It appears that politics in small town Canada is about the same as it is in the USA. I was reading a story about an Ottawa man that had purchased a vertical axis wind turbine to put in his back yard that would produce about 15% of his electrical bill. .

Ottawa has a local ordinance against structures in your yard higher that 5 meters. It happens that the vertical axis wind turbine has to be installed at least 10 meters high for it to produce the power it is designed to produce. That same bylaw require the vertical axis wind turbine to be set far back from the property line that separates Mr. Findlay’s lot from those of his neighbors, but his yard is too small to meet the requirement..

Mr.Findlay petitioned the city’s committee of adjustment to grant him an exception to those bylaws but had a few of his neighbors, that had some concerns about safety, voice decent until the safety issue was resolved. Of course he had some that also voiced agreement with installing the vertical axis wind turbine to generate his own electricity..

As with all political decisions at the time of request the decision was to “look for a way to make it happen” but the committee also wanted to have an engineer look at the safety issue. Mr. Findlay said the support for the vertical axis wind turbine was strong, well-anchored, and designed so it can only fall toward his own property. .

I am of the opinion that one citizens request, without a good sum of money backing him, wasn’t enough to sway the powers that be. That is one reason I like living in the county though the restriction are starting to get fairly tight there also.

As an update posted on 10/03/08 jamborees wrote: The city committee turned down the application on Thursday. Good thing too, with this behind them they can return to the real business of helping large developers run roughshod over these same neighborhood zoning bylaws. read the whole story here.

As you can probably imagine the rest of the comments are a little derogatory toward politician but to be fair they do have to consider the good of the community and the cash flow coming into the city coffers..

At any rate installing wind or solar energy to save money on your electrical bill is a fantastic idea. I would applaud anyone that uses clean, pollution free, renewable energy to produce electricity and save money on their electrical bill. .

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