A Saskatoon judge could rule as early as this week on whether a wind farm project in southeastern Saskatchewan can proceed or must wait until site setbacks have been changed.
Moosomin area resident David McKinnon filed the complaint this summer.
He said he wants turbines from the Red Lily Wind Farm to be located at least two kilometres from residences. The closest turbine is planned to be 583 metres, or slightly more than half a kilometre, from a home.
The application for a permanent injunction was heard in court Sept. 23. McKinnon’s lawyer has also applied for the case to be heard as a class action on behalf of those who live near the wind farm.
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McKinnon said he was told a decision could be made within 14 days of the court date.
“I have nothing against the turbines at all,” he said Sept. 28. “Before we go ahead and build it, let’s have the setbacks.”
He said he talked to Algonquin Power, which is building the wind farm, and his rural municipal council, which approved the project, but wasn’t able to convince them to build the turbines farther away from residences.
“Algonquin did move three, but they actually wound up making it closer to another (residence),” he said.
The $60 million, 26 megawatt wind farm involves 14 turbines in the Rural Municipality of Martin and two in the RM of Moosomin.
They will tie into a SaskPower substation at Red Jacket.
The project became controversial after people expressed concern about the potential health effects of the turbine noise and shadow flicker, in which rotor blades chop the sunlight and create a flickering shadow to people on the ground.
Others in the area say the project will bring tax revenue to the RMs and payments to those on whose land the turbines sit. As well, it involves renewable energy so is more environmentally friendly than nonrenewable sources, they say.
Algonquin has also secured land rights for a second phase, which would produce 106 megawatts of power and require substantially more turbines.
Michael Nissenbaum, a diagnostic imaging specialist in Fort Kent, Maine, has researched the health effects of wind turbines after people living within 1.1 kilometres of 28 wind turbines in Mars Hill, Maine, began complaining.
The 1.5 megawatt turbines in that project are similar to those that would be built at Red Lily, although some of the Red Lily turbines will be 2.5 megawatts.
In an affidavit filed in McKinnon’s case, Nissenbaum said he believes there is significant risk of adverse health effects to people living within 1.1 kilometres of such a wind project and those effects may reach as far away as two kilometres from a turbine.
He interviewed 22 of 30 adults living in the area, compared them to a control group of 27 people, and found:
• Eighty-two percent of people living in the project area reported new onset or increased sleep disturbance compared to four percent in the control;
• Forty-one percent reported increased headaches, compared to four percent;
• Fourteen percent reported new or worse problems with dizziness, compared to none in the control;
• Thirty-two percent reported concern about shadow flicker, compared to none in the control.
Many also reported new or worse feelings of stress (59 percent), anger (77 percent), anxiety (32 percent), irritability (27 percent), hopelessness (55 percent) and depression (45 percent). None of the people in the control group reported these symptoms.
