Please check the maps in our documents and links page to see what the Marlborough wind project in North Gower-Richmond looks like, in terms of impact on the community.
One map shows the 2-km impact; this is based on the recent announcement by the Society for Wind Vigilance–a group of international scientists and health care professionals–that a 2-km setback is the MINIMUM for health and safety.
The other map shows the impact out to 3.2 km on property values. This is based on the 40% AVERAGE property value loss determined by U.S. real estate appraiser Michael McCann.
If you live in North Gower-Richmond, be sure to be sitting down before you look at the maps.
And then remember that then-president of Prowind Cathy Weston wrote to a news paper last year that “wind farms” have the effect of protecting agricultural land from further housing development. No kidding.
Email us at northgowerwindactiongroup@yahoo.ca
Four major studies in two countries of 41,000 total real estate transactions prove that there are no long term impacts on real estate values due to wind turbines.
Short term dips are due to fear before wind farms go into operation. Basically, anti-wind advocacy groups promote fear that has a temporary negative effective on the market. The evidence shows that once a wind farm is up and running, real estate values near wind turbines accelerate past prices further away.
http://www.quora.com/Wind-Power/Do-wind-turbines-reduce-the-value-of-nearby-properties/answer/Mike-Barnard
We’ll just answer you once on this issue, for both your comments. We have advice from several real estate appraisers (AACIs) and statistical experts who say that all those studies–many of them funded by the corporate wind industry–are not correct.
Work done by Hoen is not consistent and used so many data points that it could not have a reasonable conclusion. Mike McCann of Chicago has critiqued Hoen’s work. Hoen and Berkley received $500,000 from the wind industry to do that study. See http://www.windfarmrealities.org under property values to see more commentary.
There several very credible studies e.g., the Appraisal One Group, McCann as mentioned, Albert Wilson, and Clarkson (2011); the latter was an independent study done by a university group, NOT commissioned by the wind industry.
At the moment in Ontario, there are properties on the shores of Lake Erie that have been for sale for years. Estimates now are that property values within 3.2 km decline by an AVERAGE of 40%.
Let’s let Mr Hoen himself speak: he now says that wind power developers ought to offer Property Value Guarantees and “if they can’t do that, they really don’t have a leg to stand on.” (McCann M in Dirty Business: the reality of Ontario’s rush to wind power, page 108)