By Julie Suzanne Pollock
A new flock of wind turbines has landed next door.
We knew they were coming. Government go-aheads rolled in throughout 2013. Just before Christmas, local appellants were turned away by the provincial Environmental Review Tribunal, which did not agree that the turbines would cause serious and irreversible harm to the land or the people on it. We waited for construction to begin and wondered how much the view would change from the Greater Honeywood Area.
Big machinery rolled up the highway on flatbeds. Soon, towers began to rise and take shape as 49 of these great, white birds gathered in the northeastern corner of Melancthon Township. Billed as a second harvest for the host landowners, the turbines and substation are owned by Dufferin Wind Power Inc., a project of Longyuan Canada Renewables Ltd. (a subsidiary of a Chinese corporation) in agreement with Farm-Owned Power (Melancthon) Ltd.
This month, Dufferin Council approved an easement to plug the project into the province’s power infrastructure. Mulmur demurred, along with Melancthon, Amaranth, Grand Valley and Mono. But the power line, approved by the province, appears to be inevitable. The 230kV single wood-pole line, now being marked out for construction, will run partly along a former rail corridor to reach a Hydro One transformer station in the Township of Amaranth.
The view to the west from Honeywood has changed notably this winter. None of the turbines are in Mulmur and we do try not to pry into our neighbours’ affairs but, frankly, these tri-pronged towers are hard to overlook.