Blanding’s turtle halts wind project

Concern for the Blanding’s turtle trumps a proposed wind development project in Prince Edward County, an Ontario tribunal has ruled.

“I believe it is the first time that the ERT has rejected the issuance of a Renewable Energy Approval by the director of the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change,” said Chris Paliare of Paliare Roland Rosenberg Rothstein in Toronto, which represented the Prince Edward County South Shore Conservancy. “( The turtles) are an endangered species that needs protection more than we need additional wind turbines.”

The turtle, it turns out, is a veteran of Ontario’s justice system, having been thrust into prominence about four years ago when the Environment Ministry issued a permit to Ostrander Point GP. In 2013, the ERT revoked that decision.

On appeal, the Divisional Court ruled in the project’s favour and struck the ERT’s ruling.

But in 2015, on further appeal, Ontario’s top appellate court agreed with the ERT that the conservationists had satisfied the “environmental harm” test in the Environmental Protection Act.

Still, the Court sent the case back to the ERT for reconsideration of the appropriate remedy. On June 6, the tribunal ultimately revoked the permit for the wind project.

Although the project’s proponents argued that the imposition of new mitigating conditions would satisfy the threat to the Blanding’s turtle, the tribunal upheld its original decision revoking the permit. Additional or revised conditions would not preserve the species, the ERT ruled.

“The tribunal finds that a small number of i ndividual adult turtles will be killed annually, that poaching will not be reduced but rather facilitated, and that there will be no measurable change to the impacts of predation,” the reasons state.

“The tribunal finds that these harms cumulatively over the lifetime of the Project will cause irreversible harm to the local population, and lead to the eventual loss of the population.”