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Photo by mihai.g from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.
Judging from the dialogue, it's tempting to reduce the acrimony over Toronto Hydro's wind turbine proposal to myopic, not-in-my-backyard isolationism. Knee-jerk assumptions imagine residents of nearby neighbourhoods so incensed, so fundamentally outraged by progress in their backward little hearts that you'll eventually see an enormous gate around the whole area, peppered with handwritten signs that read "no hippies allowed."
It's a fun way to oversimplify, no doubt. On both sides of this particular issue, however, are concerns over conservation, be they natural, economic, or both. To the proposal's supporters, an offshore wind farm represents an opportunity for Toronto to move forward as a green, industrially progressive centre, leading the way as a global city for others to follow suit. To its detractors, it means plummeting property values, skyrocketing electricity costs, and a substantial—if localized—ecological impact. It's like a condensing of every environmental policy debate over the last twenty years.
All of which is pretty impressive for a project that has barely reached the testing phase, and only after a seemingly impassable two-year hurdle.
The Scarborough Bluffs. Photo by End User from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.
In January, it was reported that the Ministry of Natural Resources was rethinking a two-year offshore wind power moratorium, first imposed in October 2006 after a much-maligned proposal to install turbines in Lake Erie. With the legal path cleared and the choice of locale clearly in need of revision, the plan moved forward to anchor a testing device in Lake Ontario, two kilometres off the Scarborough Bluffs. David O'Brien, Toronto Hydro's top executive, announced an ambitious endgame of developing an offshore, sixty-turbine wind farm on the city's tab, capable of generating 100 megawatts of electricity.
As reported in the Star on June 25, the offshore site was chosen for its natural reef rising from the lake bed: at ten metres' depth, the relatively shallow water invites secure, stable turbine installation with greater ease than elsewhere in the area. O'Brien assured Torontonians that, because of deeper waters along the shoreline, there wouldn't be an offshore wall of wind generators along the entire Scarborough–Etobicoke corridor.
Still, for residents of the Guildwood area, such assurances come not as a gilded promise of green innovation, but like an announcement that Pearson has chosen your driveway for overflow parking. "The first wind turbines will be placed just off shore from the Guild Inn," reports SOS Windfarm Toronto, a website tasked with exposing the perceived risks of offshore wind farm development. "The plan is to have a row of these turbines stretching from the Don Valley all the way to Ajax." With the turbines designed to exceed the CNE windmill in height—over 350 feet itself—residents are concerned not only by their visual impact, exceeding bluff-level by 150 feet and topped with revolving beacons, but by potentially "disastrous" environmental consequences.
"The low frequency noise emitted by blades will drive the wildlife away from the bluffs [and] into our living area," the site continues. Citing threats like pesky birds descending on annoyed local property owners—or into the paths of oncoming Guildwood cars—SOS Windfarm Toronto raises statistics published by The American Bird Conservancy that suggest 900,000 to 1.8 million birds will become fan-fodder to the wind industry every year, assuming it continues expanding at its present rate. Further environmental hazards allegedly include changes in current hastening the bluffs' rate of erosion; decrepit, hulking wrecks too expensive to deconstruct in twenty years' time; and the risk of winter storms taking out the expensive, apparently fragile power-generating equipment.
With an index of other caveats, ranging from the economic ("The value of a farmhouse may be affected by as much as 30% if it is in close proximity to a wind turbine") to the humane ("The French Academy of Medicine warns that [low-frequency, turbine-generated] sounds constitute a permanent risk for people exposed to them"), opponents maintain that the trouble with wind generation, to abridge the website's overall message, is that it is unpredictable, costly, damaging, insufficient for the city's energy needs, and that it exacerbates the industrialization of Toronto's waterfront. Which is where we come back to that whole myopic thing, knee-jerk or not.
A wind farm outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Photo by badlogik.
Acknowledging that, at this point, they are only talking about putting a four-metre-high anemometer in the water to study the proposal's feasibility, those more eager about the idea point to its long-term benefits. Some critics, according to Jose Etcheverry of York University's Faculty of Environmental Studies, are being "misled," as reported by the Star last month. "Renewable energy industries could generate thousands and thousands of jobs," he predicts. Franz Hartmann, another local supporter, remarked that it is "extremely important" to at least assess the plan's technical viability. At a time of catastrophic economic collapse, the consensus—even among moderates—is that such a historic shift in energy production may be the do-or-die fulcrum upon which an entire global economy pivots.
Among the proposal's more active supporters are local trade unions, including United Steelworkers local 8300. "The resistance from property owners, in our view, is short-sighted nimbyism," representative Gail Drever told Torontoist. "The Union has a huge commitment to help the transformation to a green economy. Thousands of manufacturing jobs have been lost, probably never to return." For this province, she says, such a step toward producing clean energy is an opportunity to return from have-not status and assume leadership in a dramatically changing economy—and not at the expense of a ready workforce. "There are skilled workers who can be trained to manufacture wind turbines and begin to rebuild our manufacturing base," Drever continues. "This has already been done in Pittsburgh, where approximately 1,400 Steelworkers are now employed building wind turbines."
After last month's attempt at an open house collapsed under the weight of its own turnout, Toronto Hydro Energy Services hosted both sides of the debate Monday night at Sir Wilfred Laurier Collegiate Institute in Scarborough, not far from the contested proposal site.
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Great piece. The bluffs are a lovely area, and we have to ask ourselves whether all our accessible natural areas will have some form of wind energy or tidal energy or solar energy capture before too long. How pristine can week keep such areas?
This story has been zoomed:
http://environment.zoomit.ca/wind-farm-pitch-brings-bluff-bluster/
Great piece. The bluffs are a lovely area, and we have to ask ourselves whether all our accessible natural areas will have some form of wind energy or tidal energy or solar energy capture before too long. How pristine can week keep such areas?
This story has been zoomed:
Wind Farm Pitch Brings Bluff Bluster.
Answer: Perfectly pristine. We just have to arrange for the entire planet to immediately reduce its energy demand by several magnitudes of order. Seeing as that will not happen, some folks are going to have to live with windfarms close to them. I have absolutely no sympathy whatsoever. Having lived next to the TREC turbine, I never ever heard of any problems with birds flying into it; the sound was totally drowned out by streetcars, airplanes, and people talking on King Street; and I'd rather have my view spoiled by a windfarm than obscured by smog.
If the concerned residents could perhaps propose a dynamic plan to reduce their energy footprint so as to offset the power that would be generated by the windfarm, maybe the rest of us in Toronto would be ok with not building it. Otherwise, suck it up and deal.
The bird death argument is somewhat incorrect. It's used in the context of a bird massacre, which doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Compare that 900k-1.8 million worldwide to the 100 million to 1 billion birds that collide with windows in the US alone.
In addition, the older style turbines caused much higher rates of bird death, the newer blades are designed differently to prevent this.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/04/common_misconce.php
http://www.torontoenvironment.org/windmills/myths
I drove through northeast New York State this summer and the sight of all those turbines was beautiful. How is it possible the US is ahead of us on the environment?
Given the opposition's claim of wind farms a) not producing enough electricity and b) being detrimental to the local environment, what is their counter-proposal? Nuclear?
I really don't get the aesthetic argument against wind turbines. I think they're beautiful - especially considering that they represent clean, renewable energy.
Mississaugans also considered their waterfront a "lovely area;" but we would have gladly traded the onshore, 146 m chimneys of the Lakeview Generating Station for shorter turbines 2 km offshore. Anyone should be glad to be asked to live next to a wind farm instead of a new coal plant, a landfill, a sewage treatment plant, an incinerator, an oil refinery, etc. We should also be grateful to the people who do suffer the ill effects of our consumption.
Andrew has a point...in the absence of massive societal change, "Not here!" implies "Somewhere else!" If Guildwood residents were to point to another community to host the wind farm instead, they would find even more busloads of people coming in to make sure this project happens.
I'm also glad to hear that United Steelworkers have clued in where the CAW have not.
I appreciate the author's approach to bring some balance and context for reporting this story. Nevertheless, i gotta say, hearing a report about this on CBC this morning and now reading this, I actually have negative sympathy for residents opposing the turbines.
Do these people have children and grandchildren? What is their alternative to providing them with energy to cook their food and heat their schools? You know what will bring down property values?
Armageddon.
This is not crazy talk, Britain's top scientist already pegs the global effects of climate change to be larger than WWI and WWII combined. We are in a situation where complaints about having your lake-view marred by unsightly windmills is categorically selfish, shortsighted and embarrassing.
Remember that increasing public transit (new streetcars and electric go trains) will increase power demands. I read today that 7% of Germany's electric need is transport related.
On top of that, we have plug-in hybrids on the horizon. If their 220V charging stations aren't blocked at peak times we could have a serious problem in mid-summer.
For those who wonder why the towers aren't built where there is more wind like Bruce, the transmission lines are at capacity and the province is way behind schedule in delivering additional capacity to where the demand is - the GTA. In any case, we need to take local responsibility for our power needs and stop fobbing it off on remote municipalities like Nanticoke.
If the wind turbines are 460ft. tall, and 2km offshore (conservative estimates), this is a scale photoshop of what the view would look like from End User's perspective.:
Compare this to the rest of Scarborough, to the Portlands Energy Centre, or Nanticoke. Not so bad, honestly.
Also, some relevant youtube.
Uh, I don't think the "armageddon" argument is gonna be very helpful in convincing anyone. I also hope people don't seriously believe wind is some kind of alternative to nuclear when it comes to generating power and cleaning up the air.
But the opponents to this wind farm seem to have an incredible sense of entitlement, as if buying a lakefront property somehow gives them control over what happens way off shore.
Anyway, I think calmly and pragmatically arguing the case, without resorting to hyperbole is what will win this issue.
To defend the residents of the Bluffs, Scarborough has had enough bs placed in it's backyard. The amount of Ontario housing, manufacturing plants, the lack of public transportation that Scarborough has to deal with, the turbines should be placed elsewhere.
The lake shore is pretty much the last attraction Scarborough has and to place wind turbines in the middle would just be one more thing to stick Scarborough in the "ghetto" category it already holds.
I am an avid environmentalist and I am pleased that the city is looking at wind turbines, but why not place them elsewhere in Scarborough, some where already unsightly, like the numerous hydrofields that serve as wind tunnels? Or along the 401 which is also an excellent wind tunnel.
It just seems like the east end of Toronto is always getting the short end of the stick and here it is again.
Like I said before, the bluffs are probably the biggest thing Scarborough has going for it so please don't take that away too.
#14, I love how you lumped "Ontario Housing" in there with manufacturing plants and a lack of public transpo as negative things Scarberia has had to "put up with".
Hands up, everybody who secretly wants this not because of the alternative form of energy, but because we want to stick it to Scarborough.
C'mon.
I know you're out there.
Also, how many ghettoes get wind turbines? Or is it just that the only "nice" part of Scarborough can't get uglified with wind turbines like the rest of it?
Finally, wtf?!! Scarborough is part of Toronto. Part of Ontario. Canada. The planet. Fucking quit yer whining about your precious little lakefront view and help save the planet. What, you think I'm kidding? Read the comments recommending nuclear power plants. How'd you like to be arguing about where to bury nuclear waste instead of a fucking wind farm?
All I can say is: Get used to looking at them. They WILL go up where they are needed and are best suited to be.
Besides, they are beautiful.
People live next to the 401, nobody lives 2km off shore. Why is this even being discussed? It's shameful. We should have wind turbines from Hamilton to Carrying Place by this point.
Oh yes, my hand is way up there if you can't see it.
wtf indeed.
Just another "hand up" for the beautiful solution that the wind-farm is. Shame on the opponents in Scarborough. The government is welcome to put a wind turbine in "my back yard" if they like.
I like the majestic look of these turbines, I'd welcome seeing a long line of them from the boardwalk in the Beaches.
They aren't noisy, you can walk or cycle right underneath the one in Pickering and enjoy the view.
We need to localize our energy and have many alternatives. We'll never get away from depending on nuclear but it would be nice if we didn't have to build another one of those close to Toronto.
The crybabies in Guildwood needs to be reassured that these won't hurt their property values, they'll always have a quiet tucked away corner without the urban realities of the rest of Scarborough.
As someone that has been dealing with these issues for 5 years, the comments on this page reinforce my notion that the most vocal supporters of wind power are the least informed about its limited benefits and real impacts. Until your home is threatened to be in the middle of an industrial power plant 24/7, it is unlikely that you would take the time to dig a little deeper into this issue and get past the warm and fuzzy perceptions. (To address only one point, if turbines are not noisy, why would there be an Industrial Wind Turbine Noise Conference in Europe? - http://www.windturbinenoise2009.org/)
Intermittent wind power will never be able to replace the baseload power from Hydro, nuclear or coal plants (the plants that actually keep our lights on). Despite tens of thousands of turbines, Germany only gets between 4 and 7% of their power from wind (and continues to build coal plants). Denmark gets close to 20%, but their electricity demand is only 1/4 of Ontario’s and they have double the amount of installed generating capacity than they need. Much of their wind power is exported at a loss and they have increased their use of coal in recent years.
Even if the supporters get their offshore plant in Toronto, the C02 emissions that it could possibly offset is almost immeasurable. It would only take a single extra daily trans-Atlantic airline flight to completely wipe out any C02 reduction benefits this plant could provide. It is a feather in a hurricane. A high-impact non-solution to our energy and environmental goals. Unfortunately, I fear that by the time the truth overcomes the green “feel good” perceptions, the province will be littered with thousands of these things.
Anyone questioning the blind faith government and big business has in this technology should be commended, not condemned.
similar to parkdales initiative of 'lending' your alley way garage face to the police for graffiti/art sapace, i for one would love to donate my backyard for a turbine
I know why people are against the wind farms-the REAL reason that nobody on Torontoist will admit to! But, it wouldn't be believed by anybody here just why others feel they don't work, and why people don't want them near their places. And if I say it, I'll be considered a pawn of the nuclear industry, even though I don't work for said industry, and am just a person who's a little bit more well informed about the subject than people who have let fear-mongering and fables make them into superstitious nabobs scared of anything modern. I was trying to find a Rick Mercer spoof about the wind farms to post a link to for here, but it's nowhere on YouTube. So, that will be all.
7, 10 or 20% coming from wind is better than 7, 10 or 20% coming from a new ecology-wrecking hydro dam or coal plant or nuclear boondoggle.
Fucking fear-mongering, rek, that's what you are. Yer a damn superstitious nabob. I'll bet you need anti-anxiety pills just to even use a mouse, never mind what Torontoist must do to your insides.
rek, you are citing gross figures. You need to take into account the energy necessary to run the things as well. There is some evidence that the effect is neutral, i.e., it takes as much energy from the grid as it otherwise replaces, or less than neutral. Its not a subject I've paid a lot of attention to so I can't comment on the veracity of these studies, but certainly even the proponents would agree that its a necessary factor to consider. Even if it is shown that the net effect is positive, on a policy analysis it should be compared with the alternatives. Can we achieve the same net reduction through other clean power sources more cheaply? I don't think that question has been answered.
#27: The effect is neutral? That's an idiotic suggestion. Take your distraction fallacies elsewhere.
It is like the suggestion that using your car headlights in the daytime wastes fuel — seemingly meaningful until you consider the ~100 watt lights use less than 0.1% of the engine's 111,000 watt (=150 hp) output.
The engineers at Ontario Hydro are trained and paid to "pay a lot of attention to the subject." No one would consider wind turbines if they placed any load on the grid. They are in the business of generation, not consumption.
In fact, no one would consider wind turbines if they did not generate lots of power, enough to be cost-competitive with coal or nuclear. This is why you don't see proposals for fields of solar panels: in raw dollars per kilowatt-hour, they aren't affordable.
While politicians can gloss over inconvenient facts, the engineers would be liable if they did not do thorough calculations that included the public health effects of burning coal, the probability and likely clean-up costs of nuclear accidents, the variability of wind over the lake (the reason this anemometer is being set up), the ecological (i.e. economic) damage due to hydro flooding, and all other significant factors. They also don't have the luxury of alluding to such effects; they must produce actual values, to the best of their considerable knowledge.
The fact that wind farms are being proposed after this kind of analysis means a power mix including wind is the cheapest option.
following danish and german experience with wind is hopefully a precursor to Toronto city and hydro collaborating to adopt their waste to energy success where significant power is made available (the increased use of coal in both jurisdictions is troublesome)
I’m going to assume from the comments above that none of those posting actually LIVE in Scarborough. Area residents have a right to voice their concerns towards a project as shortsighted as that proposed w/o being subject to the type of ignorant, tree-hugging bullshit slung at raches and others. Reserve your baseless arguments and do some fucking research. Wind is not your savoir.
Thanks to spitfireal for the only post worth reading.
Marfie:
"a project as shortsighted as that proposed"
Is the project really shortsighted if all they want to do is conduct tests to see if it's feasible?
Nobody LIVES at the proposed site, it's 2km away from the nearest backyard.
I don't know why they're considered ugly. I think they look badass. I'd love to have one visible from my backyard.
I was actually at the Bluffs today and you can see a wind turbine at the lake just across the Scarborough/Pickering border (which was way more than 2 kms away from where I was) and I tried to picture a bunch off the shore and it was a bleak picture. Lake Ontario is Toronto's main geographical attractions and to place wind turbines across the lake shore is a mistake.
Like I said, for those people who don't read whole comments before replying, I SUPPORT the placement and usage of wind turbines in Toronto, and in Scarborough, but put them somewhere else, just as effective as the lake and I am sure there is such a place.
Bleak?
You're "sure there is such a place", are you? Where, pray tell?
Tangentially, apparently high voltage transmission lines cost $3million/km. In any proposal about where to site them - including the current bluff-blocking one - may some plucky engineer remember to connect it to the nearest appropriate high voltage line and not cost taxpayers more money by forcing them to be built needlessly.