Better Plan, Wisconsin

From New York State

RESIDENTS IN WIND-TURBINE SHADOW SEEK NOISE, OTHER RELIEF

Source: LittleFallsTimes.com

September 7, 2011

By Linda Kellett

Fairfield, N.Y. —

“I don’t know how long my wife and I can stand it. It’s on and off. You can never get used to it.

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From Michigan

RESIDENTS VOICE CONCERNS OVER WIND FARM NEWS

SOURCE:Connect Mid Michigan

September 7, 2011

SAGINAW COUNTY -- The Blumfield Township Planning voted Tuesday night to amend an ordinance banning a company from building a wind turbine within 500 ft. to 1400 ft. of a residential home.

Several wind turbines could be built in Blumfield Township. They are part of $250 million dollar project by NextEra Energy Resources that would span over Bay, Tuscola and Saginaw counties.

Several dozen residents turned out for a 7:00 p.m. meeting at the Blumfield Township Hall.

Many residents told NBC25 they attended the meeting in hopes of finding out more information on the project and to voice their concerns.

"I'm not against wind farm energy but I think the township should study alternatives before they make any decisions," said Emil Muellar, who owns property in Blumfield Township.

"I am concerned about the wind noise. We need to know how safe they are. How does it affect us and if it will affect our property values," said Roseanna DuRussel.

"There's a lot of questions. There's more questions thatn there are answers," said Blumfield Township resident Don Wendland.

Blumfield Township Planning Commission Board Chairman Bruce Landskroener said Tuesday's meeting was just to approve an ordinance amendment banning a company from building a wind turbine within 500 ft. to 1400 ft. of a residential home. They board voted to approve the change. Landskroener said the Planning Commission would recommend to the Blumfield Township board to bring in experts to answer any questions residents have.

"I think they need to do a little more research. I think everyone was disappointed they didn't have any answers, said DuRussel.

From the U.S.

TEXAS WIND ENERGY FAILS AGAIN

Source: National Review Online, www.nationalreview.com

August 29, 2011

Robert Bryce

Wednesday brought yet another unspeakably hot day to Texas and, alas, it was yet another day when wind energy failed the state’s consumers.

Indeed, as record heat and drought continue to hammer the Lone Star State, the inanity of the state’s multi-billion-dollar spending spree on wind energy becomes ever more apparent. On Wednesday afternoon, ERCOT, the state’s grid operator, declared a power emergency as some of the state’s generation units began to falter under the soaring demand for electricity. Electricity demand hit 66,552 megawatts, about 1,700 megawatts shy of the record set on August 3.

As I wrote in these pages earlier this month, Texas has 10,135 megawatts of installed wind-generation capacity, which is nearly three times as much as any other state. And yet, on Wednesday, all of the state’s wind turbines mustered just 880 megawatts of power when electricity was needed the most. Put another way, even though wind turbines account for about 10 percent of Texas’s 103,000 megawatts of summer electricity-generation capacity, wind energy was able to provide just 1.3 percent of the juice the state needed on Wednesday afternoon to keep the lights on and the air conditioners humming.

None of this should be surprising. For years, ERCOT has counted just 8.7 percent of the state’s installed wind-generation capacity as “dependable capacity at peak.” What happened on Wednesday? Just 880 megawatts out of 10,135 megawatts of wind capacity — 8.68 percent — was actually moving electrons when consumers needed those electrons the most.

Apologists for the wind industry point to a single day in February, when, during a record cold snap, the state’s wind turbines were able to produce electricity when the grid was being stressed. Fine. On one day, wind generators produced more than expected. But the wind industry’s lobbyists want consumers to ignore this sun-bleached truth: Texas has far more super-hot days than it does frigid ones. Indeed, here in Austin, where I live, we’ve already had 70 days this summer with temperatures over 100 degrees, and there’s still no relief in sight. And on nearly every one of those hot days, ERCOT’s wind capacity has been AWOL. Each afternoon, as the temperature — and electricity demand — soars, the wind dies down:

This summer’s high demand for electricity has caught ERCOT off guard. In June, the grid operator projected that Texas’s electricity demand would not set any new records this summer. But demand is already exceeding levels that ERCOT didn’t expect to see until 2014. Over the past few weeks, as demand has strained the Texas grid, electricity prices have risen as high as $3,000 per megawatt-hour on the wholesale market, and large industrial users have been forced to curtail consumption in order to avoid blackouts.

And yet — and yet — the state is spending billions on projects that focus on wind energy rather than on conventional generation capacity. As Kate Galbraith of the Texas Tribune reported recently, the Texas Public Utility Commission is preparing the state’s ratepayers for higher prices. Consumers will soon be paying for new transmission lines that are being built solely so that the subsidy-dependent wind-energy profiteers can move electricity from their distant wind projects to consumers in urban areas.

Galbraith reports that “the cost of building thousands of miles of transmission lines to carry wind power across Texas is now estimated at $6.79 billion, a 38 percent increase from the initial projection three years ago.” What will that mean for the state’s ratepayers? Higher electricity bills. Before the end of the year, the companies building the transmission lines are expected to begin applying for “rate recovery.” The result, writes Galbraith, will be charges that “could amount to $4 to $5 per month on Texas electric bills, for years.”

Imagine what the state’s grid might look like if Texas, which produces about 30 percent of America’s gas, had spent its money on natural-gas-fired electricity instead of wind. The latest data from the Energy Information Administration shows that wind-generated electricity costs about 50 percent more than that produced by natural-gas-fired generators. Thus, not only would Texas consumers be saving money on their electric bills, the state government would be earning more royalties from gas produced and consumed in the state.

Further, consider what might be happening had the state kept the $6.79 billion it’s now spending on wind-energy transmission lines and instead allocated it to new natural-gas-fired generators. The latest data from the Energy Information Administration show that building a megawatt of new wind capacity costs $2.43 million — that’s up by 21 percent over the year-earlier costs — while a new megawatt of gas-fired capacity costs a bit less than $1 million, a drop of 3 percent from year-earlier estimates.

Under that scenario, Texas could have built 6,900 megawatts of new gas-fired capacity for what the state is now spending on wind-related transmission lines alone. Even if we assume the new gas-fired units were operating at just 50 percent of their design capacity, those generators would still be capable of providing far more reliable juice to the grid than what is being derived from the state’s wind turbines during times of peak demand.

Unfortunately, none of those scenarios have played out. Instead, Texas ratepayers are being forced to pay billions for wind-generation and transmission capacity that is proving to be ultra-expensive and redundant at a time when the state’s thirst for electricity is breaking records.

A final point: Keep in mind that the Lone Star wind boondoggle is not the result of Democratic rule. Environmentalists have never gained much purchase at the Texas capitol. In fact, the state hasn’t had a Democrat in statewide office since Bob Bullock retired as lieutenant governor, and Garry Mauro retired from the General Land Office, back in 1999. That same year, Gov. George W. Bush signed legislation that created a renewable-energy mandate in the state.

What about Rick Perry, a politico who frequently invokes his support for the free market? In 2005, he signed a mandate requiring the state to have at least 6,000 megawatts of renewable capacity by 2015. Perry’s support has been so strong that a wind-energy lobbyist recently told the New York Times that the governor, who’s now a leading contender for the White House, has “been a stalwart in defense of wind energy in this state, no question about it.”

And during his last election campaign, Sen. John Cornyn, one of the Senate’s most conservative members, ran TV ads showing pretty pictures of — what else? — wind turbines.

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THE NEW POLICE SIREN: YOU'LL FEEL IT COMING

SOURCE: The New York Times

February 25, 2011

By Ariel Kaminer

Joe Bader tried setting the two tones of his invention four notes apart on the musical scale, but the result sounded like music, not a siren. Same thing when he played around with a five-note interval. But when he set the two tones apart by two octaves and gave the siren a test run outside the Florida Highway Patrol headquarters in Tallahassee, the effect was so attention-grabbing that people came streaming out of the building to see what the strange sound, with its unfamiliar vibrations, could possibly be.

Which was precisely what Mr. Bader, a vice president at the security firm Federal Signal Corporation, was going for: a siren that would make people sit up and take notice — even people accustomed to hearing sirens all the time. Even people wearing ear buds or talking on the phone. Even people insulated from street noise by a layer of glass and steel. Even New Yorkers.

Rumblers, as Mr. Bader called his invention, achieve their striking effect with a low-frequency tone, in the range of 180 to 360 hertz (between the 33rd and the 46th key on a standard piano keyboard), which penetrates hard surfaces like car doors and windows better than a high tone does. When it is paired with the wail of a standard siren, the effect is hard to ignore — like the combination of a bagpipe’s high chanter and low drone, or perhaps like a train whistle and the caboose that moves that whistle through space.

Following the lead of some other municipalities, the New York Police Department gave the devices two limited test runs beginning in 2007. It liked what it heard, with the result that a Rumbler will be coming soon to a police car near you — perhaps one speeding right at you in a high-speed chase through traffic- and pedestrian-clogged streets. And eventually to about 5,000 of the department’s more than 8,000 vehicles.

Some New Yorkers have already raised concerns that the Rumbler’s low-frequency vibration could be injurious to their health. The Police Department insists that there is nothing to worry about and invited me to experience the effect for myself. But when Officer Joe Gallagher, a department spokesman, considered the fact that I am in what used to be known as “a family way,” he suggested that I not actually ride in a Rumbler-equipped squad car. “I don’t want you sitting in the back and going into childbirth,” he said. “I’m not handy with that.”

I’m not so handy with it either, so I rode in Officer Gallagher’s car while Officers Jeff Donato and Matthew Powlett of the 10th Precinct drove ahead of us, Rumbling as they went.

We zoomed up the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive on what appeared to be the only day in recent history that it was free of traffic. When at last we did encounter at least a few other cars, the officers in the front car flipped on the Rumbler, switching among its sound effects: the wail, the yelp, the hi-lo, the fast stutter.

The Rumbler is no louder than a standard siren. In fact, it’s quieter — 10 decibels lower, which translates to only half the volume. But because low-frequency sound waves penetrate cars better than those at a higher pitch, drivers experience the Rumbler as much louder than a standard siren. That’s good news for pedestrians who might prefer not to be deafened, though not necessarily for the officers in Rumbler-equipped cars. To spare the officers’ ears, the device cuts off after eight seconds.

But the officers who demonstrated it for me said they had used it in repeated intervals for longer durations. And though Federal Signal describes the Rumbler as an “intersection-clearing device,” the officers also recounted using it while zipping up long stretches of highway. “It’s like the Red Sea parting,” Capt. Christopher Ikone said.

Low-frequency sound can have physical effects, like making you feel queasy. Enough, in fact, to be of interest to some weapons manufacturers, but their experiments take place at much lower frequencies and much higher amplification than the Rumbler employs. In fact, despite the siren’s name, the rumbling effect is subtle — far less than what you experience when an Escalade rolls up beside you at a stop light, tinted windows lowered, custom speakers blaring and thunder bass thumping. Hearing a Rumbler while standing on the street, I felt a slight tingle under my ribs; in Officer Gallagher’s car, I felt a gentle reverberation on the seat.

I can faithfully report that the Police Department’s newest and soon-to-be-ubiquitous emergency alert signal does not cause eyeglasses to sprout hairline cracks that branch out across the lens and hang there for one long moment before the entire thing shatters with a delicate “plink,” as in some Bugs Bunny cartoon. Nor does it reprogram the rhythm of your heartbeat, the way a loud song on the radio can make you completely forget what you’d been humming when you heard it. Nor does it induce premature labor in pregnant women. It may, however, have caused an innocent citizen heart palpitations.

As we zoomed back down the F.D.R. Drive, dual-tone sirens blaring so we could see the other cars scatter, the driver of a Toyota RAV4 apparently thought he was being singled out and pulled to a complete halt — in the left lane of the highway. That’s an unwise thing to do in any case; an extremely unwise thing to do when you’ve got a police cruiser right behind you.

If the driver did sustain any coronary distress from the incident, help was nearby: a Fire Department ambulance was driving just a bit farther south. As we passed, its siren let out a few warning bleats. But they were the old variety: one tone, no tingling. Compared with the basso profundo confidence of a Rumbler, it sounded like a jealous whine.

From Australia

WIND FARM NO-GO ZONES TO BE ESTABLISHED

SOURCE:ABC  www.abc.net.au

August 29, 2011

By Anthony Stewart

The State Government is set to introduce new planning rules that will restrict where wind farms can be constructed.

Sweeping changes to the rules governing the construction of wind farms in Victoria will be gazetted today.

The Planning Minister, Matthew Guy, has amended local government planning schemes and state planning provisions that will deliver on a Coalition election promise to create wind farm no-go zones.

Wind farms will be prohibited in areas including along the Great Ocean Road, Mornington Peninsula, Macedon and Yarra Ranges and Wilsons Promontory.

The Government has formalised the set-back policy that stops the construction of wind turbines within two kilometres of houses, without the consent of the owner of the home.

The amendment also blocks the construction of wind turbines within five kilometres of major regional centres, a change that had not previously been flagged by the State Government.

Russell Marsh from the Clean Energy Council says the two kilometre setback policy will result in billions of dollars in lost investment

“The two kilometre setback the Government was talking about would reduce investment in wind energy in Victoria by 50 and 70 per cent,” he said.

“We were forecasting over $3 billion in investment will disappear from Victoria because of the two kilometre setback policy.”

The State Opposition’s planning spokesman, Brian Tee, says the Government has changed planning rules by stealth.

He says the Planning Minister should have introduced legislation if he wanted to block wind farm development.

“He absolutely should have brought this to the Parliament because this is going to have serious consequences,” he said.

“He hasn’t got the balance right and the cost is going to be paid by the environment.”

SECOND STORY:

SOURCE: The Washington Post, www.washingtonpost.com

August 28,2011

By Darryl Fears,

Six birds found dead recently in Southern California’s Tehachapi Mountains were majestic golden eagles. But some bird watchers say that in an area where dozens of wind turbines slice the air they were also sitting ducks.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is investigating to determine what killed the big raptors, and declined to divulge the conditions of the remains. But the likely cause of death is no mystery to wildlife biologists who say they were probably clipped by the blades of some of the 80 wind turbines at the three-year-old Pine Tree Wind Farm Project, operated by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

As the Obama administration pushes to develop enough wind power to provide 20 percent of America’s energy by 2030, some bird advocates worry that the grim discovery of the eagles this month will be a far more common occurrence.

Windmills kill nearly half a million birds a year, according to a Fish and Wildlife estimate. The American Bird Conservancy projected that the number could more than double in 20 years if the administration realizes its goal for wind power.

The American Wind Energy Association, which represents the industry, disputes the conservancy’s projection, and also the current Fish and Wildlife count, saying the current bird kill is about 150,000 annually.

Over nearly 30 years, none of the nation’s 500 wind farms, where 35,000 wind turbines operate mostly on private land, have been prosecuted for killing birds, although long-standing laws protect eagles and a host of migrating birds.

If the ongoing investigation by the Fish and Wildlife Service’s law enforcement division results in a prosecution at Pine Tree, it will be a first. The conservancy wants stronger regulations and penalties for the wind industry, but the government has so far responded only with voluntary guidelines.

“It’s ridiculous. It’s voluntary,” said Robert Johns, a spokesman for the conservancy. “If you had voluntary guidelines for taxes, would you pay them?”

The government should provide more oversight and force operators of wind turbines to select sites where birds don’t often fly or hunt, the conservancy says. It also wants the wind industry to upgrade to energy-efficient turbines with blades that spin slower.

The lack of hard rules has caused some at the conservancy to speculate that federal authorities have decided that the killing of birds — including bald and golden eagles — is a price they are willing to pay to lower the nation’s carbon footprint with cleaner wind energy.

But federal officials, other wildlife groups and a wind-farm industry representative said the conservancy’s views are extreme. Wind farms currently kill far fewer birds than the estimated 100 million that fly into glass buildings, or up to 500 million killed yearly by cats. Power lines kill an estimated 10 million, and nearly 11 million are hit by automobiles, according to studies.

“The reality is that everything we do as human beings has an impact on the natural environment,” said John Anderson, director of siting policy for the wind-energy association.

 Next Story

WIND POWER IS DYING

SOURCE: frontpagemag.com

August 28, 2011

By Tait Trussell,

While the U.S. is dumping billions of dollars into wind farms and onshore and offshore wind turbines, this energy source is being cast aside as a failure elsewhere in the world.

Some 410 federations and associations from 21 European countries, for example, have united against deployment of wind farms charging it is “degrading the quality of life.”

The European Platform Against Wind farms (EPAW) is demanding “a moratorium suspending all wind farm projects and a “complete assessment of the economic, social, and environmental impacts of wind farms in Europe.” The EPAW said it objects to industrial wind farms which “are spreading in a disorderly manner across Europe” under pressure from “financial and ideological lobby groups,” that are “degrading the quality of life living in their vicinity, affecting the health of many, devaluing people’s property and severely harming wildlife.” A petition for a moratorium has been sent to the European Commission and Parliament, said EPAW chairman J.L Butre.

France, earlier his year ran into opposition to its plan to build 3,000 megawatts (MW) of offshore wind turbines by 2020. That year is the target date the European Union set for providing 20 percent of its energy through renewable sources. An organization called the Sustainable Environment Association, opposes wind power, saying the subsidies will “not create a single job in France.”

In Canada, Wind Concerns Ontario (WCO) has launched a province-wide drive against wind power. It said Aug. 8 it wants to ensure that the next government is clear that “there is broad based community support for a moratorium…and stringent environmental protection of natural areas from industrial wind development.” WCO claimed, “The Wind industry is planning a high powered campaign to shut down support” for the WCO’s aims. “Our goal is to store the petition until the next legislative session gets underway in the fall…”

The Netherlands has approximately 2,000 onshore and offshore wind turbines. But even though Holland is synonymous with windmills, the installed capacity of wind turbines in the Netherlands at large has been stagnant for the past three years, according to an article in February in the Energy Collective. It was 2237 megawatts (MW) at the end of 2011. That was said to be about 3.37 percent of total annual electricity production. The principal reason for the stagnant onshore capacity “is the Dutch people’s opposition to the wind turbines.” They are up to 400 feet in height.

The Dutch national wind capacity factor is a dismal 0.186. The German wind capacity factor “is even more dismal at 0.167,” the article said.

Expanding wind power to meet the European Union’s 20 percent renewables target by 2020 meant adding at least another thousand 3 MW, 450-foot wind turbines to the Dutch landscape “at a cost of about $6 billion.” Not surprisingly, the Dutch people found that to be far too costly—“an intrusion into their lives and an unacceptable return on their investment, especially when considering the small quantity of CO2 reduction per invested dollar.”

An added 3,000 MW of offshore turbines also was rejected. The capital cost was figured at $10 to $12 billion. The cost was judged to be too much and the wind energy produced too little. “The energy would have to be sold at very high prices to make the project feasible.” The article added, “The proposed Cape Wind project in Massachusetts is a perfect example of such a project.” Environmental Lawyer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in July wrote an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal blasting the project off Cape Cod as “a rip-off.” Recently, the Netherlands became the first country to abandon the European Union target of producing 20 percent of its domestic power from renewables by 2020.

In Denmark, the Danes became aware that the poor economics of their heavily-subsidized wind energy is a major reason for the nation’s high residential electric rates. Opposition to the gigantic onshore turbines was so great that the state-owned utility finally announced last year that it would abandon plans for any new onshore wind facilities.

The Energy Collective article also reported that a CEPOS (Center for Political Studies) study found that 90 percent of wind energy sector jobs were transferred from other technology industries and that only 10 percent of the wind industry jobs were newly created jobs. As a result, the study said, Danish GDP is $270 million lower than it would have been without wind industry subsidies.

The Australian government, like the U.S., has placed a major emphasis on deploying renewable sources of energy, especially wind energy. As in the U.S., Australia set a target of 20 percent of its energy to come from renewal sources by 2020. The government provides generous subsidies and tax breaks to wind energy developers. But medical studies on farmer families living within 5 miles of wind farms found health problems ranging from sleep deprivation to nausea. Similar health effects have been discovered in other locations, including in the U.S.

Because wind blows only intermittently, Britain has determined that it will have to construct an additional 17 natural gas-powered plants as back-ups to wind to keep the lights on by 2020. These plants will cost 10 billion pounds, according to a posting by the Institute for Energy Research. One analyst was quoted as saying, “Government’s obsession with wind turbines is one of the greatest blunders of our time.”

Onshore wind power today costs about $0.13 per kWh. That’s nowhere near either the objective of the U.S. Department of Energy or the cost of competing power sources. The wind turbines jutting into the sky all across the country exist only because of the massive federal subsidies. Is this considered a failure by Obama officials? No way. Obama’s 2012 budget proposal increases renewables spending by 33 percent.

Wind farms in Texas that will cost $400 million over the next two years produce, incredibly, an average of only one job for every $1.6 million of capital investment. So the state’s comptroller general figured, according to a December 20, 2010 story in the Austin American-Statesman.

As long ago as 1973, then-President Nixon called for “Project Independence” in reaction to the OPEC oil embargo. The project was to achieve energy independence through development of alternative energy sources, such as wind, solar and geothermal power. So, there’s nothing new about renewable energy.

The Obama 2012 budget asks for $8 billion for “clean” energy, mainly wind power subsidies. As recently as Feb. 7, the secretaries of Energy and Interior announced plans to launch dozens of offshore turbines miles out at sea, while admitting the expense would be unknown. Despite generous subsidies, wind power is expected to provide no more than 8 percent of electric power in the U.S. by 2030.

The American Wind Industry Energy Association, the wind lobby group, said the top five states for wind energy were Texas, Iowa, California, Minnesota, and Washington. It said the second quarter of 2011 saw over 1,033 megawatts of capacity installed. It also maintained that wind is second only to natural gas and U.S. wind power represents more than 20 percent of the world’s wind power.

Over the next half century, say, it’s possible some new technologies will revolutionize energy. But, if so, they surely will come from the private sector — not government.

From Canada

COMPLAINT DEPARTMENT: Wind project resident pleads for help in another useless email to developers

SOURCE: Windyleaks.com- documents obtained through freedom of information request

EMAIL TO:  Scott Hossie, CANADIAN HYDRO DEVELOPERS
                    Gary Tomlinson – Provincial Officer, Ministry of the Environment

FROM: (A resident of Amaranth/Melancthon, Ontario)
DATE: March 16, 2009

“It is 1:00 AM.

I can’t take much more of this Scott. The Turbines were down a lot yesterday as I suppose you were testing again. Even with them looking like they weren’t working the vibration / hum in and around our house yesterday was very loud. Again, I cannot fathom what causes that when it appears everything is not running. You would know better than we.

At dinner last night it was quiet and it was the first time that it felt like the days before these turbines started. I had forgotten what peace was like.

Dennis and I went to bed at 7:20 last night because it was quiet, to try to catch up on our sleep. I prayed that you would leave these things unhooked last night so we could have one full night of rest. By midnight I was awake with the vibration back and very loud. I am so disappointed and back on the couch with the TV on to try to drown it out.

I need an answer and I need to move. I cannot bear this any longer and I will  not put up with this for Dennis and our pets either. My head felt like stew when I left the house yesterday to go shopping because the vibration was so strong. I don’t know what it is doing to us but I have the worst headache in the world right now.

I have to go to school all this week. I want you to call Dennis Monday and tell him what is going on. Gary, I am pleading with you to make this vibration in our house stop. It is absolutely maddening.”

Email to: Ministry of Environment Officials
From: a resident of Amaranth/Melancthon, Ontario
Date: Wednesday March 25, 2009 (18:18 :53)

“To all:

I would like to request a meeting with everyone to solve this ongoing problem at our property. We have vibration in our house virtually every night, some rare nights not.

I have not been lately, and will not email Canadian Hydro anymore as I do not have any faith that they are trying to help us and please note, this lack of correspondence does not suggest that things are any better in our house.

 We have done nothing but try to help them figure this out and it appears that all of our input has been for nothing. Either they are refusing to acknowledge that we have a very big problem or they do not know anything about the business they are in and can’t fix it. This would never be allowed to continue in any industrial or commercial workplace. And even then, at least the employees get to go home to a quiet house to rest. Where in the world are the safety standards for the homeowners that have had this forced upon them? This is just insane.

I do not know at which point the body starts to break down with constant vibration going through it when it is supposed to be resting. I hate for my husband, our pets and myself to be the collection of lab rats that figures that one out for them. I have to ask you what you think we would be doing right now if we had children at home? Think about it.

I cannot put our house up for sale and move. Nobody could live here, and that was echoed by   S_ _    H_ _ _ _ (employee of the developer) as he sat at our table a month or so ago. What are we supposed to do? We need help, Please….”

SECOND STORY:

From New York State

ORLEANS TOWN COUNCIL TO CONSIDER STRICT POWER ZONING REGULATIONS

SOURCE  watertowndailytimes.com

 AUGUST 28, 2011

By NANCY MADSEN

LAFARGEVILLE — The Orleans Town Council is weighing zoning law amendments that will make its rules for wind turbine placement among the most restrictive in the region.

The town of Henderson banned all wind energy towers in November. Orleans would still allow commercial and residential turbines, but the noise and setback rules would make placing turbines in the town very difficult. A public hearing continued from Aug. 11 will be reconvened at 8 p.m. Sept. 8 at the town offices, 20558 Sunrise Ave. Copies of the law are available at the town office.

The law was written and reviewed by the Planning Board after the town’s Wind Committee made zoning recommendations in October 2009 and a Wind Economics Committee made further recommendations in May 2010.

“The Planning Board wrote it, which basically went with what the committee members had suggested — it’s very strict,” town Supervisor Donna J. Chatterton said. “Pretty much, it’s a stop to having any, but they can change it.”

The proposed law would push turbines away from neighboring property lines, roads, the St. Lawrence River, neighboring town lines, state- and federally regulated wetlands and residential, historic, school and wildlife refuge areas by 3,000 feet or 10 times the diameter of a turbine’s blade sweep area, whichever is greater.

The noise regulation sets absolute levels for daytime, evening and nighttime in both the A-weighted, or basically audible spectrum, and C-weighted, or low-frequency, noise levels. If the background noise is greater than five decibels below the standard, the allowed noise level would be five decibels above the background noise level.

For example, the allowed noise level for daytime, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., is 45 decibels on the A-weighted scale and 63 decibels on the C-weighted scale. But if the A-weighted background noise during that period reaches 44 decibels, the allowed limit would be 49 decibels. If the turbines emit a steady pure tone, which sounds like a whine, screech or hum, the allowed noise limit is decreased by five decibels.

During the evening period, 7 to 10 p.m., the law would allow 40 decibels in the A-weighted scale and 58 decibels in the C-weighted scale. And during the nighttime period, from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m., the law would allow 35 decibels in the A-weighted scale and 53 decibels in the C-weighted scale.

Residents within two miles of the project would have a property value guarantee, which requires appraisals before turbine construction and when residents try to sell their properties in the first five years after construction of the wind farm. The developer and property owner would agree on an asking price, based on an appraisal, and the developer would pay the difference between the asking price and sale price.

Other regulations include:

■ The Town Council and Variance and Project Oversight Board must approve change of ownership of the project or the project’s controlling entity.

■ Notification of the project’s pending application to the town is required to be sent to all landowners within two miles of the project’s boundaries.

■ Submission of studies are required on the project’s creation of shadow flicker, visual impact, noise, electromagnetic interference, transportation issues, ice and blade throw, stray voltage and wildlife harm as well as an emergency response plan, current property value analysis, operation and maintenance plan, decommissioning plan, earthquake preparedness manual and cultural, historical and archeological resource plan.

■ Submission of an escrow agreement, proof of liability insurance of $20 million per year and wind speed data from a year prior to construction are required.

■ Turbine and blade height are limited to 400 feet.

■ An annual report from the owner or operator on the operation and maintenance activities are required so that the town can compare the project’s plan and its actual results, and its noise projections and actual noise levels.

The proposed law goes into great detail on how sound measurements should be taken. The council has flexibility on applying fines for lack of compliance with the regulations.

The amendments do not substantially change rules for personal wind towers.

Wind power development critics support the amendments and said the town should not fear the state’s placing turbines against the town’s proposed law under the rejuvenated Article X electricity development law.

“The setbacks are great,” said Patricia A. Booras-Miller of the Environmentally-Concerned Citizens Organization. “They were thinking of Article X, too; there’s a lot of documentation to support their reasons.”

The town feels urgency, too, to pass the law before a new slate of council members is elected in November. The council must act on an environmental review of the law, so the law may not pass at the September meeting.

“We want to go the next step so we can get approved before the end of the year, before our board changes,” Ms. Chatterton said.

COURT WON'T ENFORCE TURBINE NOISE RULES

SOURCE: East Oregonian, www.eastoregonian.com

August 25, 2011

By ERIN MILLS,

Invenergy claims there is no “bright line” noise standard, that it can generate 36 decibels at nearby homes or 10 decibels above the ambient, whichever is higher, up to 50 decibels.

At a planning commission meeting last year, Invenergy’s acoustical expert, Michael Theriault of Portland, Maine, admitted the project violates the standard even by its own, looser definition.

The Morrow County Court stunned a crowd Wednesday when it refused to enforce an Oregon law that limits the noise a wind project can make at nearby homes.

The court voted 2-1 that, although noise from the Willow Creek wind project exceeds state standards at a few homes, the violations did not warrant enforcement action.

At one home, for example, the noise level exceeded limits 10 percent of the time the turbines were running, according to the project’s own acoustical expert.

County Judge Terry Tallman voted against the motion, only because he was against the vote itself.

“We don’t have the funds to force compliance,” he said. “The state of Oregon says it doesn’t have to do it, because it doesn’t have the funds. Why are we being forced to live by a higher standard than the state of Oregon?”

Tallman was referring to the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, which wrote and, for a time, enforced the state’s industrial noise control regulations. The laws still are on the books, but the DEQ terminated its noise control program in 1991 because of budget cuts. That left enforcement up to local agencies.

Morrow County adopted the state’s noise control rules and asks wind projects to comply as part of the site certification process.

Wind projects less than 105 megawatts may seek a conditional use permit from the county; larger projects must go through the Oregon Energy Facility Siting Council.

Morrow County granted the 48-turbine Willow Creek project, north of Ione, a permit in 2005.

However, after neighbors of the project began to complain about noise, county officials began to realize Oregon’s noise law is not exactly crystal clear. And a parade of lawyers and acoustical experts, for the neighbors and Invenergy, the Chicago-based company that developed the Willow Creek project, further muddied the waters.

The law says a wind project may not increase noise at adjacent homes by more than 10 decibels. If a wind developer does not conduct a study to determine the ambient noise at a site, it may use an assumed background of 26 decibels, for a total of 36 decibels.

Willow Creek’s neighbors believe a wind developer must choose, before it builds, whether to conduct an ambient noise study or go with the assumed level of 26 decibels. If it goes with 26 decibels, it cannot break the 36-decibel limit by even one decibel.

Invenergy claims there is no “bright line” noise standard, that it can generate 36 decibels at nearby homes or 10 decibels above the ambient, whichever is higher, up to 50 decibels.

At a planning commission meeting last year, Invenergy’s acoustical expert, Michael Theriault of Portland, Maine, admitted the project violates the standard even by its own, looser definition.

But because the violations are so minimal, by only a few decibels a small percentage of the time, he said, they qualify as “infrequent and unusual events” and therefore exempt from the law.

An acoustical expert for the project’s neighbors came to different conclusions.

Kerrie Standlee, who has helped complete site certificates for the Oregon Department of Energy, said the wind farm consistently broke the noise rule at precisely the time when Theriault decided not to use the study data, when wind speeds exceeded 9 meters per second.

Standlee said the wind project broke the noise rule by more decibels, and more frequently, than Invenergy claimed.

In its decision Wednesday, as in previous deliberations, however, the Morrow County Court disregarded Standlee’s testimony and relied on Invenergy’s conclusions.

“There might be some violations,” Commissioner Ken Grieb said, “but we don’t think they’re significant enough to take action.”

The ruling is a reversal of a previous, January decision, in which the court agreed the project violates the wind rule at Dan Williams’ house. His home is the one at which the violation appears to occur most frequently.

That decision modified a Morrow County Planning Commission decision, which found Invenergy out of compliance at four nearby homes.

All parties appealed the county court’s decision to the Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals. The board returned the decision to the county, asking the court to clarify its decision.

“I’m flabbergasted,” said Jim McCandlish, a lawyer for three of the neighbors, after the vote. He said his clients’ constitutional right to due process was being denied. He said they intend to appeal the decision to the board of appeals.

“The county court has an obligation to protect the health and welfare of its citizens,” he said.

Irene Gilbert, an anti-wind activist from Union County, called the vote ridiculous.

“I think it sets a really bad precedent when a group of county commissioners say, in spite of the data that says there is a violation, we are choosing not to act on it.”

SECOND STORY:

COST OF TEXAS WIND TRANSMISSION LINES NEARS $7 BILLION

SOURCE The Texas Tribune, www.texastribune.org

August 24, 2011

By Kate Galbraith,

Gov. Rick Perry, who appoints the three Public Utility Commissioners, has strongly backed the build-out, which will result in several thousand miles of new transmission lines carrying wind power from West Texas to large cities hundreds of miles across the state.

The cost of building thousands of miles of transmission lines to carry wind power across Texas is now estimated at $6.79 billion, a 38 percent increase from the initial projection three years ago.

The new number, which amounts to roughly $270 for every Texan, comes from the latest update on the project prepared for the Public Utility Commission (see page six). Ratepayers will ultimately be on the hook for the cost, but no one has begun to see the charges appear on their electric bills yet because the transmission companies building the lines must first get approval from the commission before passing on the costs to customers.

A commission spokesman, Terry Hadley, says that the first of these “rate recovery” applications may be filed before the end of the year. Ultimately, the commission says, the charges could amount to $4 to $5 per month on Texas electric bills, for years.

In 2008, when the Public Utility Commission approved the project, it was estimated at $4.93 billion. Gov. Rick Perry, who appoints the three Public Utility Commissioners, has strongly backed the build-out, which will result in several thousand miles of new transmission lines carrying wind power from West Texas to large cities hundreds of miles across the state. This is expected to spark a further boom in wind farm development, particularly in the Panhandle. Texas already leads the nation, by far, in wind power production. Electricity generated by other sources, like natural gas, coal or solar, can also use the lines.

However, deciding the routes for the lines — a painstaking process that played out in the hearing room of the Public Utility Commission — stirred controversy, as landowners in the Hill Country and other parts of the state tried to prevent them from going through their property. The transmission companies pay a one-time sum to the landowner for an easement to build the lines across his or her property, but ultimately the companies have the power of eminent domain if the landowner resists. Hill Country landowners did succeed in stopping one line and a portion of a second, after grid officials determined that it was possible to upgrade existing infrastructure, but serve the same purpose, more cheaply.

The new lines are all expected to be completed by December 2013, although delays could still occur. Construction of the lines is at various stages; one company, Wind Energy Transmission Texas, plans to begin building 378 miles of lines next month, for example.

Among the reasons for the increased costs, according to the new report, are that the original 2008 estimate used straight-line distances to calculate the cost of the lines. However, as the process played out, the Public Utility Commission often requested that the lines follow fences or roads in order to minimize the intrusion. So the distances will probably be 10 percent to 50 percent longer than the original planners allowed for, the report says. Inflation also boosts the price tag.

The new estimate, of $6.79 billion, is also subject to change.

“It is likely that costs may fluctuate and change over the next year,” states the report, which was prepared by an engineering services company called RS&H and published in July.

LIVING WITH NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF WIND TURBINES

SOURCE: The Rock River Times, rockrivertimes.com

August 24, 2011

By Barbara Draper,

When we first experienced this, we thought something was wrong with our lights, but as our eyes kept moving to find the source — we just couldn’t figure it out. I then walked into the kitchen, and it was coming through the closed venetian blind — then we knew. That flicker lasted an hour. It made my husband feel ill, like motion sickness. The brighter the sun, the more intense the flicker.

I live 1 mile from the city limits of Ohio, Ill., in Bureau County on the Big Sky Wind farm, which covers approximately 13 square miles, more or less. In that area, there are at least 56 turbines, and 30 are on land owned by absentee landowners who do not have the negative effects of shadow flicker, poor TV reception or noise.

In that same 13-square-mile area, there are 47 homes, excluding those in the Village of Ohio. Ten of those homes belong to and are lived in by people who have turbines on their farm. The other 37 homes are owned and occupied by residents who are not participating in the wind farm.

We are among those 36 nonparticipating homes because we chose not to have a turbine on our farm, as did two other farmers in our area. However, most of those 36 homes are on small rural estates, and they had no choice for a turbine.

We have 12 turbines located around our house that vary in distance from less than a quarter-of-a-mile to three located less than a mile. There is no window in our home to look out without seeing turbine blades going round and round. I have taken pictures from my windows, if anyone is interested in looking at them.

As we sit on our patio, we are looking at 31 turbines spinning. The sound is a monotonous sound of whish, whish that can vary in intensity and, at times, has sounded like a train rumbling down a track. I refer to it as irritating, like a dripping faucet. It just never stops, unless the turbine is not running.

The beautiful countryside in our area has disappeared, along with the quiet and peaceful county living we once had.

We have shadow flicker many months of the year, from 15 minutes to more than an hour a day, whenever the sun is shining and turbines are running.

At a meeting before Big Sky was built, I asked about shadow flicker. The developer said I would have flicker for maybe two to three seconds a year. I should have had him write his statement down and sign it. My suggestion is that if a developer tells you something, have him sign a written statement to that effect.

Some mornings, we don’t need an alarm, because the flicker wakes us up. This fall, we will again have the most intense flicker starting in October and until the end of February. This comes from a turbine 1,620 feet (according to Big Sky measurements) southwest of our house.

The flicker is in every room in our house­ — we can’t get away from it. When we first experienced this, we thought something was wrong with our lights, but as our eyes kept moving to find the source — we just couldn’t figure it out. I then walked into the kitchen, and it was coming through the closed venetian blind — then we knew. That flicker lasted an hour. It made my husband feel ill, like motion sickness. The brighter the sun, the more intense the flicker.

This flicker is hard to explain to people. Flickering fluorescent lights in every room might be similar; however, they would not cast moving light on the walls and furniture.

This flicker comes through trees, blinds or lined drapes. Light-blocking shades would have to be sealed to the sides of the window.

The shadows are on our buildings, our lawn and across our field. Last fall, I covered the tops of my south windows with wide aluminum foil. I did this so I could look outside a few windows without seeing rotating blades. It didn’t keep out the flicker. I have now replaced the foil with pleated shades.

The Bureau County Zoning Board was told by a wind farm representative that 20 to 30 hours of shadow flicker a year was acceptable. It is not acceptable. I asked the representative if he lived on a wind farm. He answered, “No.”

Residents, especially nonparticipating residents, should not have any flicker in their house or any shadow from turbines on their lawn, outbuildings or farm land. I have read that this is a trespass.

An executive of Big Sky told us on the phone that we had a serious shadow flicker problem. The next time we talked with her, she denied saying it — another reason to get their statements in writing and signed.

A person has to live on a wind farm 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to really know what it is like. You cannot get the whole effect by just driving through it and stopping by a turbine for a short time. The conditions vary, hour by hour, day by day, and even season to season.

When Big Sky first started erecting the turbines, my husband and daughter drove to one — they couldn’t hear a thing. We thought, “Oh, this won’t be so bad.” One trip does not tell the story.

I realize wind farms are big money for participating farmers and tax-supported institutions. However, more consideration needs to be given in the placement of the turbines to eliminate what we are having in Big Sky.

We don’t live in the quiet rural county anymore. It has been replaced with an industrial wind park. They call it a wind farm — wrong — it produces no food. It just eliminates many food-producing acres.

These counties need to realize the impact of turbines and make their ordinances to protect the people. Shadow flicker should not have to be tolerated by rural residents. It is disturbing and has health consequences. I have been told that someone with seizures could not live in our home because of that intense flicker we have in the fall.

I also strongly believe no shadows from turbines should be cast across highways, as they are in Big Sky. Several drivers have told me they have been startled by them — slammed on their brakes, and some nearly ran off the road. I called the Illinois Department of Transportation, but was told they could do nothing as long as the turbine was not in their right of way — it was a county issue.

All of these problems are disturbing and serious problems, and there are health problems involved. I sometimes think this country has its priorities mixed up. I love nature and animals, but when a conservation area was given a farther setback from turbines in Lee County than we were given from our homes in Bureau County, I got disturbed.

I believe there needs to be much more study done on wind turbines before filling this nation’s countryside with them. In making your ordinances, please make sure your residents are protected from the negative effects of turbines.

Barbara Draper is a resident of Ohio, Ill., in Bureau County, about 75 miles southwest of Rockford.

NOTE: The video below is from DeKalb Illinois.

SECOND STORY

FROM MISSOURI

NOTE FROM THE BPWI RESEARCH NERD:

According to post construction mortality studies submitted to the DNR and the Public Service Commision, turbine related bat kill rates in Wisconsin are the highest in North America and more than ten times the national average.

More than 10,000 bats per year are killed in Wisconsin each year by wind turbines. When the Glacier Hills project goes on line later this year, over 4000 more bat kills per year will take place. These figures are from documents provided by the wind companies themselves and confirmed by the DNR and they are unsustainable.

Yet no Wisconsin environmental organization has stepped in to help, and the story that makes head lines in other states with half the mortality rate continues to be ignored in our state.

If you are a member of a Wisconsin environmental organization, Better Plan urges you to contact them and ask that they look into this.

Renewable energy sources should not get a pass on killing wildlife, especially bats, animals critical to an agricultural state like ours.

In Missouri, they're already talking about it....

HOLY BATTERED BATS! DOUBLE MENACE THREATENS FARMERS HELPERS

SOURCE: www.publicbroadcasting.net

August 22, 2011

Tim Lloyd,

Farmer Shelly Cox and her husband rely on the mainstays of Midwest agriculture: John Deere tractor, genetically modified seeds and rich soil.

They also get extra help from what you might call nature’s pest control crew – migrating bats.

“They’re huge at insect control,” Cox said while walking toward a small wetland where bats cluster during the summer months.”How much money do you want to spend on pesticides? Or do you want to be saving money and using what Mother Nature gives us?”

Cox credits the bats that visit her family’s 86-acre farm outside Savannah, Mo. as a big reason why they’ve only used pesticides twice in the last 15 years.
But that could change soon.

Wildlife experts in the heartland are preparing for a serious one-two punch to the bat population: a mysterious fungus spreading from the northeast, and the proliferation of wind power.

“There are large bat populations in the Midwest,” said Thomas Kunz, a Boston University bat researcher. “There’s going to be some pretty massive die offs there in I would say three years.”
The conservative estimate of economic impact is $3.7 billion a year but could reach as high as $53 billion, according to research Kunz published in the Journal Science.

“Farmers would have to spend that much more on pesticides,” he said.

Kunz found that just one colony of 150 big brown bats can gobble up 1.3 million pests a year.

Fungus spreads westward

There’s not much Kunz and other researchers can do about what’s projected to contribute most to the demise of cave-dwelling bats in the Midwest, a nasty fungus that ultimately spawns into something dubbed White Nose Syndrome.

The syndrome gets its name from the white face it gives infected bats and takes around three years to develop. In parts of the northeastern U.S., bats have been decimated by White Nose and have all but disappeared in some areas, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

“That fungus manifests itself in several ways: Loss of body fat in mid-winter, abnormal winter behavior, suppressed immune system,” Kunz said.
Once White Nose Syndrome is full blown, the fungus grows down into the hair follicles on their faces.

Itchy and irritated from the discomfort, hibernating bats wake up often, fly around and burn up their fat reserves. Deaths are mostly caused by simple exhaustion, but White Nose also can lead to fatal dehydration because it scars the thin membrane of wings where bats absorb moisture.

The fungus has been spotted as far west as Oklahoma. Though experts are keeping their fingers crossed that somehow in the Midwest the fungus won’t turn into the syndrome, Kunz isn’t optimistic.

“Mass mortality wasn’t observed until the third year,” he said. “This is the third year it’s appeared in Pennsylvania we have a massive mortality going on.”

To date, there is no cure for the syndrome and conservationists are hustling to slow its spread. Further complicating the problem is head scratching nature of the fungus itself, which grows on living tissue.

“I really have not seen anything of this magnitude,” said Sunni Carr, wildlife diversity coordinator with the Kentucky Department of Wildlife Resources. In addition to her day-to-day work in Kentucky, she also works with federal and state agencies to coordinate a national response to White Nose.

“I am confident that this is the most significant and dire wildlife issue that I will deal with in my career,” Carr said.

Geomyces destructans, the scientific name for the fungus, primarily affects cave bats and is suspected to be transmitted on the clothing of spelunkers.
In June, Missouri’s Mark Twain National Forest went so far as to close its caves through 2016. Similar efforts have been taken at other state parks in the Midwest.

Wind turbines rise up

As bad as White Nose Syndrome is for cave-dwelling bats, to a lesser extent the proliferation of wind power across the Midwest poses a danger to their counterparts, tree bats.

For reasons that remain unknown, bats are attracted to turbines that tower above tree lines. Once the migratory species is close, the pressure drop can crush their fragile lungs or they can simply get smacked by the spinning blades.

While no nationwide programs track how many bats are killed by wind energy each year, estimates have the number reaching as high as 111,000 annually by 2020.

That’s based on the premise that wind turbines will continue spouting across the country at a rapid clip.

In the second quarter of 2011 alone, the U.S. wind industry installed 1,033 megawatts, according to a report by the American Wind Energy Association. And Iowa, an epicenter for corn and soybean production, comes in second in the nation for the number of megawatts produced by wind power and has 3,675 facilities, according to the report.

That’s good news for wind proponents but has bat experts feeling anxious because federal protections only cover the endangered Indiana bat. To avoid killing that species, wind companies hire experts like Lynn Robbins, a bat researcher from Missouri State University in Springfield, Mo.

On a recent summer day, Robbins stood next to a creek in northwest Missouri while a team of student workers hung nets and placed bat detectors just miles from the first town in nation to be completely powered by wind energy, Rockford, Mo.

“What the student workers are doing today is doing a survey to determine if the endangered Indiana Bat is present in area that’s slated to become a wind energy facility,” Robbins said.

Robbins couldn’t give the exact location of the proposed wind facility or the name of the company due to contractual obligations.

“If they’re here then the wind company must take the next step in being more careful as to where they put the turbines, or determine even if they’re going to put the turbines in the area,” he said.

Though finding an Indiana bat might slam the brakes on a proposed wind farm, the presence of other bat species isn’t likely to impede development.

“There’s a gradient of contribution and acceptance of wildlife impacts and what companies are doing about it,” said Ed Arnett, a researcher participating in the Bats Wind Energy Cooperative.

The cooperative, founded in 2003, brings together the American Wind Energy Association, Bat Conservation International and federal agencies for the purpose of researching how bat fatalities can be prevented. (It’s not just bats, either; wind power has also been shown to kill migratory birds.)

Tech solutions?

Most wind companies, Arnett said, have at least some level of interest in minimizing the negative impacts a facility has on bats, but currently the best way to avoid fatalities takes a chip out of company profits.

“Many bat species don’t fly at higher wind speeds,” Robbins said.

So, the idea is to set the turbines so they won’t spin at lower wind speeds when bats are more likely to be flying around.

“It would typically cost a company about 1 percent of its revenue,” said John Anderson, director of sitting policy for the American Wind Energy Association.

“But it depends on the location and the company.”

The best technological solution, placing devices on the top of wind towers that jam bats internal radar, works great in the lab, but not so great in the field.

With that in mind, Arnett pegs his hopes on generating the kind of research wind companies can use on future projects.

“Proactively, in planning to the future, there’s no reason why those costs can’t be factored into the implementation and operations plan of a project,” Arnett said.

And every little effort helps.

Bats are long lived, some species routinely make it to 30 years, and they don’t reproduce quickly. All of that adds up and makes them particularly susceptible to dramatic population declines.

Back at Cox’s family farm, tucked in the rolling hills of northwest Missouri, she’s noticed a change.

“Maybe in a given evening we were seeing a dozen or so swooping around the light, and now, last year we were seeing maybe four or five,” she said.

She’s not ready to push the panic button, at the same time she can’t help feeling a little uneasy.

“If you don’t really know what’s going on you hate to kind of be a catastrofier,” Cox said. “But, yes, I have notice a difference in the number that we would typically see around the lights at night.”

[audio available]