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The Citizen, 2012-10-04, Page 6PAGE 6. THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2012. Turbine Working Group calls for donations Catholic board proactive with amalgamationThe Huron-Perth Catholic District School Board (HPCDSB) is looking to the province to provide further direction on their amalgamation proposal. HPCDSB Director of Education Martha Dutrizac, said the 2012 provincial budget identified an initiative to amalgamate school boards by September 2013. The Minister of Education has urged boards to take the initiative to develop business plans that would meet these objectives. “The idea was presented as a way to reduce finances in all the school boards in the province,” said Dutrizac. “Through a number ofdiscussions and meetings with theministry, it became clear theprovince has very specific directives and a very specific timeline in which this will happen. “We were directed to begin dialogue with neighbouring boards to try and determine where some restructuring could take place within a set of financial parameters, because this entire thing is driven by finance and it is very specific on the restructuring of the administrative level.” Dutrizac stressed that the amalgamation is not a restructuring of schools or the staff in the schools, it is specifically at the management level - to do more with less. She said when the HPCDSB didtheir review, they were very specificabout four criteria. “We wanted therestructuring to maintain the integrity of our programs, minimize disruption to staff, maintain our high standard of student achievement and ensure the culture of our board would be maintained - specifically the catholic nature and education,” Dutrizac said. “Over many meetings and discussions we have determined that boards of similar size, similar beliefs and who have similar goals are what, we believe, will sustain our catholic nature and sustain for us on the financial perspective as a bigger board with less management,” she said, noting the Bruce-Grey Catholic District School Board andWellington Catholic District SchoolBoard were the best fit.Bruce-Grey is the smallest of the boards with 3,300 students, while Wellington is the largest with 7,800 students. Huron-Perth has 4,200 students. Trustees from all three boards supported a motion to submit a proposal to the Ministry of Education. “That is all we can do at this point because we need support and facilitation from the ministry to help us develop an amalgamation plan,” said Dutrizac, adding, “We are at the point where it is clear to our constituents that this is the direction the board has determined and we will await a ministry response to help us develop a plan forimplementation.”Bernard Murray, HPCDSB trusteechair, said, “Being one of the smallest boards in the province we are not going to dodge the bullet, so it is best we be proactive.” “We have been given the chance to make our own recommendations and to me this is a sales pitch, and if we do a good job of selling maybe we can get the buyer to pick it up,” he said referring to the Ministry of Education. “If we can set a plan together that is good for us then it is good for the government too and I think we have put together a good proposal,” he said. Details of the plan can not currently be released. THE EDITOR, After realizing that the provincial government was not listening, Shawn and Trish Drennan decided it was time to stand up and fight against the injustice being dealt to all country residents. They agreed, with the help of civil rights lawyer Julian Falconer, to spearhead a legal challenge on behalf of their community citizens’ organization (SWEAR (Safe Wind Energy for All Residents). SWEAR was formed in early June, 2011. Its mission statement is “safe wind generation for all life”. Shawn and his wife Trish have now launched a lawsuit against the Ontario government and the developer claiming a breach of their constitutional rights under sections 7 and 2(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and making a claim of nuisance against the developer. (Also included is an injunction to stop the Renewable Energy Approval process until federal and provincial health studies are completed and reported upon.) The Drennans’ farm in Ashfield- Colborne-Wawanosh Township near Goderich has been in the family since 1922 – 90 years. The Drennans discovered that it was soon to be surrounded by 150 industrial wind turbines – 12 within two kilometres and the closest only 650 metres from their front door. A massive (50-60 acre) 270 MW step-up transformer station would be built approximately 600 metres from their home. One 138,000 V line was to up in front of their farm and another 34,600 V line would run in front of the house. In addition they already have an expropriated 500,000 V corridor already running through their farm. That’s why they decided to find out for themselves whether people already living near turbines were experiencing health problems. They had heard the CBC reports of scores of people suffering from ailments they attribute to living downwind from turbines. They started by asking those who had moved away from the turbines why they had done so. But to their astonishment they discovered that if people had been bought out by the energy companies, they were under gag orders not talk about what they had experienced. The Drennans soon learned that all across Ontario, scores of people have now had to abandon their homes because they could no longer tolerate the effects of low frequency and infrasound emitted by the turbines – a phenomenon that affects livestock as well as children. Horses are especially sensitive to it. Grand Bend Realtor Doug Pedlar, the newly-elected president of the London/St. Thomas Real Estate Board says that the invasion of the wind turbines has led to a 30 per cent drop in property values. That loss alone is a serious problem for the farmer who needs all his collateral to continue operating. Shawn and Trish were also worried about the effect of the turbines on the fertility of their soil since there are widespread reports that earthworms disappear near the turbines and some farmers are complaining that their water quality has been adversely affected by the pile driving during construction of the foundations. One insurance company has even refused to reissue a policy for a farm that hosts a turbine. However, when the Drennans talked to people living near wind turbines at Shelburne in Grey County and at Clear Creek in Norfolk they heard the same complaints of nausea, insomnia, ringing in the ears, constant dizziness and cardiovascular disease. Not everyone is affected but enough people are to make it a serious and widespread problem – one that has occurred all over the world where industrial wind turbines have been installed. Over 80 Ontario municipalities have now demanded a moratorium on building the turbines until we find out how they are affecting people. Health Canada has taken the reports seriously enough to begin setting up a health study. Nonetheless, the Ontario government, although it is still waiting for the results of its own health study continues to race ahead with wind development approvals, ignoring the caution urged by our rural communities. Shawn and Trish are to be admired for their determination and their courage. They are the kind of old- fashioned good neighbours who put their neighbourhood first. I am sure you will agree with me that we all need to support them in this effort which will ultimately be to our own benefit. Their action is applauded by the Multi-municipal Wind Turbine Working Group, comprised of elected officials and appointed citizens from municipalities in Bruce, Grey, Dufferin, Huron and Perth Counties. If you have similar concerns and feel you can help out in this very important David and Goliath struggle, would you please send a cheque payable to SWEAR to Dave Hemingway, 78403 Whys Line, Central Huron, RR 2, Bayfield, ON N0M 1G0. For more information contact swearontario@gmail.com Even a modest amount will help out in a big way. Mark Davis, Deputy Mayor, Municipality of Arran-Elderslie; Chair, Multi-municipal Wind Turbine Working Group. Letters to the Editor Writer frustrated with lack of answers THE EDITOR, I don’t know whether to laugh, cry or scream. I attended the Nuclear Waste Management Organization’s (NWMO) Deep Geological Repository (DGR) Open House at the Ripley Community Centre several weeks ago. This is supposedly a process for helping people understand the implications of welcoming the highly radioactive waste fuel from all of Canada’s nuclear reactors into their community. It was like attending a smoking information session by the tobacco industry that failed to mention lung cancer, emphysema or heart disease. The open house has lots of fancy displays and glossy literature but when one does a little thinking about it the goal seems more to gloss over or mislead the attendee than to provide the “transparency” it mentions in its literature. Here are some examples: • I asked the very pleasant young man touring me through the displays if they had any information on the health impacts of radiation. He said yes but when we went to find the brochure it wasn’t there. It had not been brought to the open house. He did give me the name of it and promised to send it to me – but it meant that anyone who did not know to ask would not get easy access to that information. • There was a neat little display of some stones and a pair of salt and pepper shakers which you could rotate past a geiger counter and hear it clicking off radiation hits and see the scale. However there was no information about how this level of radioactivity compared with that of used fuel. When I asked the staff of the NWMO at the session they couldn’t tell me but would get back to me with that information. • A brochure entitled “Multiple-Barrier System” on its front page in bold print says “Barrier 1: The Used Nuclear Fuel Pellet” underneath is a photo of an ungloved human hand holding a pellet with tweezers in front of a pile of pellets in the background. When I point out to the staff that this can’t be “used nuclear fuel pellets” since they would be way too hot, both radioactively and thermally, for a person to be unprotected, they agreed that it is a misleading picture. • When I got home I went on the internet and looked up the document missing at the open house “The Nature of the Hazard”. It mentions cancer once and fails to mention birth defects or genetic damage by name. It has a very small graph showing the radioactivity of used fuel compared to natural uranium. It uses double logarithmic scales on both the time and radioactivity scales. The equally spaced time points on the graph are 10-2, 100, 102, 104, 106 this translates to three days, one year, 100 years, 10,000 years and 1 million years. The radioactivity scale is equally confusing. For ordinary people a more useful discussion can be found in a talk by Dr. Cathy Vakil, Queen’s University, Department of Family Medicine. To find it go to YouTube and search for “Radioactivity, Health and the Nuclear Industry, Dr. Cathy Vakil”. Or Google “Chernobyl’s Children” if you want to see how these “hazards” play out in real life. It is misleading and dishonest to talk about the “hazards” of radioactive fuel without being clearer about cancer, genetic damage and birth defects. This is not a good start to a community information process that purports to be open and honest. Yours Sincerely, Tony McQuail 86016 Creek Line, RR 1, Lucknow, ON By Hilary LongSpecial to The Citizen See histories and historic photographs on the Huron History section of our website www.northhuron.on.ca The Citizen