Editor’s note:  The following was written by Ms. Melissa Ware, a resident of Victoria, Australia, to Australia’s popular radio talk-show host, Alan Jones.  Melissa and her family have been devastated by Wind Turbine Syndrome, as she describes to Mr. Jones.  You can listen to an interview of Melissa and her partner, here.

Alan Jones is a vigorous critic of the wind energy scam and its health impacts.  He is, as well, a champion of the “little guy” against big business and big, brutal, dumb government.

Click here for a PDF of her letter.  Melissa wrote another, somewhat different letter to the Prime Minister, the Honorable Tony Abbott.  Titled “Wind Farm Impacts,” it, too, is worth reading (PDF).

 Dear Mr. Jones,

I have been meaning to contact you for some time since seeing you host the Canberra Rally last year and listening to your superb radio interviews about ‘wind farms’. I wish to express my gratitude for your wonderful ability to speak so loudly and forcibly on behalf of ordinary Australians being segregated and becoming wind farm refugees, through no fault of our own.  Your catch phrase, “why not put them in Macquarie St.?” is bittersweet, as I wouldn’t wish more IWT suffering on anyone.

Lack of knowledge and simple trust, faith that everything would be fine were my failing. Alas, life living inside a wind facility complex is one of torture that does not end.  Noise day and night, night and day for years.  With rare respite, we live about 800 metres from an industrial facility with 22 nearby turbines — a noise-induced, and mental, emotional, physical and spiritual nightmare.

Unfortunately my sensitivity to my environment, its sounds and energy so precious a skill that aids my bi-lateral hearing impairment, now appears a hindrance with the constant industrial noise and vibration endured inside and outside my home and property here at Cape Bridgewater. Ears and body buffeted, exhausted from the bombardment. At times in desperation I want to flee and never be near or lay eyes on a turbine again.

My partner, my eleven year old son, and I each suffer as a direct result of the Cape Bridgewater wind facility.  There is no protection, no likelihood of protection for any of us from this noise abuse and industrial intrusion we have been enduring for the past five years.  And it is unbearable.

Between you and me, I would give anything for the ‘nocebo theory’ to be true, and symptoms resulting directly by being physically violated by this unnatural noise vibration and energy pulsations to not exist — and to be all in my head. Positive thinking is powerful and gets me through each day but cannot, does not, stop infrasound and my solid-stone house vibrating, or our declining health.

Melissa Ware

I live isolated on a rural farm, and fifteen or so years ago could find no relevant information on wind farms using Google.  No one from the Department of Health, Department of Planning or EPA local or otherwise has shown any concern or interest in us. There is no management plan to deal with this disaster other than to subject us to minimilisation, dismissal, or be given a colossal run-around.

How can it be that workers, businesses etc abide by health and safety laws, established through good practice, undertake management and action plans, follow the law to protect workers and clients, yet our own government fails to follow the rules and is failing in duty of care?

Writing letters, sending e-mails hasn’t worked.  What will?

Quality of home life is unbearable.  Yesterday I sent the letter and message below to Mr. Abbott etc. with hope that another small voice of distress may be heard and changes can be made to protect us and so many others about to be subjected to living inside a wind facility.

Sincerely,

Melissa Ware
1/31/14

—Muriel Blair (Ontario, Canada)

I believe, probably without justification, that I live in a democratic society.  One with freedom of speech, the right to peaceful assembly and the expectation that those who are elected to office are working with the good of all in mind.

In fact this is far from the truth, and I am beginning to understand that my freedoms and the freedoms of my fellow Ontarians are contingent on following the word of our (dare I say it?) criminal politicians.

Should you follow with sheep-like devotion the decrees handed down to you, you can wear the badge of freedom.  Should you believe the lies, whether they wear the green label or promises of a great economic future in the hands of Chinese-owned companies, then you will be afforded the freedoms that democracy boasts of.

But, should you question the actions and lies fed to the intubated masses, then you are targeted. Your rights and freedoms are no longer. Goose-step in time with the Gestapo’s, or be labelled and condemned to be one of the black sheep, destined to be known as a trouble-maker.

Keep in mind that I am referring to hard-working citizens.  Mothers, fathers, grandparents, community leaders, teachers and community volunteers. I am talking about people whose only flaw is that they care about how their communities look and feel. They care about what legacy their children and grandchildren will inherit. And they give a damn about their rights and freedoms.

Their homes are not just boxes to live in, but are the world where children are raised and loved, life is lived and memories are made. To these residents who choose to speak out, their homes and their lives are synonymous with their communities.

Make no mistake, greed and corruption are taking all this away — destroying the fabric of rural Ontario and rendering our province into a totalitarian state. Are my emails being monitored? Perhaps they are. Has fear gripped my heart? You betcha.  The likelihood that I am under police surveillance is very real.

Even so, I cannot stand by and let injustice prevail. I need to speak out, and I need to move forward in my desire to protect my province from the economic catastrophe that will destroy all our communities.

I look to people like Malala Yousufzai, Eve Ensler, Martin Luther King, the Dalai Lama, Esther Wrightman, Marcelle Brooks — and everyone else who puts themselves out there to speak the truth. It’s often not comfortable.  It’s their honesty and genuine belief that they can make a difference that inspires me.

The comfort zone is a nice place, but nothing grows there.  Nothing at all. In fact, things rot in the comfort zone. Ontario is in that comfort zone right now.

I hope that everyone reading this finds their own Malala or Esther to inspire them to keep up the fight.

This fight will not be won without casualties.  Chatham Kent, Haldimand and now North Middlesex, to name a few. I say, let’s band together — we all know what’s happening and we all know that it’s wrong. (Even the Ontario Provincial Police who may be monitoring my emails, and Esther Wrightman’s, know it’s wrong.)  As my colleague Marcelle Brooks always says, “Your silence gives consent.”

Nothing could be truer than that statement.

Our blog, the Middlesex-Lambton Wind Action Group, may be loud, we may be obnoxious at times, but we’re honest and we’ve got nothing to hide. We are fortunate that we have fighters on board who are willing to stand up to what is wrong, and they inspire the rest of us to move forward.

“Proof wind turbines take thousands off your home: Value of houses within 1.2 miles of large wind farms slashed by 11%, study finds” 

• Study by the London School of Economics found value of homes close to wind farms slashed by 11%
• Home that costs £250,000 would lose £27,000 in value
• Homes as far at two-and-a-half miles away could be reduced by 3% 

.
—Sanchez Manning, MailOnline (1-25-14)

The presence of wind turbines  near homes has wiped tens of thousands of pounds off their value, according to the first major study into the impact the eyesore structures have on house prices.

The study by the London School  of Economics (LSE) – which looked at more than a million sales of properties close to wind farm sites over a 12-year period – found that values of homes within 1.2  miles of large wind farms were being slashed by about 11 per cent.

This means that if such a wind farm were near an average house  in Britain, which now costs almost £250,000, it would lose more than £27,000 in value.

In sought-after rural idylls where property prices are higher, the financial damage is even more substantial. In villages around one of Southern England’s largest onshore developments – Little Cheyne Court Wind Farm in Romney Marsh,  Kent, where homes can cost close to £1 million – house values could drop by more than £100,000.

The study further discovered that even a small wind farm that blighted views would hit house values.

Homes within half a mile of such visible turbines could be reduced in value by about seven per cent.

Even those in a two-and-a-half-mile radius experienced price reductions of around three per cent.

The report’s author, Professor Steve Gibbons, said his research was the first strong evidence that wind farms are harmful to house prices.

Prof. Gibbons, director of the LSE’s Spatial Economics Research Centre, said: ‘Property prices are going up in places where they’re not visible and down in the places where they are.’

The study, which is still in draft form but is due to be published  next month, focused on 150 wind-farm sites across England and Wales. It compared house-price changes in areas that had wind farms, were about to see one built  or had seen one rejected by the  local authority.

Last night Chris-Heaton Harris, MP for Daventry, said: ‘There’s plenty of anecdotal evidence – especially in my constituency – of house-price reductions near wind turbines. The question is, will anybody be liable for these losses in future?’

And Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the LSE, said: ‘These results are not really surprising as it is already known that people place a value on countryside views.’

A Department for Energy and Climate Change spokesman said: ‘Developments will only get permission where impacts are acceptable.’

A spokesman for Renewables UK, which represents the wind industry, said: ‘We will be analysing the conclusions closely when the final report is issued.’