RICHMOND – South of urban Ottawa, the Schouten brothers are embracing green energy in more ways than one.

First, Ed Schouten has agreed to lease land to Kemptville-based Prowind to build four wind turbines on his dairy farm and his dairy partner brother Rick is building a methane digester.

But it’s not so easy. There were endless studies and as for the wind turbines, one neighbour turned activist is whipping up a frenzy of fear among those in the area, just northwest of North Gower, said Ed Schouten, of Cornerview Farms.

The activist has asked for more studies and will throw any argument at anyone who will listen in hopes that one objection will stick, Schouten said. "The argument now is that people will get sick. You can study this forever. It’s already been studied. The landowners who live with these turbines never get sick."

Schouten said he visited Huron County where there are hundreds of wind turbines. Turbines do make noise and some days you can hear them, Schouten said but in the two days that he was in Huron County, he didn’t hear a thing.

"What we are doing (south of Ottawa) is absolutely nothing compared to Huron County."

He agrees that the turbines shouldn’t be too close to houses. A new provincial law restricts wind turbines within 880-metres of a house. In Huron County some are 550 metres away from peoples’ homes, he said.

Schouten likes the wind turbines on farmland because, he says, "it enables us to keep farming. You put a turbine on your property and it keeps developers away. They won’t come knocking. They won’t build houses in areas with turbines."

As far as the current project goes, Schouten expects it may take another year or two before the turbines are up and running.

His brother Rick said that when the funding was in place for a methane digester they decided to get into it right away. Funding offered up to 40 per cent of project costs up to $400,000.

The 500kilowatt/hour digester will be powered by cattle manure. The farm milks about 450 cows. Surprisingly, the digester will increase its power production at least eight times using oil and grease from restaurant traps, he said. He said that the tipping fees and earnings from extra power generated from the oil and grease that made the project profitable for their farm. "You can add anything organic" to the digester as long as you have the manure, he said. The microbes in the manure are necessary to turn the waste into energy, he said.

The digester, constructed by Powerbase, is slated to be completed before the end of the year. But there are still some unanswered questions. They don’t know what the hook-up charge will be and Hydro One isn’t saying. "We still don’t have answers to that one," Schouten said.