Taxpayers’ money wasted in fight against wind turbines
Clearview is left feeling failed by process after last week’s decision to approve eight wind turbines in the township.
The approval came one day before the start of judicial hearing that probably would have resulted in the same outcome.
In all honesty municipalities never had a part in the decision making process but that didn’t stop it from being an election issue.
There was a significant amount of faith placed on this council to take up the fight against the wind turbines.
Clearview went into this round with an economic impact analysis, prepared in partnership with the Town of Collingwood, as to how some of the proposed windmills would affect operations and future development of the Collingwood Regional Airport. Both parties have interest because the airport is owned by the Town of Collingwood but is located in the Township of Clearview.
How much weight was given to the analysis, and the opposing analysis prepared by wpd, is unknown but there is a feeling that it was money wasted.
The large scale renewable procurement system is set up to leave municipalities out but yet it is the municipality that has to live with the outcome.
We live under four levels of government and residents don’t always see a differentiation between issues and what tier of government is responsible for them.
Wind turbines and solar farms are newish territory for this part of rural Ontario and people assume they should have some right of approval. When implementing their green energy strategy, the province probably knew that there would be a lot of push back from people and figured few projects would come to fruition if local councils, who have to look their constituents in the eye at the grocery store each week, bent to the will of the community, who in this case don’t want wind turbines scarring the landscape.
As it is, people are saying these turbines are being ‘crammed down our throats’, that they are unnecessary and will prove to have been a poor decision.
Municipal officials are heading to Toronto in a few days for an annual conference where they meet with various ministers and their staff to discuss issues. It has often been said that some of the best advocacy work is not done in the meetings or at seminars but in the hallways. You can bet that councillors and staff from Clearview and Collingwood, their wounds still fresh, will be cruising the halls of the Royal York hotel with an eye out for the Premier and Ministry of Environment and Climate Control reps.
They will want it known that they are not happy with how things went down last week.
But at one point they will have to give up the fight and not spend any more taxpayer dollars on fighting a fight that was futile from the beginning.
