And the answer is, no. But it depends who you are.
Let’s tell you something first: do you know how much the corporate wind developers are getting for their turbines? After debt payment etc., they are going to make $300,000 to $400,000 per turbine, per year. (Figures from Dr John Harrison and others)
What are farm owners getting? Well, since their contracts contain a virtual gag order, they’re not allowed to talk about any details (clever tactic for the corporate wind developers), so there is no clear idea, but some have been getting as little as $7,500 per turbine a year, while others are getting $10,000 or more…as much as $20,000 per turbine.
This is all due in Ontario to the huge subsidies the government is paying the wind developers. Wind itself, being inefficient, unreliable and inexpensive, doesn’t make any financial sense without the subsidies. Dragon’s Den star and fund manager Kevin O’Leary knows this and says he wouldn’t touch a wind developer as an investment.
Money aside, leasing land for wind turbines will tear your community apart. People you’ve known for years, helped out at haying time for example, will be upset with you. And later, when people start feeling the health effects from the noise and vibration, and when property values drop, you’ll be nobody’s friend.
Here’s a snippet from a farm owner testifying at the Public Commission on siting wind turbines in Wisconsin:
It’s been 2 years now with the turbines and everyone in the community is irritable and short, they snap back. The best of friends for 35 years, but everyone just snaps. People are not really mad directly at the wind turbines or even know what they are mad about, they’re just mad, aggressive.
The closest one to my house is 3,000 feet away — way too close.
You don’t get sleep at night because they roar like at an airport. I get shadow flicker in my house, but down in the village of Johnsburg where those are about another 1,500 feet away from the turbines — oh probably 4,500 feet total those blades are throwing shadows right over all the house roof tops in entire village … that’s really bad.
All of our tv’s got knocked out too. I can only get local channels when the turbine is turned in a certain direction. 97% of the time, we got no reception. There is no mitigation either.
I go to the doctor and now I’m on a lot of different medications. I’ve been to the hospital a couple of times in the past two years with chest pains. And they just can’t figure out what it is, but now we’re all being diagnosed with wind turbine syndrome.
And I sure got it. It definitely causes depression. Memory loss is the worse issue. I see it so bad in myself and especially my parents who are older. But they are at the point where they just don’t care anymore because there’s nothing they can do anyhow.
My dad is a totally different person since these things went up. He stays in bed all day now. Even if he does get up to eat, he just goes back to bed. There is no will anymore. I ask the doctor — how are they doing this to us? He just says he doesn’t know.
We Energies called today and they are going to be spraying for weeds, so I asked if there were any more plans for windmills? They said, they don’t know. I told em … “This area is completely destroyed, it would make more sense to just put a few up around here as opposed to destroying the rest of the state.”
I got turbines and the money doesn’t pay off in the end. I’ve gotta spend more on cutting around those things and all them cables. It has destroyed my farmland.
I feel really bad for the folks who don’t have contracts cause they’re still all stuck. Even if a realtor wants to sell a place, the first question a buyer asks is if there are windmills in the area. They just hang up.
They should be paying everyone around who is affected, that way – everyone who wants to move could get out and move. So many want to move and leave, but they can’t sell their property. The developers deny devaluation, but it’s real … the ones without contracts lost half the value of their property and can’t move because they have no money, still trying to pay off their homes. At least if you got contracts and enough windmills, you can move out.
It turned out to be a real shocker. This whole thing is not right, it should not be done in small communities, but you know, these are just simple country folk who do just don’t say anything. Even if it’s bad, they just go along with it cause what else are they supposed to do?
If I could write out a check from all the money they gave me and give it back, wake up tomorrow morning and all the turbines be gone, that’d be the best thing that ever happened to me.
Considering leasing land for wind turbines: take care. And call a lawyer.
NorthGowerWindTurbines 