A Wolfe Island couple’s argument that nearby wind turbines significantly decreased their home’s value has been rejected by Ontario’s assessment review board.
The appeal by Ed and Gail Kenney was being closely watched in rural Ontario, where turbine developments have provoked both support and opposition in local communities.
But the board said the Kenneys had failed to prove that the turbines scattered around their waterfront home have reduced its value.
“We’re incredibly disappointed,” Ed Kenney said in an interview.
“We’re not dissuaded,” he said. “We have concerns that our rights to fair and unbiased representation in the face of a province completely driven by the current agenda have been trampled.”
MPAC, the Municipal Property Assessment Corp., assessed the property near Kingston, Ont., at $357,000 in 2009.
That was up from the earlier level of $200,000, which had been set before a major wind power development came to Wolfe Island.
This is not a surprise to anyone that’s been actually following the issue. Lawrence Berkeley Labs concluded as much in a comprehensive 2009 study –
…based on the data sample and analysis presented here, no evidence is found that home prices surrounding wind facilities are consistently, measurably, and significantly affected by either the view of wind facilities or the distance of the home to those facilities. Although the analysis cannot dismiss the possibility that individual homes or small numbers of homes have been or could be negatively impacted, it finds that if these impacts do exist, they are either too small and/or too infrequent to result in any widespread, statistically observable impact. Moreover, to the degree that homes and wind facilities in this sample are similar to homes and facilities in other areas of the United States, the results presented here are expected to be transferable to other areas.
And yet strangely, if you talk to REAL ESTATE agents, who work everyday with this sort of thing, people will take a home without a turbine in sight, any day over one where they can see a turbine. You might also want to ask the contractor in Port Elgin who had people walk away from sales agreements due to a wind turbine going up near their subdivision, whether there was any affect on his sales.
And why is it now mandatory, in Ontario, that you HAVE to disclose in any house sale agreement, whether there are any future plans for wind development in the area. Like the disclosure clauses that they used to have for UFI? Wonder why that is.
in part because of the far right wing disinformation campaign about wind power, which I will be further exposing
in upcoming videos and posts. Climate Deniers and Windbaggers hope that if they repeat something often enough it will become true. This worked for Dorothy, but she had magic ruby slippers.
So go back and tell your handlers that I’m coming after them, they are liars, and their lies will be exposed.
Actually, I know for a fact that in Ontario, you MUST disclose any plans for wind turbines to be built in your area, having just sold a house a couple of months ago. You HAVE to disclose any information about possible wind turbines being erected, or else the buyers can either come back on you, or walk away.
I would still like to know why that is if there’s no effect.
Dadgummit. A rumor from that famous well known person Donna Quixote is all I need to get me movin away from them pesky windmills. I think I’ll just find my self a nice shack somewhere by a gas station, with a nice view of coal smokestacks. Not too far from that highway overpass and that cell phone tower though. I hate dropped calls. Kinda quaint aint it?
I can see the rabid blowhards at Wind Concerns Ontario getting a knicker-twist out of this. They are pretty quick to shout down any thing that casts even the slightest positive aspect to wind power generation.
I can understand being impassioned by the WCO crowd is so polarized I wonder is they’re descendants of US rightwing draft dodgers.