Inventing Victims - Wind Turbine Syndrome in Ontario

Today's guest editorial comes from Richard (Dick) Hill, a retired researcher who is interested in the social advantages of wind power and environmental protection.   As a former mayor, he is also intrigued by the political and activist hypocrisy approach in attacking this new energy source.

The effect and non-effect of Ontario wind turbines is a topical discussion.  I have just read a book, The Righteous Mind by Jonathon  Haidt (Pantheon 2012), which provides significant thought on how humans react with something new and what drives people who are resistant to change.  Haidt basically comments that if somebody doesn’t like change or the appearance of wind turbines, they will invent victims to justify their assumptions.

In Ontario, the anti-wind turbine syndrome is mainly a creation of the Conservative Party in an effort to minimize any environmental and economic effects initiated by the Liberal Party, in particular the Green Energy Act of 2009.  It is used as a political wedge issue to create FUD - fear, uncertainty and doubt.  The unsubstantiated issues of public health and economics are secondary to the political challenge of defeating the opposition by any means.

There are over 250,000 large wind turbines around the world producing environmentally friendly electricity with little social or economic comment.  Even in Ontario the most effected people, with operating wind turbines on their property, do not complain.  If the anti-wind activist statements were true, most of Europe would be dead by now.  The wind turbine syndrome is essentially an Ontario illness.

The well-funded anti-wind activists talk of supposed harms without scientific or technical evidence that stand jurisprudence.  It is an issue searching for a problem with reasoning in support of emotional reactions for the judgements they have already made.  Most people make first judgements quickly and then search for reasons to support them.

Many of the supposed harms from wind turbines are fabricated myths with preposterous victim claims. The anti-wind zealots are not searching for veracity, but are reasoning in support of their emotional reactions using distorted scientific studies, social media and Google to find support.   This confirmatory mindset is a one-sided method to rationalize a particular point of view in support of their decision.  This extreme partisanship can be addictive, forming a consensual hallucination.

There are multiple ills attributed to wind turbines with headaches, nausea, and sleep loss being most prevalent. These problems are common with modern living of which around 20 to 50 percent of the population complain whether or not they live near wind turbines.  The symptoms are real but the causes are general.

This situation is political opinion that is not based on real facts.  Well-funded lobby groups have the skills and resources to distort reality making it difficult for the medical community to overcome.  Most of the anti-wind evidence is based on personal stories without medical certification or judicial review.  Also myths and mischief Information are provided by vested interests.

Front organizations such as Wind Concerns Ontario and Ontario Wind Resistance spread misleading stories and faux facts about wind turbines that scares people in the manner of a flu or small pox epidemic.  Other social scares have been created for cell phone, WIFI, wireless phone towers, high-voltage power lines, fluoridated water and vaccinations to which the same illnesses such as headaches and sleep deprivation are attributed.  The medical community has not been able to find any linkage causing human adverse health.  Studies have shown that attributed symptoms continue as long as the sufferer believes they are exposed to the source even when the source no longer exists.  This is known as psychogenic illnesses, otherwise known as the nocebo effect - belief that something causes real harm- and is the opposite to a placebo.

Some Ontario residents are suffering genuine health symptoms but the source of these symptoms should not be attributed to wind turbines.  Possibly these illnesses are caused by the extreme hype of the anti-wind organizations that spread misinformation and bully citizens at public meetings.  It is the misinformation from vested interests that causes harm, not wind turbines.  The syndrome is mainly a communicated disease causing medical panic related to either hysteria or NIMBY-ism.

Haidt’s ‘The Righteous Mind’ helps to understand the anti-wind political aspects and how balanced information can help the wind industry to proceed with the their environment friendly and cost effective energy programs.  Ontario residents are foolish to be consumed by fear of hypothetical harm from the supposed health effects of living next to wind farms.

Nepean MP hijacks Jubilee Medal program to push political agenda

Source: http://www.pierremp.ca/news/

On November 22, 2012 Nepean MP Pierre Poilievre presented four Diamond Jubilee Medals.  

The Diamond Jubilee Medal was struck to commemorate the Queen's 60th anniversary of her accession to the Throne.  Nominations are handled by Members of Parliament, Provincial Lieutenant Governors and Premiers; plus a number of Non-Governmental agencies.

This presentation, at Kars, ON (a small village in the MP's riding) carried the theme of honouring "rural champions".  Those rural champions deservedly included Glenn Brooks (a local municipal official who served for over a decade and advocated for farmers), Paul Mussell (a local comedian who pokes fun at rural life) and Mrs. Marion Newman (a local teacher who volunteered to promote Agriculture in the Classroom). 

Unfortunately one of the medals was tarnished by being awarded to an anti-wind activist via a number of her political allies.

Jane Wilson, the recipient, is (or certainly was) Chairperson of the North Gower Wind Action Group ever since a project was proposed in her area.  She is the current head of the anti-wind group Wind Concerns Ontario.

Lisa MacLeod is the MPP for the riding.  It appears that MacLeod is part of a PC campaign to take Ontario's energy system back to the virtual stone ages.  It is now PC Leader Hudak's stated policy to place nuclear energy over any other sources of electrical power generation in Ontario, while reversing all advances in renewable energy by repealing the Green Energy Act .  They intend to replace renewable energy with nuclear power based on a lop-sided tender.  Nuclear supplier 1 would compete with nuclear supplier 2 but neither would be required to compete with wind, gas, hydro or solar - because nuclear would lose every time based on cost and risk. 

Put another way, nuclear would be guaranteed a price premium that ratepayers would be required to pay for decades.  Even as the whole world turns away from ridiculously expensive nuclear power (not to mention safety issues revealed by Fukushima), the PC's want to return to the 1970's.

Pierre Poilievre is the MP for Ms. Wilson's riding.  He was somewhat late into the wind turbine fray but joined on when the federal Conservatives's joined in the provincial anti-wind fight a few years ago.  At some point, the provincial PC's and federal Conservatives in Ontario realized that they had a common cause.  They could disrupt the provincial Liberals' wind file.  Perhaps these Conservative ties also had a hand in Health Canada's unprecedented $2 million study on the possible health effects of wind turbines, even though 17 other studies had found no connection.  For their own purposes, they ignored the fact that the University of Waterloo had been conducting an identical study for many months in Ontario.  

Mr. Poilievre maintains a website.  Here are some examples of how the three have collaborated:

July 16, 2012: Poilievre, MacLeod call for a moratorium on North Gower industrial wind turbines

July 16, 2012: Put the Brakes on the North Gower Wind Turbines

August 17, 2012:  Marlborough Moratorium Makes Cents

Plus this article from EMC Manotick dated August 23, 2012:  http://www.emcmanotick.ca/20120823/news/Poilievre+launches+petition+to+stop+wind+turbine+project

What this constitutes is an unholy alliance of the federal Conservatives and provincial PC's and Wind Concerns Ontario, at the very least in Nepean.  The provincial PC's played off the NIMBY attitudes of urban weekenders who threw their farmer neighbours under the bus.  The federal Conservatives also threw their farmer constituents under the same bus.  In the picture below, you'll see a small bunch of wind protesters plus their MPP, Lisa MacLeod (left, in the black suit with the capri slacks),  their MP Pierre Poilievre (centre, in the open neck blue shirt holding the sign) and Jane Wilson (right, in the black top and slacks).   We suspect that there weren't a lot of local farmers in the picture (farmers seldom wear sandals), plus farmers like the fact that turbines provide income and don't disrupt farm operations.

Source: http://www.pierremp.ca/news/

We don't think that a Commonwealth Medal should be so brazenly exploited politically. 

This is especially true with a medal that typically celebrates genuine volunteerism towards the most vulnerable members of society. And, whether they want to accept it or not, Wilson and her anti-wind gaggle do not qualify as vulnerable members of society. Thousands of rural Ontarians are lined up to participate in the clean energy economy; hundreds of farmers are staying on family land thanks to the clean energy economy; and dozens of rural communities have seen millions of dollars in much-needed economic benefits thanks to the clean energy economy.

There are so many people who are investing their reputations and their personal finances to advance renewable energy - including most of the country's top banks.  Developers risk hundreds of millions of dollars in projects based on a 20 year contract with the Ontario people.  They get paid off the meter, i.e. by the kWh.  If they spend too much on their projects, if they misgauge the energy potential of their site or if their technology under performs, they take the hit and go bankrupt.  

This is in stark contrast with nuclear operators who receive forgiveness when their projects go over budget - and they go over budget EVERY SINGLE TIME.  Ontario is still paying off their stranded debt .

In our opinion, it's the real risk-taking pioneers, the landowners, the developers and the municipal leader and politicians who have stepped forward to clean up this province's ancient electricity system who deserve the Medal.  They bring much to the rural economy - in fact, they have saved many family farms and contributed income to rural economies.  

What have wind opponent's done?  Nothing.  Absolutely nothing, other than creating hysteria and political mischief.  And yet they get a medal. 

What's wrong with this picture?

For every appraisal there is an equal and opposite appraisal

In the last few weeks, Ben Lansink released two documents on the Wind Concerns Ontario and Ontario Wind Resistance websites.  Mr. Lansink is an accredited appraiser and declares that his documents have been published without prejudice and that they are fair, impartial analyses. 

Other than his accreditation, nothing could be further from the truth.

We'll expose his bias in three sections:

         1. Motivation

         2. Data manipulation

         3. Omission of Press influence

1. Lansink's motivation

Mr. Lansink's firm specializes in creating evidence for law suits involving perceived losses in property value.  It's called "diminution".  It’s typically used in expropriation cases, where the appellant is attempting to increase the payment for their property. 

According to his website, "Ben specializes in Diminution in Value analyses and the resulting Injurious Affection. His assignments include proximity to airports, hydro power transmission corridors, land fill sites, wind turbines, roads and road works, as well as contaminated land and buildings including urea formaldehyde foam insulation".

So, a logical question might be, “Why would Mr. Lansink choose to perform all this research and then initially publish it on the Ontario Wind Resistance and Wind Concerns Ontario websites?” An impartial expert with solid balanced arguments might have considered developing more traction by using either the mainstream press or reputable academic journals or magazines to present his case.

The answer to this question may come from the relationship between Mr. Lansink and Eric Gillespie, and Mr. Gillespie’s relationship with wind opponents.  Eric Gillespie is the lawyer who has acted for a host of wind opponents and is closely associated with Wind Concerns Ontario (WCO). There have been a number of lawsuits launched recently by Mr. Gillespie against wind developers and their hosting landowners; all of which include property devaluation as part of the argument (e.g. Wiggins v. Fairview, Norfolk Wind Concerns v. UDI Renewables, Parent v. River Canard Energy).

Eric Gillespie and Ben Lansink appear to have assisted a common client in the past (Red Hill Valley Neighbourhood Association) and Mr. Gillespie refers to Lansink’s work in a letter to Canada’s Attorney General.

In addition, at least one source has described Mr. Lansink's presentation to an anti-wind group in which he confirmed his association with Mr. Gillespie.

Given this information it is reasonable to assume that Mr. Lansink’s report is intended to support Mr. Gillespie’s initiatives in the courts and wind opponents’ public position. Whether they are “fair and impartial” is another question that may only be answered in the courts   

2. Lansink's manipulation of data

Mr. Lansink appears to be selective with the limited data he uses in his case studies and presents, as a basis for his conclusions, information from a few isolated home sales.   This would be in contrast with following the most basic notions of random sampling or full transactional analysis from which solid impartial experts typically derive their conclusions.

In Melancthon, for example, he chooses five properties that were bought by a developer (Canadian Hydro Developers - CHD) and then sold after the project was completed. He cloaks those situations as a classic buy-resell case study and attempts to create a valuation based on the following methodology:

1.    Assume that the purchase price was at fair market value.  In truth, CHD purchased all properties at over 50% premium to market values – as represented by MPAC assessment data (Table 1).

Table 1 Sales price vs. assessment value for Lansink’s Melancthon properties (1^st sale)

Property	Sale price	Sale date	Assessment	Assess. Year	Price/Assessment
1	$302,670	17aug2007	$232,000	2007	1.30
2	$299,000	01jun2005	$195,000	2005	1.53
3	$500,000	15nov2007	$293,000	2008	1.71
4	$305,000	29dec2006	$216,000	2006	1.41
5	$350,000	30oct2007	$182,000	2007	1.92
Weighted Average					1.57

Source: Lansink, MPAC

         

2. Assign a price escalator from "comparable" markets - in this case the greater Dufferin area.  However, the greater Dufferin area includes Orangeville, a market that's been on fire as a sleeper for Toronto, as well as Amaranth, a sleeper for Orangeville.  As a result, Lansink’s calculation of the increase of value due to the passage of time may be aggressive.

3. Assume that the properties were also sold at fair market value.  In aggregate, this may be close to the truth.  CHD had used a number of the properties for their project staff for a couple of years, lowering their cost of housing staff and construction workers, versus hotel, motel and travel alternatives.  Once the project was fully commissioned the operator had little on-going use for the properties and sold them.

In three cases, the properties either sold at their asking price or close to their assessed value (Table 2). 

Table 2 Sales prices vs. assessment value for Lansink’s Melancthon properties (2^nd sale)

Property	Sale price	Sale date	Assessment	Assess. Year	Price/Assessment
1	$215,000	27mar2010	$215,000	2010	0.82
2	$250,000	19jun2012	$318,000	2012	0.79
3	$288,400	12nov2009	$293,000	2008*	0.98*
4	$278,000	03aug2009	$228,750	2009	1.22
5	$175,000	16sep2010	$173,334	2010	1.01
Weighted Average					0.95

Source: Lansink, MPAC

* Assessment data not available for 2009

Two properties were likely sold below market value because of their uniquely heightened association with wind turbines.  Wind opponents who used these transactions to create a firestorm of media coverage that detailed their perceived health problems dramatically highlighted that association.  A search of the seller’s name + wind on the Internet yields over 500 citations.  One is actually used in the Lansink document.  Obviously, wind opponents’ actions devalued these properties by their unsupported statements.  Selling that house after such a mauling in the press would be like selling a haunted house.

In contrast, a search of the successful buyers’ names yields no mentions of any such complaints.

One case study "analysis" is highly suspect.  The original landowner was holding up an OMB hearing that was ruling on CHD's project.  In the hearing, CHD had made adjustments to the project in accord with the concerns of the municipalities and other landowners.  For this particular landowner CHD agreed to purchase his property (OMB PL0605653 Minutes of Settlement).  The residence condition was deemed uninhabitable and was subsequently demolished.  This fact was omitted in Lansink's appraisal.  He compares the above market price of the property when originally purchased with the market value price of the raw land when it was subsequently sold.

Of course, there remains the question about the hundred or so other transactions that occurred in the area in that time frame.  Those transactions were conventional single buyer-seller transactions, much like those included in the following analysis, but they were excluded for some reason.   A subsequent blog will explore these transactions in more detail.

So, in summary, the prices paid by CHD for these properties were sufficiently over-market to negate all the claims of devaluation stated by Lansink, and the sample used so small and selective that the conclusions drawn were clearly biased and wrong.

In Clear Creek, Mr. Lansink chooses seven properties that were sold in the area of a project.  In contrast with his previous methodology described above, only two were buy-sell situations.  A number of obvious questions arise:

1. Were these the only properties sold? Were other properties, at similar distances from turbines, sold in the area (e.g. Jacksonburg, Houghton Centre, Hemlock)?

         2. Is the residential price index for the broader county relevant to this group of properties?

         3. Did wind opponents pollute their property values through their hysterical reactions to the media?

If these properties are truly indicative of the nature of sales in the micro-area, then there may be evidence of diminution.  However, this is another area that was ground zero for health effect claims.  A group called "Norfolk Victims of Industrial Wind Turbines” had extensive press coverage.  A search for the leader of the group ("stephana johnston"+wind) yields over 800 citations.  As one commentator noted, " Also, Stephana Johnston, 81 has now guaranteed no one will buy her house as she's publicly stated that the turbines make it impossible [for her] to sleep there."

We are analyzing the Clear Creek transactions and will publish more conclusions in a further post.

3. The influence of media's amplification of wind opponent hysteria

A number of independent appraisals were performed in the early to middle stages of wind turbine development in Ontario, for example:

         • Stantec for Canadian Hydro Developers [Melancthon], 2006

• Blake, Matlock & Marshal for Windrush Energy [Melancthon, East Luther], 2006

         • S. Rayner for Canadian Hydro Developers [Wolfe Island], 2007

         • University of Guelph Master of Science Thesis [Melancthon], 2009

         • Canning & Simmons for CanWEA [Chatham Kent], 2010

         • Assessment Review Board ruling on Kenney property [Wolfe Island], 2012

Outside of Ontario, a 2009 landmark study by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that “Home sales prices are very sensitive to the overall quality of the scenic vista from a property, but a view of a wind energy facility does not demonstrably impact sales prices”.

All of these studies found no significant reduction in property values before and after the project was constructed. 

However, as wind projects were proposed for cottage areas such as Prince Edward County, the Huron coastline and Grey Highlands, opposition began to grow using bogus logic, and biased media intensity increased.  The umbrella organization Wind Concerns Ontario (WCO) represented most, if not all, of the wind action groups (WAG's).   WCO had sophisticated members and access to professionals (e.g. PR, medical, legal, engineering, etc.) whose cottages, in many cases, were located near these developments.  Within a few months they had developed a very sophisticated and effective PR campaign.  However, in our opinion, these professionals took license with their credentials by not disclosing their cottage locations and by posting opinions that were frequently outside their training.

As an illustration, a search in Google Trends for Ontario reveals a strong and sustained campaign from early 2009 to the present.

Figure 1: Google Trends search for the term “wind concerns Ontario”

Source: Google Trends

Since these WAG's had no evidence that was specific to projects planned near them, they shone a bright light on existing projects.  Anyone with a complaint was sure to be introduced to newspapers, television and radio; and invited to speak at scores of anti-wind lectures throughout Ontario.  As noted earlier, some of those press mentions added up in the hundreds.  Many of them, and their previously unknown small community names (e.g. Melancthon, Ripley, Clear Creek, etc.) became well known.  It is conceivable that this type of media coverage placed downward pressure on property values in a few places.  In contrast, other projects built in the same time frame, such as Chatham Kent and Prince garnered relatively few complaints and little press coverage.

In subsequent legal challenges and Environmental Review Tribunal (ERT) decisions (almost totally represented by Eric Gillespie), not a single case has substantiated any of the claims of adverse health effects.  In fact, health claims seem to have been removed from recent ERT's by the appellants.  Importantly, in cases where residences were sold on the market or purchased by developers and then re-sold, there has always been a willing buyer and no media mentions of complaints of adverse health effects.  Lansink suggests that those buyers have been legally gagged, but no one is able to sign away their rights of redress under common law.  If they were provably suffering, they would still have some form of recourse.

* * *

In summary, Lansink's analysis appears to be significantly biased. While he may turn up some isolated examples of property devaluation, Lansink has failed to show that wind turbines have widespread negative impact on property values.  Moreover, there is plenty of evidence to demonstrate that those suffering from psychogenic symptoms (I.e. those that originate in the mind) may have inadvertently been the root cause of their loss.  They certainly had lots of help from hundreds of activists who used these people, described as "victims", to keep proposed projects from their back yard.  And, some of the media, sensing a good conflict, fanned the flames.