The Wind Rush is a compelling documentary that examines the unintended consequences of wind energy projects on communities. It sheds light on the balance between renewable energy goals and residents’ health and quality of life.

Driving by a wind farm and looking at the rural houses, it’s easy to be skeptical about the talk of wind turbines making people sick. We’re told that wind turbines are good and green. So, how could those people living by them have an issue? 

But there is a problem—and it’s there because some governments and wind companies didn’t do their homework before installing megawatt after megawatt of giant industrial machines. As a result, people living near the turbines are suffering. 

In the new documentary film WIND RUSH, produced for CBC Doc Zone by Toronto’s 90th Parallel Productions, southern Ontario is the battleground for the pro- and anti-wind forces. The government there pledged to wean the province off coal-fired generation plants and replace them with green wind energy. 

But as soon as the turbines went up in places like Wolf Island, Amaranth, and Bruce County, people realized they could hear them. Sometimes it was like a whisper, but other times it sounded like a jet taking off. 

And then it got worse.

New turbines started coming in at two to three times the size of the old ones. And they were even louder. It led to chronic sleeplessness for many people living close by — and that can lead to diabetes, depression, and heart disease. Others were affected in their inner ears by low-level sounds that set off their equilibrium. Doctors started seeing patients after patients complained of the same set of symptoms. Then, people realized that no one had done any significant human health studies before giving the green light to the turbine farms.

WIND RUSH takes viewers to southwestern Alberta, where wind has been an energy staple for over twenty years. There is plenty of room for humans and windmills to coexist—a stark contrast to Ontario, where the same prairie technology was installed in a dramatically different landscape. The film then moves to Denmark, a country long considered the poster child for the wind energy movement. But as WIND RUSH reveals, the relationship between the Danes and turbines has soured.

WIND RUSH talks to people on either side of the turbine divide and then turns to scientists to determine what has gone wrong. In the next several years, the turbines will double in size again—bigger, louder, and more powerful. But have the people who live among the wind farms been forgotten without sufficient research?

You can watch and learn more about “The Wind Rush” online by following this link: Doc Zone | CBC-TV.