Ontario leaps before it looks with proposed wind-turbine rules

About now, Neal Michelutti and two colleagues at Queen's University are receiving responses to a survey about wind turbines on Wolfe Island, which sits in Lake Ontario near Kingston.

They want to find out whether, as many suspect, the turbines rob people of sleep and hearing, or cause stress, skin rashes, headaches, high blood pressure or a host of other ailments.

The study is rudimentary. Last summer, the researchers sent questionnaires to all 600 homes on the island, where an 86-turbine wind farm was about to be installed. About 150 people responded.

Last month, with all the turbines in place and some operating, a second survey went into the mail. It's due back now. A final questionnaire will go out in early fall, when all the machines will have been generating electricity for a few weeks.

Results will be available in about a year.

Astonishingly, this is apparently the first study undertaken anywhere that attempts to measure health differences before and after wind turbines go into an area.

Michelutti and his colleagues live on the island. They're not anti-turbine. "I'm in favour of anything that reduces greenhouse gas emissions," Michelutti says. He figures the issue likely centres on how far turbines should be kept from homes. In Europe and elsewhere, required setbacks range from 250 to 1,500 metres.

The rule for Wolfe Island is 400 metres. "I'm not sure how that was agreed upon," Michelutti says.

Certainly it wasn't based on medical evidence, because there isn't any, one way or another.

This week, the provincial government entered the fray, proposing a minimum setback of 550 metres for any turbines, and substantial distances from property lines.

Industry officials argue such regulations could kill many new land-based projects in Southern Ontario. Developers are assessing the impacts, says Sean Whittaker of the Canadian Wind Energy Association. Given such high stakes, and the importance of wind power in Queen's Park's plan to promote renewable energy, you'd think setback requirements would await scientific evidence.

Instead, Queen's Park has responded blindly to pressure from a well-organized group that managed to spook some Liberal backbenchers.

As Michelutti's study suggests, the collection of evidence is barely in its infancy. With a budget big enough to pay for stamps and photocopying, his survey will eventually reveal how perhaps one-fifth of Wolfe Island's residents view their own health status. There's been no funding, anywhere, for epidemiological research to actually measure what's happening in the bodies of turbine neighbours, before and after projects go in. There are no indications the province, or anyone else, has interest in such work.

Turbines might have health impacts. We don't know for certain. And if there are impacts, we've little idea what causes them.

The new regulation is based on audible noise. The aim, it says, is to keep neighbours from hearing more than 40 decibels, "approximately the noise level experienced in a quiet office or library. " That requirement would, ludicrously, stop the addition of two turbines to the lone one now operating at Exhibition Place. Traffic noise from nearby Lake Shore Blvd. and the slightly more distant Gardiner Expressway is much louder than the whoosh of turbine blades, and far exceeds the calm of a reading room.

Turbine noise can be dramatically reduced through alterations such as sharpening the blade's trailing edge or reshaping gears, so one-size-fits-all setbacks make little sense.

"If you're constraining for sound, base it on sound," is Whittaker's reasonable argument.

Meanwhile, the province's announcement ignores the slim possibility any health impacts might be caused by emanations - low-frequency signals, perhaps - not detected by human senses.

On a major policy, Queen's Park has leapt before it looked.