Halifax council Tuesday punted on a decision on new zoning rules for wind turbines.
Currently, no new windmills can be erected anywhere in HRM; existing windmills are grandfathered in and may remain. After two years of study and public input, city staff had brought forward a proposal that nearly completely bans wind turbines in the urban areas, with the exception of relatively small (less that 60 metres high) turbines, which will be allowed in tightly designated areas in business parks. In rural areas, however, turbines would be allowed, and this is the contentious issue.
Most controversial are proposed rules around very large, industrial turbines, those taller than 60 metres and with more than 300 kilowatt generating capacity—the type of turbines found in wind farms that sell commercially to utility companies. Such a farm has been proposed for the Jeddore area, and has generated much resident opposition.
The proposed rules would require the turbines to be set back from adjacent property lines by a distance greater than one-and-a-half times the height of the turbine, and from “habitable buildings”—houses, schools, businesses, etc.—by 550 metres. As some industrial wind turbines can exceed 200 metres in height—taller than the Tufts Coves smokestacks or the Maritime building on Barrington Street, opponents say the setback distance should be increased to at least 2,000 metres.
Council heard about four hours of public testimony Tuesday, then asked staff to bring back more information about how other governments regulate wind turbines. Council is expected to make a final decision at its next meeting, on August 2.
This article appears in Jul 7-13, 2011.
ZOMG – THAT HEADLINE IS SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO HILARIOUS. Really, that is just mint. I can’t believe that someone managed to come up with such an appropriate double entendre AND was daring enough to print it. Truly, the Coast continues to set the bar for alternate media higher and higher with each issue. We are so fortunate in these troubled and uncertain times to have such courageous and prescient journalists as society’s first line of defence. Someone on your staff is clearly smart enough to write lyrics for Weird Al Yankovic and I sincerely hope that she/he is recieving sufficient remuneration to keep her/him here because we are all the richer for her/his presence.
Keep up the good work Coast.
HRM faces real challenges when rural come-from-aways can protest anything that disturbs their pastoral silence, but Bayers Road and Chebucto Road have to be widened and these communities broken up so these folk can zoom into town whenever the spirit moves them. Oh, did I mention that the coal-fired power plant that provides these people’s power is in metro so there’s no pollution in Jeddore.
To me this outcome signifies a failure of the so-called “public input” mechanism. I daresay that the majority of HRM citizens have opinions on at least a handful of issues, if not dozens. I also suspect that the majority of us never hear of most “public input” sessions, and of those we do a healthy percentage have either already happened or they are in some inconvenient location 25 or 50 or 100 klicks away on an awkward evening.
I consider myself reasonably well-read as far as keeping up on local news on the Internet, but that sure doesn’t inform me about a whole bunch of “public input” meetings. I get the impression that on any issue special interest groups, both pro and con, tend to get the word somehow, but the rest of us – the other 99 percent – get left out. I’ll bet money that those “public input” sessions on this wind turbine question did not feature a representative average mix of the voters of HRM.
If public input is desired, why not move into the 21st century, and put surveys online? Send out flyers on a quarterly basis, say, that publish notification of upcoming polls on the municipal, provincial and federal levels. Each flyer has a randomly generated ID that can be used only once. Since this is not a binding vote there is no need to be crazy about security though; that should suffice. The ID is recorded against a neighbourhood but not against any individual.
Town and church hall meetings stopped being effective quite a while back, especially in urban areas. The fact that this is still largely how “public input” is solicited tells me that in most cases the agencies involved really do not care for true public input at all – they are just posturing.
So city staff came out with this proposal…based in part on “public input”. How many dozens of people was that again?
Excuse me rich..the rural communities are not the issue and have several up and running already…but they also see chickens and cats as being very useful as well.
Realist, I am always shocked that I find out the next day or too late the same day about events I should be at ….Is this deliberate so folks cannot mobilize in a meaningful way to engage with the topics…of course it is…..lets not look further than the Commonwealth Games Bid…that was all our ‘want’ as well…did you not know that..nevermind the methodology was shoddy and the math was wrong and lacked external validity for a sound representative number….
“Council passes on wind” the public should be able to see that council are the experts as they produce the product at their meetings in generous amounts with no need to involve any common sense input from anyone!