Heather Wright/The Independent

A wind project planned for Brooke-Alvinston won’t go ahead. But for some opponents of industrial turbines, the politicians didn’t go far enough.

Monday, with almost 100 residents looking on, council, in a unanimous vote rejected Venfor Inc.’s proposal to put up to 30 wind turbines in the Central Lambton municipality.

Venfor Inc. first started talking about the possibilities of a wind project in 2024 and is now working to submit a bid for a 300-megawatt project in Brooke-Alvinston and Adelaide-Metcalfe to the Independent Electricity Supply Organization in December.

Venfor officials said 20 of the turbines will be in Brooke-Alvinston, mainly north and west of Alvinston. The towers are expected to be about 120 meters tall.

According to Ontario law, developers need letters of support from the municipalities involved to be considered for a contract.

Dan Zimmerman, a member of a concerned citizens group, told councillors Monday over 480 people signed a petition against the Venfor project. The two main concerns are the affects the project could have on agriculture in the community and concerns the water table could be affected by the construction of the turbines.

Zimmerman said councillors needed to look only as far as Chatham-Kent to see the possible impacts on the water table. People in North Kent, had good potable water before the construction of a project, he said. “Now they’re holding up a muddy old bottles of water to the Ontario government, says this is fine to drink – go ahead, but it looked like something pulled out of the ditch.”

Resident Leo Sanders was also opposed to the project saying he’d recently travelled to Denmark where there are a lot of turbines. “They had enough sense to save their best agricultural land,” he added. “There is no reason that these windmills should be built on perfectly good agricultural land,” he said.

It was clear council was agreed, with almost all saying upfront they didn’t support the project. Mayor Dave Ferguson pointed out Venfor has changed its tune on a number of key points.

“It started out with 17 turbines, and at the meeting (they) said 20. The information (Venfor is) sending us now is from 25 even 50,” he told the crowd.

Venfor also sent a graph showing Brooke-Alvinston and Adelaide Metcalfe Township could receive about $1 million a year with a community host agreement over 30 years. Ferguson pointed out the province has been handing out 20-year contracts.

Venfor also estimated up to $600,000 in municipal taxes could be levied on the project in both municipalities. Ferguson pointed out that at least half of Brooke-Alvinston’s share would go to school boards and the boards of educations.

The mayor is also still wary of who would take the project over. “There is no actual documentation of the company. We’ve been told, actually at this point, about two companies. We have not seen the deal. Why would we vote for something (when) we can’t see the deal to check it out.”

And Ferguson says “there’s been no agriculture impact assessment.” That was part of the deal Venfor made with the two municipalities in March.

While council was opposed to the project, several councillors said the cash was attractive since funding to rural municipalities has decreased in the last 15 years.

“We do need revenue. I’m not saying the windmills is where we are going to get it from, but we do need more revenue,” said Councillor Craig Sanders.

Councillor Frank Nemcek said Brooke-Alvinston has always made do on limited cash adding the wind developers “are just putting farmer against farmer, person against person and that’s not the way our little town, our little municipality, is. We’re all one…We all work together.”

In a confusing vote at the end of the one-hour special council meeting, councillors agreed to declare itself “not a willing host to the Venfor Inc. project.”

Nemeck asked that the municipality declare itself an unwilling host for all projects, but Councillor Don McCabe wanted to keep the door open for new technologies which might be less intrusive.

Dan Zimmerman, the spokesperson for the concerned citizen group, said that is not enough.
“It was it was wrong vote,” he said after the meeting. “We didn’t get where we needed to be, as far as an unwilling host for industrial turbines.”

Zimmerman says that leaves the door open for other companies to try to put a wind project together in Brooke-Alvinston in the future.