Representatives with the Otter Creek Wind Farm are hoping to bring jobs, various community benefits and 16-20 wind turbines to the Wallaceburg area.
Adam Rosso, director of project development in Ontario for Boralex, told the Sydenham Current at a Tuesday open house at The Clubhouse at Baldoon that the purpose of the meeting was to introduce themselves to the community.
“We don’t have anything in stone yet,” Rosso said. “The general gist of (the) meeting is to say ‘look, this is where we are thinking of developing our next project’. We have no idea of actual turbine locations yet or infrastructure and it’s part of a competitive process.”
Rosso added: “If we are fortunate to win a Power Purchase Permit from the ISO, we will go through the renewable energy process which will essentially establish the process that we need to go through to permit the project as we go.”
Rosso said they are getting “mixed feelings” in terms of feedback from the community.
“I think people are apprehensive about the project coming in because we don’t have details and I think they are use to a process underneath of the FIT Program that is a little different than what we are doing here,” he said. “We are trying to get into the community early and often to take those considerations into our design if we are fortunate enough to get a Power Purchase Agreement.”
Rosso added: “I think everyone wants to know where the turbines are going. Right now there is a map and it’s based on the uncertainty of what we are doing. We don’t have any natural heritage work, we don’t have any archaeological work, we don’t have the foundational studies to quantitatively say exactly where we might want to put the turbines and that’s the reason why. It’s about controlling expectation, it’s about understanding and making sure that the public understands that if we were to talk about a layout, or talk about infrastructure, we are very confident that we would be able to install the turbines in those locations.”
Rosso said during the construction period people can expect anywhere from 120-140 construction jobs for about a six to eight month period.
“Boralex prides ourselves on trying to hire locally as much as we can,” he said. “A lot of the civil works, civil contractors, excavators, site office, lay down areas and all that kind of stuff. We try to hire locally as much as we can. During the operational phase, it’s not extensive but we are probably looking anywhere from three to five people for the life of the project.”
Rosso said Boralex does have a community benefit agreement signed with the Municipality.
“It’s a significant amount of money coming back into the community through the arrangements that we have already got with the Municipality,” he said. “We do have an operational budget for funding local charities and local activities during the operations.”
Rosso said Boralex is no stranger to Chatham-Kent.
“We own and operate 45 turbines in the Chatham-Kent area,” he said.
“We were one of the very first projects installed in the area with our Thames River Project. This was before the Green Energy Act where we went through the Municipality and got by-law changes and municipal support. Also another reason is the Municipality has indicated to developers that they are open for business and they are willing to support our turbines in their community.”
Rosso said Boralex has worked with the Municipality and come to an agreement with a Community Benefit Agreement as well as a Municipality Support Resolution through council.
“That means they are supporting the project and in this competitive bid process that is worth some respect from the provincial government in a policy change that the government was looking to do to kind of balance the political and public concerns with regards to projects,” he said. “In this process, projects or contracts that have Municipal support are more favourably looked at in the selection process that all of these projects will go through between September 1 and December of this year.”
Rosso said when dealing with people’s concerns with the project, they are taking in all the feedback.
“In terms of the health concerns, we were part of the Health Canada study here in Chatham-Kent,” he said. “I understand that turbines can be associated with annoyance with no cause or actual link to any real health effect. I mean, I understand if it is a change to a rural landscape it can annoy people, but we would design our project to be completely compliant with all the laws and take land owner feedback.”
Rosso added: “Boralex’s perspective is not to exceed law but to be more conservative then we absolutely need to be. Our project is proposed to be anywhere from 16-20 turbines and we feel very comfortable that we can do a very good job of minimizing the impacts from a noise perspective in the community.”
Rosso said the design life of a turbine, depending on what type of turbine, is between 20-25 years.
“We are an owner and operator with a large degree of respect for the maintenance of our turbines,” he said. “In fact Boralex really prides ourselves on a very high availability for our turbine fleet performance across Canada and France.”
Rosso added: “So we are not here to just buy a cheap turbine and then just leave it there for some sort of holding company to run and operate. The turbines that we have chosen in Chatham-Kent previously have a 12-year maintenance program with a top German turbine provider so that we expect to be able to own and operate turbines well past their initial 20-year lifetime. The idea after that would be to re-power and re-permit the project with another contract or market price and own and operate those turbines as long as we possibly can.”
Here is more of our coverage from Tuesday’s meeting:
“Rosso said during the construction period people can expect anywhere from 120-140 construction jobs for about a six to eight month period.” How terribly exciting, 120 jobs for six months. And then we get to live with a large industrial complex sprawled across the rich farmland and wetlands of southern Ontario for at least 20 years. Our children will certainly thank us. We can, of course, expect the turbines to become idle before too many years as the obsolete technology becomes useless. Unless of course we continue to elect leftist ideologues to provincial office in which case we could look forward to subsidizing the otherwise unprofitable industry for many glorious years to come.
“I understand that turbines can be associated with annoyance with no cause or actual link to any real health effect.” Folks, please take note that Mr. Rosso now puts the burden of proof on you to demonstrate that there would be negative health effects associated with the Otter Creek Wind Industrial Complex. If this were an industry that was not in bed with the far left ideologues at Queens Park then the burden of proof would of course be on them to prove that there would be no negative health effects, not on us to prove that there would be. Nice try, Mr. Rosso. Do you think you could impose that burden on the good people of the 905 area code ? No ? But with the poor rubes of 519 ? No problem !
“That means they are supporting the project and in this competitive bid process that is worth some respect from the provincial government in a policy change that the government was looking to do to kind of balance the political and public concerns with regards to projects,” he said. Allow me to translate: If the people are compliant and submissive, then we can expect to be fed a few scraps and that will make living in a horribly disfigured environment just so much better. Or to translate into the language of the Soviet era, “Make it easy on yourself comrade, submit!”.
Say, have you noticed there is no talk of a remediation plan or of the funds to pay for removing concrete and polluted soil from the farmland when the turbines will need to be dismantled? Not their problem ! They will have waved bye-bye long before that day ever comes.