Dear Herald: No one says "windmills" anymore

So Scotian Windfield has won a contract in our poorly-structured renewable energy strategy to build 20 commercial turbines (may not be exactly as shown) in Digby County. Same kind, near as I can tell, as the ones that pepper Europe, difference being that we have no feed-in tariff system to make buy-in from the grassroots happen.

SOOOOooo what happens instead? Emu farmers (yes, that great Nova Scotian livestock staple, emus) worry that the 'industrial noise' will frighten the birds literally to death. This is a new take on the old 'wind turbines kill birds' saw. I wonder if the farmers also were active in agitating against the quarry, which it seems to me would be responsible for wAAAYyyyy more machinery noise. Turbines, except during construction, sound like "Whooosh whooosh".... a bit like wind or waves. If a wind / wave sound scares emus, perhaps Digby is not an ideal locale for them. Sayin.

The other concern the farmers raise is that one of their family has epilepsy, which seizures can be triggered by light strobing. Fair enough. The issue of setbacks rears its head again. The municipal bylaw determining proper distance from dwellings of turbines doesn't apply to these ones because they are built under a development agreement, according to the Herald. At some point very soon the government provincially is going to have to release some rules around setbacks and get the whole thing settled.

It's sad to see another negative story about wind developments which should hold such promise for this province, reducing our reliance on imported energy, and reducing our pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Unfortunately, the system seems stacked against renewables because of the top-down nature of the process.

Read the Herald story here; and someone please have the headline writer tell me why "windmills" is used here. There must be a reason. Do people outside the environmental realm still call these tall, sleek, beautiful, structures windmills?

*****

A personal note: Great weekend. I'm trying to not 'dear diary' as much here, but just wanted to note that. Played supergeeky Zombies at Scott's; finally saw Borat, which was much, much funnier than I ever expected; and Apocalypto, which was beautiful. Watched all of first season of Buffy. Had Peter over for supper. Went to Amy & Larry's for Easter dinner with Kylene and Amelia; and Sean's coming for supper today. One of these things will be discussed in greater detail in the pen-and-paper journal. Probably Zombies.