A proposal to put 15 wind turbines as close as one kilometre offshore in Lake Erie should require an environmental assessment, Gord Meuser, a spokesman for the group Citizens Against Lake Erie Wind Turbines, said Friday. SouthPoint Wind has completed its environmental screening report but Meuser said the group will be asking that it be bumped up to an environmental assessment with more studies specifically on Lake Erie.

A proposal to put 15 wind turbines as close as one kilometre offshore in Lake Erie should require an environmental assessment, Gord Meuser, a spokesman for the group Citizens Against Lake Erie Wind Turbines, said Friday.

SouthPoint Wind has completed its environmental screening report but Meuser said the group will be asking that it be bumped up to an environmental assessment with more studies specifically on Lake Erie and the impacts the turbines could have here. He said there aren't other freshwater wind turbine projects for comparison.

"We'd be the guinea pig," Meuser said.

The public has until Sept. 28 to comment in writing on the proposed offshore wind farm. Kingsville was informed Friday that the review period is extended to Oct. 5.

SouthPoint Wind has put the more than 400-page environmental screening report on its website at www.southpointwind.com. Hard copies are available at the Kingsville and Leamington libraries and town halls.

If concerns can't be resolved with SouthPoint Wind, the public can ask the Ministry of the Environment in the next month for an environmental review or an environmental assessment.

If more studies don't have to be done, the wind project could move to its construction phase. The report says that could start in the spring of 2010. Construction could last two years.

SouthPoint Wind wants to build a 30- megawatt wind farm made up of 15 turbines in three sites south of Kingsville, Union and Leamington. Each site would have five turbines.

The white turbines would be one to 1.5 kilometres offshore and would be a maximum height of 125 metres above the water to the top of the top blade.

The environmental screening notice of completion says the results of the report "confirm that there are no significant negative environmental effects anticipated from the South Point Wind Project."

The report says the turbines are expected to have "little effect on fish populations." The report also says with lighting or other mitigation strategies, the risk of birds colliding with the turbines is "low."

Jim Liovas, president of SouthPoint Wind, couldn't be reached for comment Friday.

The SouthPoint Wind proposal is one of seven offshore wind proposals in Ontario, said Jolanta Kowalski, a spokeswoman with the Ministry of Natural Resources. The province owns the lakebed.

She said SouthPoint Wind is the furthest along in the approval process.

Meuser said the onus is on the public to comment on the project and because of the time frame, he's recommending people send a registered letter to SouthPoint Wind with copies to elected representatives and government agencies.

Residents opposed the proposal and the provincial government placed a moratorium on offshore wind farms in November 2006. The moratorium was lifted in early 2008.

Leamington and Kingsville have teamed up to hire Jones Consulting Group out of Barrie to review the environmental screening report to see if the municipalities have any concerns.

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