Industrial wind turbines are being pushed by government and wind developers, doing their own studies, to promote their own interests. All of us who are in the line of fire from these gigantic industrial installations seem to be of little concern. Our rural countryside is threatened with industrial wind power installations with minimum setbacks from homes of only 400 meters.

Do you live inside an industrial wind farm? I do. I live within the Forward-Invenergy project. It is a tremendous invasion of our life style and a horrible happening to our area. My wife, our 13-year-old son and I have experienced headaches, nausea, light headedness, lack of sleep because we hear them in all rooms of our house ...I trusted the elected officials of the town and county and the state's public service commission. That was a terrible mistake. If you allow large industrial limits closer than the set backs I mentioned above you will regret it. It will divide your community.

It was noted that there are always costs that must be mitigated when producing power for our consumerist lifestyles. One glaring omission from the meagre list of negatives to wind power is the pollution of noise and its sequela. These generators are very noisy. Research into sound pollution is not complete and its effects on both human and wildlife must be considered. ...We must do a full environmental assessment on how the sound vibrations will affect life within its footprint, just as we would any other technology.

First of all, I want to say that Cape Vincent's Town Supervisor Tom Rienbeck is doing the right thing. I never thought I would ever say that, but I saw firsthand what he is trying to do for the town. He has appointed a committee of local residents to hammer out a wind-turbine zoning law. They are working from a draft document written by the town's law firm.

Next week Grand Mananers will be invited to a public meeting to hear about a wind farm planned for the "back of the island-" the high western cliffs facing the Grand Manan Channel and the State of Maine. The proponent, First Wind of Newton, Massachusetts, acquired the rights to the site on property owned by the off-island Crabbe forestry company, from a fledgling New Brunswick company that has since disappeared from the scene. The First Wind plan is for 13 wind turbines (over 200 feet or 60 metres high), with the potential for another 50 if all goes well.

These three letters all respond to recent news reports on the wind energy facility proposed for Amherst Island and the potential of that project exceeding the 88-turbine Wolfe Island facility now under construction.

Ontario, which has developed and implemented some progressive policies for getting more renewable energy on the grid, hasn't found a way to tie these programs into a larger, economic-boosting industrial strategy. None of its request for proposals for new wind power has required any level of local content, nor does the province's standard offer program, which pays a premium for the electricity that comes from small-scale solar, wind, hydro and biogas projects.

Why are wind turbines being rammed down the throats of people who don't want them? They are fine for people who want them, but if their neighbors don't want that noise, why isn't there help for them? I know people who are being forced to move because their neighbor wants the turbines, and the company is putting them within 500 to 750 feet from the home of the people who don't want them.

Conventional wisdom, of which public opinion is a component, supports industrial wind power well beyond its negligible merits for electricity generation and CO2 emissions reduction. Although not well-informed, this popular view is understandable because of concerns about climate change, media hype, political policies that claim to address this issue, pronouncements by environmentalists stepping outside their area of expertise, and effective promotion by wind power organizations. Europe is looked to, undeservedly, as a model. This drives a political motivation for governments to take action in support of wind power, and for opposition parties to criticize any apparent lack of action. It has made having "green" credentials a political necessity.

As much as there's been lots of talk about wind addressing our energy needs in the future, that future would appear to be a long way off yet. Wind accounts for less than 1 per cent of the energy produced in Canada (Ontario is the wind-farm leader). The Canadian Wind Energy Association believes it can be 5 per cent by 2010. ...There's no shortage of people, including green enthusiasts, who believe the forecasts are wildly optimistic. While wind certainly offers us hope and will be a weapon in our collective fight for energy independence, it's also a technology that poses huge challenges.

Wind energy has its problems. It only comes when the wind blows. This reality - this Achilles' heel - makes wind a nuisance in the eyes of power-system operators, who have the challenge of trying to balance electricity supply and demand on the grid. This means we need to adapt the grid so it becomes easier to predict and manage such an intermittent, yet crucial resource. Too many jurisdictions - including Ontario - try to shoehorn wind and other renewable technologies into a 100-year-old electricity system designed for big central power plants. For this reason, wind bears a burden it inherited, and takes blame for inflexibility it didn't create

Creating a welfare-dependent industry in the province may benefit the backers of these projects, but the potential cost to taxpayers is huge, and the outlook for an unsubsidized industry is grim. ...The wind power industry in Canada gets a federal government subsidy of $10 per megawatt hour. But B.C. consumers can expect to dig deeper. The cost of electricity from wind power is about $71 per megawatt hour. That compares to about $48 for natural gas and $25 for electricity produced from B.C.'s heritage hydro assets.

Wind turbines sound great when you first hear about them. Who is against renewable energy? Farmers who struggle to make a living are eying up the $9,000 they are to receive per turbine per year. Ten turbines is a retirement income of $90,000! Who would blame the farmers! And the Bonnechere and Madawaska township councils can see much-needed tax dollars flowing in. But there are problems with the whole scheme. ...Let's make sure that if we choose to install hundreds of 400- foot high turbines in our heritage countryside we do so from informed choice.

Nancy Madsen's article "Cape Vincent to air turbine zoning plan" (Aug. 15) informs readers the town has appointed a committee to review a new draft wind law. The article listed conflicts of interest for each town officer related to contracts with the wind developer. For a board that has a history of trying to ram through these wind projects any way they can, why are they suddenly trying to do things by the law? Perhaps the recent investigation of wind-company corruption slapped them into the realization that their questionable actions could actually jeopardize passing a wind law. So they talked to their wind-law lawyers who advised them to do everything right.

The Maple Ridge wind-power project in Mr. Yancey's town "produces enough electricity to power about 100,000 homes." Most articles on wind power include such boilerplate information, but rarely put the number in context: Despite tens of billions in taxpayer subsidies for research, development and marketing, wind power still is two to three times more expensive than carbon-fired electricity. It's why, despite all the hype and the pipe dreams, wind turbines still produce less than 1 percent of the nation's electricity ...

I attended the July 30 showing of BP Alternative Energy's proposed 95 wind turbine settings in the town of Cape Vincent. A presentation by Dereth B. Glance, program director for Citizens Campaign for the Environment, stated that in her experience there was no noise at 750 feet away from operating turbines. She also stated that studies have shown that there is no reduction in property values as a result of proximity to wind turbines. These statements are in sharp contrast with the reality that I have encountered in my efforts to learn the truth about wind turbines.

Accompanying the myth that wind turbine energy will replace fossil fuel energy is denial of the ecological impacts and health effects of wind turbines by governments and promoters. The ugly reality is that wind turbines are a serious addition to the industrialization of quiet rural landscapes, places that people have long valued for quality of life, retirement and recreation. The environmental costs imposed on wildlife and people have been systematically ignored by a political and regulatory system that has corrupted individual and societal freedom and environmental integrity by relegating these values to some distant offshoot of economic growth.

Sunday's massive series of explosions at a Toronto propane plant gives credence to every Not In My Backyard (NIMBY) argument posed to this point in time. ...In Barrie, Northern Ethanol's plan to build a plant on the former Molson Brewery site has faced opposition from residents in every part of the city. Opposition to Bob Jackson's plan to built a wind turbine on his Mapleview Drive West Toyota dealership has, conversely, caused mostly local concerns. In both cases, however, opponents fear the worse. ...And everyone is concerned about how it will affect their bottom lines, property values. The point is, the reason people look at worst-case scenarios is that sometimes they happen.

Currently, the wind law is designed to accommodate the noise levels expected by the developer PPM Energy. These levels are measured at the outside wall of a resident's home, disregarding one's property line, and are unhealthy. Federal guidelines state that an appropriate level of noise in a bedroom during sleep is 24dBA (A-weighted decibels). However, our current local laws allow noise levels to reach 50dBA. State guidelines in New York state that an increase of 6dBA above normal background will cause complaints and should be avoided. According to the guidelines, an increase of 20dBA is intolerable. ...We have shown our local government that placing 62 turbines in a four- by five-mile populated area is harmful to residents. To date the town leaders in Clayton continue to ignore the plea from residents to protect us.

People have been hoodwinked into promoting wind turbine energy as some sort of Nirvana all while human population growth and per capita energy consumption continue to spiral upward. Turbine energy generation is fueling growth in human population and energy consumption and growth in a false "economy". It is NOT doing the opposite. Matching the folly of the energy replacement misunderstanding is denial by governments and promoters of the ecological impacts and health effects of turbines; the ugly reality is that they are a serious addition to the industrialization of quiet rural landscapes that people have long valued for quality of life, retirement, and recreation. ...Wind turbines are an assault on human well being and act to degrade the human "gestalt". Promotion of wind turbine energy is a case of serious misjudgment by those who fraudulently use green wash to promote their commercial aspirations.