the public has access to both the reports and the peer reviews during the decision making process,” he explained.
But in the process to approve wind turbines as announced by Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty, “The provincial peer review process for green energy projects is not clear but it appears to happen near the end and it is not clear if the public has access to the provincial peer reviews during the public process.”
There are six wind turbine proposals for Wellington County to date:
– Mapleton and Woolwich, by Invenergy, Conestogo Wind Energy Centre, 160MW, and 64 to 100 turbines;
– Mapleton and Wellington North, Nextera Energy, Conestogo Wind Farm, 23MW, 9 to 15 turbines;
– Centre Wellington and East Garafraxa, by Invenergy, Belwood Wind Farm, 54MW, 25 to 35 turbines;
– Centre Wellington, WPD Canada, Belwood, 9MW, 4 to 6 turbines;
– Centre Wellington, WindTech Research and Development, 0.04MW, 6 small turbines; and
– Wellington North, Schneider Power and Arthur Wind Farm, 10MW, 5 turbines.
Bolzon noted there is another project by IPC Canada south of Arthur which is in the planning stages for 6MW.
The planning committee also received some letters from Belwood area residents who oppose the project, and also a delegation from Janet Vallery and Dave Hurlburt, of Oppose Belwood Wind Farm.
After hearing their comments, the committee made several recommendations:
– that county council advise the Premier, the Minister of Municipal Affairs, the Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure and the Minister of Environment of its concerns with respect to wind energy projects, and especially as follows;
– council reaffirms its support for a moratorium on wind energy projects until a health study is completed by an independent third party;
– council believes the proponent driving consultation process under the Green Energy Act fails to provide a meaningful method for the public to express their concerns to the provincial decision makers;
– council believes the approval process under the Green Energy Act fails to provide the public and municipal governments with access to provincial peer and inter-agency reviews of wind energy projects in advance of decision making, assuming these provincial reviews are available at all; and
– council believes the relationship between various wind energy permitting and approval processes under the Green Energy Act and the Ontario Power Authority feed-in tariff program are confusing and unclear to municipal government and the public and are causing unnecessary anxiety to residents living in or near proposed wind energy sites.
Further the committee recommended that Chief Administrative Officer Scott Wilson obtain a legal opinion on the powers of Wellington County council or its local municipalities to regulate wind energy and other renewable or alternative energy projects.
Planning committee chairman Walter Trachsel said, “It seems with the Green Energy Act people in rural areas are paying to have their lives disrupted.”
Council was unanimous in supporting the committee’s recommendations.
