Better Plan, Wisconsin

GOT TURBINE TROUBLES or CONCERNS? 

Call 1-888-732-7234! The Coalition for Wisconsin Environmental Stewardship (CWESt) is a grass roots organization of made up of people concerned about the responsible placement of wind turbines. CWESt's primary goal is to provide a central source for both  gathering and giving out reliable information about industrial wind plant siting, issues relating to the industrial wind turbines and the effects on residents.  CWESt will take your concerns and information to our legislators in Madison. The number is good 24/7! The BPRC applauds CWESt for providing us with this very helpful resource.

What a difference 18 days makes!

These two email messages were sent to us within 18 days of each other.

The resident who sent them asked that their name be withheld for now but has given us permission to post them.

The BPRC has verified this resident's name and address, and we are glad to have information from someone who can tell us what life is like now that the turbines are up and running. We are told others in the area are others having problems too.

If you are having turbine troubles, please contact us with your story by clicking here.

First email: MARCH 10, 2008
Message: Would you please send me a DVD of the interviews with residents, and is there a way to get a hold of a DVD of the turbine that exploded? I’d appreciate it. Dial up in the country has no streaming video.
We live in the township of Marshfield, the Blue Sky Green Field project.
They are right out in my backyard but not hooked up yet so we don’t know how noisy they will be
Thanks
(name withheld)
Township of Marshfield
Fond Du Lac County

Second Email MARCH 28, 2008

Subject: BLUE SKY GREEN FIELD
Message: They’re here.

    Now what for us? We tried to tell them before but only now are they ready to listen. Too late!
    We have five acres right in the Blue Sky/ Green Field project. We can see the (name withheld) turbine out of our dining room window.
    One of the turbines is very close to us, but we can’t measure without trespassing or paying someone to use their special equipment to measure it. Their GPS says none of the other turbines is closer than 1000 feet from a habitable structure. Not property line, mind you. If the darn thing fell this way it would most likely be in my back yard.
    I can see turbines out of every window in my house, there is no escaping it, and it’s driving me nuts already. It’s the constant movement. And the noise woke me up in the middle of the night last night. It wasn’t the turbine itself making the noise but the pulsating howl of the wind hitting it. Maybe that’s one of their loopholes.
    One of my neighbors, a land owner who is hosting a windmill, called me yesterday to ask if I could get my local T.V. stations because he couldn’t and didn’t know who to call. Luckily another land owner/host had already given me contact info with the express wish that I not tell anyone where I got the information from. They both wish they had not done this.
    My question is, Now What? Have you any idea if we have any legal recourse? We have not received a cent in any way. There was a supposed payment made for people in our position, but the town board decided we didn’t need to get any payments. We would realize it in our lower property taxes. Our taxes were higher this year than they have ever been.
    I don’t know where to start, get a lawyer on my own, or try to get all of us together to find a lawyer, I know that other people have fought them successfully bit I can’t find any info on how they did it.
    I hate the thought of leaving our home of ten years, but this will drive me to distraction. I’ve had a constant headache for nearly three weeks and the doctor has no idea why.
    I’d appreciate hearing any ideas you might have.
 
THANK YOU  
 (name withheld)
Town of Marshfield
Fond Du Lac County

NOTE FROM THE BPRC RESEARCH NERD:  If you are having turbine troubles, something you can do immediately is keep a record of what is happening to you. Each day write down what problems you are having with noise or shadow strobing, what time it happened, and how long it lasted. Just a few sentences a day is all it takes and it will go a long way to establishing a credible record of events that may be valuable later.

Here is another letter from a Wisconsin woman who is having trouble living near turbines:

To Jim Lepinski, Public Service Commissioner:

I am writing in disgust to you about the wind turbine project that went up around the town of Brownsville. My family and I live in the township of Leroy. We came to live out here about five and a half years ago, looking for a nice community to live in and raise our children. We thought we had found an area where people would look out after one another and show decent good values towards their neighbors. Obviously this is not the place, nor the people that I thought were out here. Now all I hear when I go outside to my once quiet yard is that thumping swishing noise created by those stupid wind turbines. Not to mention how ugly those things are with their stupid red lights on top of them.

I feel like we now live in the middle of an industrial park! If I wanted to live in an industrial park with noise and lights we would have lived in a city. We chose to live on a quiet rural road where no real disturbing sounds existed up until now. We were never in favor for those things to go up around here. I have never heard anything good about living next to them and now I know it as a fact.

My husband did go to a couple of the town hearings before they voted to put them up, only to have fallen on deaf ears. I think maybe those who were supposed to be listening to the opposers of this project were probably doodling while their pleas were being said. My husband and I are tax paying upright citizens, who have worked hard for what we have. We have done nothing but renovate our house, trying to make it a nice home, only to have you and your people knock it all down.

The really great thing is, you don't care. No one cares. Do you live next to these things? I bet none of you do. I am personally inviting you to come out to our house while they are turning, which is ninety percent of the time, so you can hear for yourself what a nuisance these things are. Thank you so much for considering people like me. You know it takes us average middle class citizens to make your stupid townships and counties go round. Do we deserve this? If you guys think they are so great, why don't you put them up in YOUR backyards! I don't care what anyone says, you all sold your souls to the devil for a little bit of money.

You had men put these things up, and they can take them down. This is not a God-made creation, they are man-made pieces of junk that are creating a lot of noise in my yard. I want something done about this! Start making laws that protect innocent citizens like us from this stupid project. I don't care if you need to try and save the Earth this way, but you should not be allowed to disrupt people's lives in the process.