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marcus gee

An offshore wind farm stands in the water near the Danish island of Samso. Ontario’s chief medical officer of health, Dr. Arlene King, concluded in a report last year that wind turbines cause no adverse health effects.Bob Strong /Reuters

If you stand on the Scarborough Bluffs on a clear day and look out at the lake, you might see a small white structure standing in the water. The Toronto Hydro Anemometer Station is designed to measure the wind off the bluffs in case, one day in the future, Hydro gets the chance to build an offshore wind farm there.

The station consists of three white poles, each topped by a spinning propeller. From an environmental point of view, it is entirely harmless. Like an actual wind turbine, it produces no air or water pollution. Fish, in fact, use the legs of the structure as habitat.

Yet city councillors spent more than an hour on Tuesday in sharp debate over its future. Paul Ainslie of Ward 43, Scarborough East, said area residents "want it out, plain and simple." Michelle Berardinetti of Ward 35, Scarborough Southwest, said the $1-million project is "just a complete waste of money."

In the end, common sense prevailed. The city's executive committee voted to let the project continue until its planned conclusion next fall. With winter weather approaching, the earliest it could have been removed was next spring, and the work might have compromised seasonal fish breeding in the area.

Even so, the debate illustrated the growing power of one of the strangest environmental movements Ontario has seen: the lobby against wind farms. Pressure from community groups enraged at the idea of seeing a thicket of turbines sitting off the Scarborough Bluffs helped persuade Premier Dalton McGuinty to announce a moratorium on offshore wind farms in Ontario despite his zeal for green power.

Similar pressure in several rural Ontario ridings, where land-based wind farms are planned or running, may have played a part in toppling Liberal MPPs in the Oct. 6 election, including cabinet ministers Leona Dombrowsky and Carol Mitchell. Those losses arguably cost the Liberal government its third majority.

The umbrella group Wind Concerns Ontario counts no less than 57 community organizations in its ranks across 33 counties and districts. It is just the kind of noisy, well-organized lobby that gives politicians fits. Sing their tune, and they can turn out the volunteers and raise money to get you re-elected. Oppose them and beware. It is no accident that the councillors who made the most noise about Toronto Hydro's little wind-gauge platform hail from Scarborough, where the lobby is fiercest.

The lobby claims that wind farms can disrupt the water table, kill bats and birds, frighten wildlife and damage the health of people living nearby. Noise and vibration from the spinning wind turbines produce "sleep deprivation, which in turn can cause headaches, high blood pressure and other symptoms," claims Wind Concerns Ontario.

The evidence is against them. Ontario's chief medical officer of health, Dr. Arlene King, concluded in a report last year that wind turbines cause no adverse health effects. As for bird kills, Britain's Royal Society for the Protection of Birds reports: "The available evidence suggests that appropriately positioned wind farms do not pose a significant hazard for birds."

A single wind turbine, championed by Jack Layton, the late NDP leader, has been operating for years at Exhibition Place in Toronto. Toronto Hydro says the impact on birds has been minimal and there is no evidence anyone's health has been affected.

Whether wind power makes economic sense is a real question. But to attack it as a threat to the environment or human health is upside down. The whole point of wind power is to reduce the damage to health and the environment caused by burning fossil fuels.

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