Normally, I don't write about problems I encounter in getting information from government because I feel it's too "inside baseball" for readers. I'm making an exception because I think this incident illustrates the problems besieged opponents of industrial wind turbines living in communities across Ontario are encountering in getting straight answers from their own government. This, as Premier Dalton McGuinty appears hell-bent on erecting these giant steel structures, up to 40-storeys high, as fast as he can. The last time McGuinty was this juiced we got ... eHealth.

Barbara Ashbee distributed this letter to all media in Ontario Canada. Ms. Ashbee and her family abandoned their home due to wind turbine noise and other impacts which have harmed their health and quality of life.

There are many people across Ontario who are being harmed by the simple fact they live too close to wind turbines. ...The tragedy is, some families are being driven from the homes they've lived in for decades and have incurred losses - financial, emotional, health and living conditions. Many of these people welcomed green energy into their communities in the form of wind turbines in the beginning.

Have you ever gone to the doctor's office or emergency room with concerns for your health, only to be dismissed as imaginative or overly sensitive? How does that feel for you? ...This is what is happening to so many families in our rural community as they try to explain that the wind turbines are destroying their health and lives.

Let's hope the provincial government will move quickly to have a comprehensive epidemiological study on the impacts of industrial wind turbines conducted prior to having any other industrial wind turbines installed anywhere in Ontario.

An article in the Nikkei recently may well spell trouble for the fledgling alternative energy industry-and particularly for the wind power generation sector, where most energy investment has taken place in Japan. Apparently residents in the town of Toyohashi, Aichi Prefecture, have petitioned a wind turbine farm operator (Nikkei doesn't mention who) to close down their plant in the evening hours-on the basis that low frequency noise emanating from the wind farm is causing residents in the area serious health problems.

We measured industry noise at night under low and medium wind conditions. We found, in front of the boundary fence of an industrial plant we measured, a sound pressure level of 52 dBA. Then, 1500 m away, we measured the same noise at the same value (52 dBA), implying that the noise is hardly attenuated by distance. This is an extraordinary result and it took calculations for us to appreciate that the combination of a temperature inversion (where the ground is colder than the air) and the wind had caused the plant noise to travel significantly further than usual. We further discovered that our findings were actually quite well known - the phenomena is not new.

A doctor says she's conducted research that suggests that people living close to wind turbines are susceptible to what she calls Wind Turbine Syndrome (WTS), an illness with symptoms including sleep disorders, heart disease, panic attacks and headaches ...if the research is reproduced and backed up by further studies, it could actually have a big effect on the siting and zoning of wind farms - a 2-kilometer buffer between wind farms and buildings is substantial. It's not like we needed more reasons to slow down the installation of clean power, but if there's merit to the findings, they should be taken seriously.

All new technologies carry risk. That is true of benign new technologies as well as the old industrial sort. This paper's report on the potential health hazards of wind turbines, generators of eco-friendly wind power, will be unwelcome for many environmentalists and indeed for the Government, which for entirely creditable reasons is committed to a great increase in their number. But a new book by a New York pediatrician, Dr Nina Pierpont, on which our report is based and which draws on international studies, ought not to be ignored.

Let's be perfectly clear. The only way to "mitigate" problems associated with industrial wind turbines is to make sure the projects do not go up within residential areas in the first place. As reported in a recent Daily News letter ("Think big on wind energy" by David Bassett, May 20, 2009) , the U.S. Department of Energy admitted when these immense machines were being developed that they were intended for placement in the remote, unpopulated areas of the Midwest, and offshore -- not amongst rural/residential areas like that of WNY.

Meridian Energy, which claims to support the communities where it generates electricity, is facing attack from the Makara community on the subject of noise from its West Wind windfarm. It's a subject which refuses to go away. Makara residents have been stating their concerns about the windfarm for years, because it's close to their houses. And now that 40 of the 62 turbines have been completed and brought into use, their fears are becoming their reality.

Local MPP John Gerretsen stated in an interview with the CBC that the new setbacks are needed "to best protect the health and safety of Ontarians," and that where turbines are shown to cause negative health effects, "the towers will be moved." Ministry of Environment officials who attended the public forum on the Green Energy Act held on June 25 in Toronto proposed that 5% of Wolfe Island residents in close proximity to the turbines could experience such negative health effects as dizziness, tinnitus, headaches and sleep disorders due to noise and vibration. There are many islanders who are now quietly coming to terms with the reality ...

We are writing to express concerns about the health effects from the placement of industrial wind turbines adjacent the residential areas on the shoreline of Pigeon Bay in Kingsville, Union and Leamington and requesting the Ontario Ministry of Health conduct epidemiological studies prior to construction.

In Mr. Waltz's opinion, the task of writing a meaningful noise ordinance that would, in fact, adequately protect Prattsburgh residents is difficult. Mr. Waltz made a number of extremely provocative comments. One, ...wind turbines produce no constant tonality, no universal signature, making the creation of a noise standard challenging. Two, the most critical issue isn't audible noise; ...Three, because the DEC Noise Guidelines measure DBA without any consideration of low frequency noise, those guidelines are not an appropriate standard for a Prattsburgh Noise Ordinance.

It's not yet midnight. The sky is clear, except for a few small clouds moving across the sky. I am standing on my back deck and I am in awe of the ominous, deep rumblings of the closest windmill. It is a kilometre away. This is the sound they told us did not exist. Just like the ones I saw in Loweville, the turbines sound like a jet--too high to be seen, but close enough to hear. The difference is, the jet passes over, and the silence of the night resumes. In the case of the turbines, the noise continues into the night, and then into the day.

In its headlong rush to appear to have "green" policies, the McGuinty government has jumped on the green power bandwagon and has rejected science and engineering as well as economic, social and environmental considerations when it comes to implementing the so-called "green energy" plan.

People from across Ontario who welcomed wind turbines into their community are now coming forward with questions and concerns about disturbed living conditions and health concerns and don't know where to turn. Some have been driven from their homes. Some can't afford to leave and just try to cope. Many of these people are re-victimized by the denial of any adverse health effects from wind companies.

We, the people who love Orangeville do not choose to have our homes and recreational areas turned into an industrial zone for any amount of money! We do not choose to suffer from effects of high unbearable amounts of noise and turn our quiet countryside into an unsuitable place to raise our families as a result of now, introducing an industrial park that will intrude into our midst. ...It would seem that no stone should be left unturned in comprehensively examining the likely adverse impacts of large-scale wind facilities. Industrial-scale projects must be safely sited.

Our work has shown that people in Mars Hill living within 3,500 feet of turbines there are truly suffering, in a real medical sense. Clearly, any regulation that results in placement of turbines, anywhere in Maine, at less than a 3,500-foot setback is courting a bad human outcome, regardless of sound modeling used by the industry to show there will be no ill effects in that range. As clearly demonstrated by post-construction measurements at Mars Hill, the model used by the wind industry for that project was seriously flawed.