Shear Wind Nearing July 30th Deadline for Response to EA Investigation

ShearWind must respond to claimed inaccuracies in their EA statement by July 30th, one of which is detailed in the most recent press release from Eco Awareness Society (see below).

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Why is Shear Wind Afraid of Dr. Pierpont?

Dr. Nina Pierpont M.D. is a graduate of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. In the abstract to her upcoming book Wind Turbine Syndrome: A Report on a Natural Experiment, one reads:

“This report documents a consistent and often debilitating complex of symptoms … [that] include sleep disturbance, headache, tinnitus, ear pressure, dizziness, vertigo, nausea, visual blurring, tachycardia, irritability, problems with concentration and memory, and panic episodes associated with sensations of internal pulsation or quivering that arise while awake or asleep. The study is a case series of 10 affected families, with 38 members age <1>

In their November 27, 2008 addendum to their Environmental Assessment registration documents, Shear Wind Inc., in describing Dr. Pierpont’s work, misrepresents the maximum distance from a turbine as only 457 meters instead of 1.5 km; this is more than three times less than what the abstract states. In fact, there are seven homes closer than 1.5 km to turbines in Shear Wind’s Glen Dhu project. For this and five other statements of questionable truthfulness in their addendum, Shear Wind is under a Section 115 investigation by Nova Scotia Environment with a response due July 30, 2009.

Now, in their July newsletter to the community, Shear Wind again seeks to discredit Dr. Pierpont’s work, this time by claiming her view “that people living in proximity to wind farms may suffer from ‘Wind Turbine Syndrome’ … is not supported by scientists.” Shear Wind cites the Canadian Wind Energy website where links to seven articles authored by these scientists ostensibly support this claim. It is reasonable to expect that these authors reviewed Dr. Pierpont’s work and criticized her methods or “wind turbine syndrome” itself. However, a thorough reading reveals that five of the articles do not even mention Dr. Pierpont and only one article makes reference to her case series study stating, “One cannot discount the information.” Shear Wind is again misleading our community. While these authors do in fact “not support” Pierpont’s work, neither do they refute it, as Shear Wind would have us believe.

In contrast, Dr. Joel F. Leher, MD, F.A.C.S., one of the four doctors and scientists who, as referees, have peer reviewed the manuscript for Dr. Pierpont’s upcoming book, states, “This [report] addresses an under-reported facet of Noise Induced Illnesses in a fashion that is detailed in its historical documentation, multi-systemic in its approach and descriptions, and painstakingly and informatively referenced…. [It] opens up the area of low frequency vibration to the medical community….I applaud her.”

Based on the growing body of evidence, doctors, such as Dr. Pierpont, are calling for a minimum 2 km wind turbine setback or construction moratorium until an independent study can assess the full impact of wind turbine noise. However, as long as Shear Wind can create doubt through disinformation, our government and the general public will turn a deaf ear to such reasoned caution and Shear Wind can continue to site turbines based on financial convenience and to recklessly gamble with the health and well being of our rural communities.

Kristen Overmyer, M.S.M.E.

Baileys Brook

Some Green Collar Workers' Jobs as Intermitant as the Wind

Workers at P.E.I. wind turbine company say they haven’t been paid in eight weeks

The Canadian Press

CHARLOTTETOWN — A wind turbine maker in Charlottetown is under investigation by P.E.I.’s Labour Relations Board after employees complained they’re owed up to eight weeks of back pay.

Entegrity Wind Systems sent most of their workers home late last month after running into financial trouble.

But most of their 50 employees haven’t been paid since mid-May.

The company has not filed for bankruptcy.

Roy Doucette, director of labour and industrial relations with the Labour Department, said they are still trying to determine the status of the company.

The department issued an order this week that requires Entegrity to pay its employees.
The company has 10 days to appeal. If they don’t pay, the Labour Department will issue a judgment against Entegrity in the courts.

“We don’t know a whole lot yet, except for the fact we have employees obviously who have not been paid,” Doucette said. “We have authority to put third-party demands on monies coming into the company.”

Entegrity has offices in Charlottetown and Boulder, Colo., and a production plant in Albany, P.E.I.

http://www.amherstdaily.com/index.cfm?sid=268027&sc=508

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Wind company ordered to pay back wages

CBC News

The P.E.I. Labour Department ordered a wind energy company this week to pay its employees the back wages owed to them.

Some employees who work for Entegrity Wind Systems have told CBC News their employer hasn’t paid them in weeks.

In mid-June, Entegrity told all of its 35 employees to stay home after it began to experience financial troubles.

Most of the employees affected worked in Charlottetown while some worked at a factory in Albany, P.E.I.

Malcolm Lodge, the chief technical officer with Entegrity, said the company did not see any problems beforehand.

"It happened fairly quickly and some large customers who had gone part of the way into purchases of numbers of machines scaled back their purchases," Lodge told CBC News on Friday.

"We had thought we would ride it through. We've now had to downsize the company a bit," he said.

Entegrity, which has been operating in the province since 2004, manufactures 50-kilowatt wind turbines that are suitable for small businesses and farms.

The company maintains operations in Prince Edward Island and in Boulder, Colo.

Entegrity sent a letter to its suppliers and customers in June to inform them that the economic slowdown in the U.S. has affected its overall sales.

The provincial government lent approximately $400,000 to the company. Lodge said a portion of that loan has been repaid.

Lodge said the company is currently seeking financing from both the public and private sectors so it can continue its operations.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/prince-edward-island/story/2009/07/10/pei-entegrity-layoffs.html

Study to determine health effects of turbines

Sarah Boesveld

From Wednesday's Globe and Mail Last updated on Wednesday, Jul. 08, 2009 10:14AM EDT

By now, the residents of Wolfe Island, Ont., are getting used to the whirr and thump of wind turbines overhead. By next year, they'll get a glimpse of whether those whirrs and thumps could be damaging their health.

Researchers at nearby Queen's University have embarked on the first study to probe whether wind turbines built over communities can cause adverse health effects. The study measures residents' health and well-being before the turbines arrived on the island, again when the turbines were built but not yet operational and again after they'd been operating for a few months.

People living close to turbines in other regions have reported nausea, headaches, dizziness, anxiety, sleep deprivation and tinnitus - an incessant ringing in a person's ears.

However, there has yet to be any substantive research linking those ailments to the presence of windmills, says lead study author Neal Michelutti, a research scientist in the Queen's University biology department.

"To our knowledge, this is the first time that people have acquired a snapshot of community health prior to wind turbines," he says. "It gives us [a sense of] community health that we can use in a before-and-after comparison."

The issue of health has become a lightning rod in the debate dividing communities where wind farms have been built, Wolfe Island being no exception.

While the Ontario government recently legislated a 550 metre setback for wind turbines, the 86 machines on Wolfe Island that officially hissed to life on June 26, are only 400 metres from people's homes.

Last July, Dr. Michelutti and his Queen's colleagues mailed out 1,000 SF36 surveys, a standard, multipurpose health questionnaire, to every registered address on Wolfe Island. Between 150 and 200 people returned the anonymous surveys.

On the survey, residents gave a snapshot of their general health, describing any illnesses or health problems both physical and emotional and sharing their level of physical activity and mental concentration. The researchers sent a second questionnaire asking about symptoms commonly reported by people living near wind turbines and for the residents' attitudes toward the wind project.

The same survey was completed this spring and another will be mailed in late August after the turbines have chopped the air for two months. When the third round of surveys comes back, Dr. Michelutti and his colleagues will analyze the data to find out whether community health has suffered, he says.

They plan to follow up on an annual or biannual basis for a number of years to see whether the health impacts, if any, continue to persist or crop up later. It's tricky to attribute ill health effects to turbines, without knowing a person's health beforehand, Dr. Michelutti says, which is why a before-and-after comparison is so crucial.

"A lot of these symptoms are pretty commonly reported symptoms - anxiety, sleeplessness, these sort of things," he says. "It's difficult without having that baseline data to attribute them to a specific cause and effect like the windmills."

Questions in the second survey which ask whether a respondent is for or against the wind farm may help them find out if symptoms are psychosomatic, he says.

Previous research, much of which has not been peer reviewed, links wind turbines with a variety of physical and emotional problems. Researchers in Portugal claimed the turbines contributed to "vibroacoustic disease," a full body reaction to low frequency noise that affects the auditory and vestibular system, which controls a person's ability to balance. A pediatrician in the United States coined the term "wind turbine syndrome" to describe the symptoms people experience from living near wind turbines, such as sleep disturbance, headache, vertigo, ear pressure, tachycardia (rapid heart rate) and concentration and memory problems.

Wind-farm construction has polarized communities across the country. Those in favour of wind energy say the environmental and economic benefits are plenty. Those against the farms have argued that they are annoying, disruptive and that they are harming the health of residents.

Dr. Michelutti says he and his colleagues are neutral on the issue and have not accepted funding from any anti-wind turbine groups or wind-energy development companies.

"What's important to note is no one on this study is against windmills," he says. "I think most people think windmills are great, but the question is does it make sense to build them on top of communities? Really what we're hoping our study can contribute is information on proper setbacks for the turbines."

Conducting unbiased research on the health effects of living near wind turbines is key, says Robert McMurtry, a professor emeritus at University of Western Ontario and former assistant deputy minister of population and public health at Health Canada. Such a hot button issue deserves proper tracking in order to advise on setback rates for future wind farms, he says.

"Repeating it in year two and three will really add important information to the understanding," he says. "And then if you start doing correlations between setbacks and health problems, that will be very important too."

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health/study-to-determine-health-effects-of-turbines/article1210357/