Eastern Lake Ontario Environmental Research Group 2000 (cont'd from eloerg.tripod.com/waupoos)

Wente on Wind and Bald Eagle mugging, Globe and Mail, February 2, 2013
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CMAJ on PMRA, November 2023
EV as empty vessel in car sewers, Eric Reguly, Globe & Mail, May 20, 2023
Comic Piccini opera, Redux, Ontario auditor general Env Report, Globe & Mail, May 18, 2023
Venal or Venial? letter to Globe, May 16, 2023
"Cry me a river over a few bats", Redux, Globe & Mail, May 12,2023
Greenbelt "Scam": Barbarian Ford invasions, Globe & Mail, May 12, 2023
Barbarian Ford invasions case: City of Belleville Bell Creek dvlpt, Intelligencer, April 25, 2023
Road building projects in Wales, UK, cancelled as climate clangers, the Guardian, Feb 14, 2023
Unpublshed letter to Globe, 1996 opioids revisited, February 6, 2023
Cathal Kelly on climate charade, Globe & Mail, January 27, 2023
Ontario Bill 23, letter to the Premier, and Todd Smith MPP, Nov 24, 2022
Canola conundrum, letter to Globe & Mail, October 2022
3rd (Canadian) arm of U.S. Air Pollution Health Effects Study, the Guardian, Aug 12, 2022
Atomic awe and Boris blight, letter to Globe, July 11, 2022
Your !&#!*^%! car, Part II, Globe and Mail editorial, July 16, 2022
Your !&#!*^%! car, Part I, Globe and Mail, June 20, 2022
CAPE report on fossil fuels, Globe and Mail, June 9, 2022
Traffic Air Pollution Health Effects report, CAPE, April 2022
EU Bans Toxics, the Guardian, April 2022
Comic Piccini opera: Ontario Auditor General Environment Report, November 2021
......RIP Trillium...... November 16, 2021
Covid-19 Parlour Sessions 2020/2021, April 1, 2021
Mitch Podoluk, Obituary, Globe and Mail, September 2019
Notice to (Big Bay) Mariners, August 2019
Air Head, Globe and Mail, August 2019
Leon Redbone, RIP, June 2019
Ontario Endangered Species Act at risk, letter to Rod Phillips, April 2019
Slide to Extinction, Chris Humphrey, letter to Globe, October 31, 2018
Peter Galbraith, FRCP, obituary, October 2017
White Pines on Death Bed, Bruce Bell, Intelligencer, July 17,2018
Thucydides Trap, letter to Globe, May 2018
Great Lakes toxics down, SUNY Oswego/Clarkson U, April 2018
Machine subversion of democracy, letter to Globe, April 2018
Air Pollution overrides Ancestral Genes, Globe, March 2018
Olympian Cathal Kelly, letter to Globe, March 2018
Environmentalists seeking unemployment, letter to Globe, February 2018
Less is more on Bike Lanes, National Post, January 2018
Tramadol, 10 years on, Globe and Mail, November 2017
White Stripes: Belleville bicycle lanes, letters, November 2017
Occupational Cancers, CCO research results, Globe and Mail, October 2017
Big Pharmoney and Canadian Drug Use Guidelines, Globe and Mail, June 21, 2017, Kelly Grant
Oxycontin, 20 years on, letter to Globe, May 2017
Lake Ontario wind turbines to remain on hold? Feb 2017
Obituary, Raold Serebrin, September 2016
Sartorial slip or signal? letter to Globe editor, October 2016
Weapons of mass distraction, letter to Globe editor, Oct 2016
Point O turbines 99% Down the Drain, CCSAGE, July 7, 2016
Point O turbines Dead and Damned, PECFN, July 6, 2016
Rabid diplomat, letter to Globe, May, 2016
More on bats: rabid rocker? letter to Globe, January 2016
Lighthouses of eastern Lake Ontario, new book by Marc Seguin, March 2016
Continuing corporate windpower malfeasance: Windstream and Trillium Corp, Feb 2016
Amherst Island: the next fine mess, Feb 2016
Valerie Langer: Thirty years of effort pays off on the B.C. coast, Feb 1,2016
Trillium log, 6th annual ELO expedtion, September 2015
Trillium Wind Corp intent on Spoliation of eastern Lake Ontario and Main Duck Isle, June 2015
Turtles rule? Ontario Court of Appeal Decision: Turtlegate, April 2015
Obituaries, Mary Terrance (Luke) Hill, January 2015; Valerie Ingrid (Hill) Kaldes, July 2015
Ontario Court of Appeal turtle hearing, December 2014
Trillium Log, 5th annual ELO expedition, September 2014
Planetary public health manifesto, The Lancet, March 2014
Ostrander Bioblitz, butterfly inventory walk, August 10, 2014
Victory at Cape Vincent: British Petroleum withdraws turbine proposal, February 2014
Stay of execution granted by Ontario Court of Appeal, March 2014
Never say die: Will the Court of Appeal let the Ostrander Phoenix fly free again? March 2014
Divisional Court ruling in Ostrander: turtles belly up, Trojan horses win, February 2014
Lafarge 2020, pushing the air envelope again, Hazardous waste as cement kiln fuel proposal, Jan2014
Another fine mess in Port Hope: municipal waste incinerator proposal, January 2014
Ostrander: fiasco, or snafu? you decide, December 2013
Ostrander rises again, Noli illegitimi carborundum, December 2013
British Petroleum backing off Cape Vincent after a decade of aggression? December 2013
Turbines best Bald Eagles in U.S law, December 2013
SARStock 10 years after, letter to Globe, August 2003
Trillium log September 2013: Surfin' USA: Hanging Ten in a Hughes 29
ERT Post mortem: Garth Manning lets it all hang out, August 2013
ERT post mortem: Cheryl Anderson lets it all hang out, August 2013
ERT Post Mortem: Ian Dubin lets it all hang out, August 2013
Great Lakes United turns thirty, goes down, RIP GLU, July 29, 2013
ERT decision, Ostrander turns turtle, goes down, July 3, 2013
PECFN Thankyou, and Appeal for funds, July 6, 2013
Minister of Env on Lake Ontario Off shore wind turbine status, June 2013
Lake Ontario water level control plan, June 2013
Play by Play, Part II, APPEC Ostrander ERT Appeal, June 2013
Ostrander ERT June 2013, Appendix VI, an indirect cause of human morbidity and mortality ?
ELOERG Presentation to Ostrander ERT, Part II, Human Health, May 2013
The Dirty E-Word, Terry Sprague, Picton Gazette, April 2013
Toxics in Great Lakes Plastic Pollution, April 2013
Bill Evans on Birds and Wind farms, April 2013
Mayday, Naval Marine Archive, April 2013
Experimental Lakes Area, Kenora, Closing by Federal Gov't, March 2013
Fishing Lease Phase out on Prince Edward Point, March 2013
Windstream makes $1/2 Billion NAFTA claim, March 2013
Play by Play, PECFN Ostrander ERT Appeal, March 2013
Offshore Wind turbine moratorium 2 years later, The Star, Feb 2013
ELOERG ERT submission on Ostrander: Appendix V: Pushing the Envelope of the MoE SEV, Feb 2013
Wente on Wind and Bald Eagle mugging, Globe and Mail, February 2, 2013
Sprague on Wind and Bald Eagle mugging, Picton Gazette, Jan 25, 2013
Cry Me a River over a Few Bats: Submission to Env Review Tribunal, ELOERG, January 2013
Lake Ontario's Troubled Waters: U of Michigan GLEAM, January 2013
Letter to Minister of Environment re: Ostrander, January 2013
No Balm in Gilead: Ostrander IWT's as Trojan Horses, January 2013
Ostrander Turbines: another Christmas gift by the MoE, Dec 2012
Occupational carcinogens: Ontario Blue Collar breast cancer study, November 2012
Fresh water fish Extinctions, Scientific American,November 2012
Great Lakes Toxics revisited, November 2012
Frack the What ? November 2012
$ 2 1/4 Billion Trillium Power lawsuit knockback Appeal, November 2012
Canada Centre for Inland Waters decimated, October 2012
Birds, Bats, Turbines, and the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario, October 2012
Ecological public health, the 21st centurys big idea? British MedicalJournal Sept1,2012
Trillium log, Sept 2012
George Prevost, Saviour of the Canadas, 1812 - 1814. June 2012
The Victory at Picton: Bicentennial Conference on War of 1812-1814, Differing Perspectives, May 2012
Carleton Island and the 1812, letter to the Globe, October 2011
Queen's Fine Arts Department Succumbs, letter to Principal, December 2011
Mr. Kumar and the Super 30, November 2011
Letters, Articles and Projects from the Nineties
Alban Goddard Hill, web site manager

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MCGUINTY'S LEGACY IS A GREEN NIGHTMARE

by Margaret Wente, Globe and Mail, February 2, 2013

On the morning of Jan. 5, workers with a fleet of heavy equipment mounted a stealth assault on a bald eagle’s nest near the shore of Lake Erie. Their mission was to remove the nest – one of only a few dozen bald eagle nests in Southern Ontario – to make way for an access road to the site of a new industrial wind turbine. As a pair of eagles looked on from a nearby tree, the workers sawed off the limb with the giant nest and took it away to parts unknown.

Ontario’s environmental regulations would usually make this illegal. But the wind company, NextEra Energy, one of the biggest operators in the province, had obtained special dispensation.

Wind power is supposed to be environmentally friendly. But a lot of environmentalists don’t think so. “People couldn’t believe it happened,” says Scott Petrie, a waterfowl ecologist and executive director of Long Point Waterfowl, a conservation group. “Cutting down bald eagle nests flies in the face of anything you would call green energy.”

Wind turbines have invaded many of Ontario’s most scenic and ecologically rich areas. They’re invading coastal wetlands and spreading along major migratory flyways – up the Bruce Peninsula, west to Lake Huron, south to Lake Erie, and east to Prince Edward County, where environmental groups are fighting a major wind development in Ostrander Point, an important bird area. “We have no idea whatsoever of the cumulative impact of these things,” says Dr. Petrie. Turbines chew up birds and other flying things, and they disrupt wildlife habitats.

But, in Ontario, nothing is allowed to trump Big Wind. Ontario’s Green Energy Act, the brainchild of outgoing Premier Dalton McGuinty, gave the green light to rampant wind development. By 2016, the goal is to more than double the amount of wind power being generated now.

Wind companies are not owned and operated by idealistic entrepreneurs. They are run by some of Canada’s, and the world’s, biggest corporations, including pipeline and pulp and paper companies. Wind contracts are flipped like other financial instruments. NextEra, the outfit that cut down the eagle’s nest, is the largest generator of wind and solar power in North America. Because of a lucrative U.S. tax break for wind power, the company has paid no U.S. corporate income tax for several years, despite billions in profits. Big Wind is among the biggest lobbyists in Washington.

Dalton McGuinty’s Green Energy Act was a spectacular policy blunder, based on a string of faulty premises: that coal emissions were killing us (they weren’t), that we’d soon be running out of fossil fuel (we aren’t, and Ontario doesn’t use much anyway), and that switching to green energy would help save the planet (not in our lifetime). As the price of fossil fuels went up and up, the reasoning went, renewables would become more and more competitive. Just one problem: The price of fossil fuels has plummeted.

In order to promote green energy, governments around the world have handed out billions in the form of subsidies and fixed long-term contracts. A very generous Ontario became an international magnet for wind and solar companies. The money was guaranteed, and the approval process was easy.

Today, the wind power generated in Ontario is both expensive and useless. The province actually pays hundreds of millions of dollars to other jurisdictions to take surplus power off its hands. Energy-intensive companies are leaving because their hydro bills are too high. And taxpayers are stuck with 20-year contracts that will add billions to their hydro bills (and/or the provincial deficit). For the record, Ontario’s incoming premier, Kathleen Wynne, is a big fan of these arrangements. But even a saner government wouldn’t be able to undo them.

Meantime, the wind juggernaut rolls on. “It’s ripping communities apart,” says Heather Sprott, whose family owns a 300-acre farm near the Niagara Escarpment. Farmers in the area have been offered as much as $20,000 a year for each turbine they allow on their land, meaning they could reap $60,000 or $80,000 a year by harvesting the wind. “That’s a lot of money for a farmer,” she says. But she’s not tempted. She loves the views, and worries about potential health effects.

In Britain, the tide is turning against wind power. The U.K. has 3,000 onshore turbines, with another 6,000 in the works. Big Wind’s opponents include prominent environmentalists such as James Lovelock, best known for the Gaia theory, which theorizes that the biosphere is a self-regulating entity. Mr. Lovelock is trying to stop a 20-storey wind turbine planned for his neighbourhood. In his protest letter, he writes: “We never intended a fundamentalist Green movement that rejected all energy sources other than renewable, nor did we expect the Greens to cast aside our priceless ecological heritage because of their failure to understand that the needs of the Earth are not separable from human needs. We need to take care that the spinning windmills do not become like the statues on Easter Island, monuments of a failed civilization.”

Every premier wants to leave a legacy, and Mr. McGuinty has left his – giant wind turbines stretching as far as the eye can see. And a pair of bald eagles searching for their lost nest.

Comment: (unidentified reader)

My daughter took this video of the "take-down."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtF6TUYfj8c

...and a week later she asked NextEra, "Why?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtF6TUYfj8c

 

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Eastern Lake Ontario Environmental Research Group