Entries in wind farm health impacts (2)

7/20/11 Telling the truth, the whole truth in Maine AND Video from Ontario and Wisconsin's turbine related bat kill rate is the highest in North America but it's not news. In Pennsylvania, bat kill rates that are half as bad as Wisconsin's are making headlines.  

The following was posted on the website windturbinesydrome.com.
It was submitted as testimony to the State of Maine Board of Environmental Protection, 7/7/11, by  acoustician Robert Rand.
·
 Robert W. Rand, INCE
65 Mere Point Road
Brunswick, Maine 04011

Thank you for the opportunity to speak today as a Maine resident.

My name is Robert Rand.  I am a resident of Brunswick (Maine), and a member of the Institute of Noise Control Engineering (INCE). I have over thirty years of experience in general and applied acoustics, including ten years’ work on power plant noise control engineering in the Noise Control Group at Stone and Webster Engineering Corporation in Boston.

The story I relate today really happened.

I have conducted a number of independent wind turbine noise surveys in the last eighteen months in Maine and elsewhere, without ill effects. However in April 2011 I was unpleasantly surprised while on a wind turbine noise survey with my long-time colleague Stephen Ambrose, also a Member of INCE, where, indoors, variously we experienced nausea, loss of appetite, headache, vertigo, dizziness, inability to concentrate, an overwhelming desire to get outside, and anxiety, over a two-night period from Sunday April 17 to Tuesday April 19. It was a miserable and unnerving experience.

During the most adverse effects, the A-weighted sound level outdoors was at or above 42 dBA, and indoors at 18 to 20 dBA, due to the home’s solid construction. The dBA levels indoors were found to be completely unrelated to the adverse effects.

Adverse effects occurred indoors and outdoors when the infrasonic noise level was over 60 dBG, and the adverse health effects were absent when the wind turbine was idle and the infrasonic noise level was under 60 dBG.

It is worth noting that Dr. Alec Salt identified 60 dBG as the inner ear infrasonic sensitivity threshold in 2010. Thus this experience in April was consistent with Dr. Salt’s findings that the inner ear responds to infrasonic noise above 60 dBG.

The distance was approximately 1700 feet from a single 1.65 MW industrial wind turbine.

The owners who built this home for retirement are reluctantly preparing to abandon the home.

We obtained some relief during the survey, repeatedly, by going several miles away.

It took me a week or more to recover. I experienced recurring eye strain, nausea, sensitivity to low frequency noises, and reduced ability to work on the computer for several weeks.

The adverse health effects I experienced are similar to those reported by neighbors living near wind turbines in Maine and elsewhere. They are not addressed by the regulatory framework in place. I have not seen any consideration by wind facility applicants of potential adverse health effects or community reactions.

I now know personally and viscerally what people have been complaining about. Adverse health effects from wind turbines are real and can be debilitating. The field work points directly to wind turbine low-frequency noise pulsations, especially indoors, as a causative factor. I want all Mainers to be protected from these serious and debilitating health effects.

I welcome and urge your support of the Proposed Amendments to the Dept. of Environmental Protection Noise Rule for wind turbine projects.

·
Robert W. Rand, INCE
65 Mere Point Road
Brunswick, Maine 04011

Tel: 207-632-1215
rrand@randacoustics.com

Click on the image above to watch this video from Ontario.....
 
NOTE FROM THE BPWI RESEARCH NERD:
WISCONSINS DIRTY GREEN SECRET: The most recent post construction mortality studies confirm that Wisconsin's wind turbine related bat-kill rate is the highest in North America and is considered to be unsustainable.
Aside from a single article by Tony Walter in the Green Bay Press Gazette, the media has been silent on this issue. (The article by Tony Walter is no longer available on the Press Gazette website (why?) but you can read it HERE.)
State and local environmental groups are taking a strict hands-off approach to this subject and have not spoken out, allowing the slaughter to continue with no complaint.
If you are a member of a Wisconsin environmental group, please urge them to look into this issue and speak up.
HOW BAD IS IT?
Wind developers claim turbine related bat mortality will cause about four deaths per turbine per year.
Pennsylvania is making headlines with a bat kill rate of 25 kills per turbine per year.
In Wisconsin, the most recent post construction mortality study puts the kill rate at over fifty bats per turbine per year.
FROM PENNSYLVANIA:
Pa. wind turbines deadly to bats, costly to farmers
READ ENTIRE ARTICLE AT THE SOURCE: PITTSBURGH POST GAZETTE
Sunday, July 17, 2011

The butterfly effect suggests the flapping of a tiny insect's wings in Africa can lead to a tornado in Kansas.

Call this the bat effect: A bat killed by a wind turbine in Somerset can lead to higher tomato prices at the Wichita farmers market.

Bats are something of a one-species stimulus program for farmers, every year gobbling up millions of bugs that could ruin a harvest. But the same biology that allows the winged creatures to sweep the night sky for fine dining also has made them susceptible to one of Pennsylvania's fastest-growing energy tools.

The 420 wind turbines now in use across Pennsylvania killed more than 10,000 bats last year -- mostly in the late summer months, according to the state Game Commission. That's an average of 25 bats per turbine per year, and the Nature Conservancy predicts as many as 2,900 turbines will be set up across the state by 2030.

This is a bad time to be a bat.

It may seem like a good thing to those who fear the flying mammals, but the wind farm mortality rate is an acute example of how harnessing natural energy can lead to disruptions in the circle of life -- and the cycle of business. This chain of events mixes biology and economics: Bat populations go down, bug populations go up and farmers are left with the bill for more pesticide and crops (which accounts for those pricey tomatoes in Kansas).

Wind industry executives are shelling out millions of dollars on possible solutions that don't ruin their bottom line, even as wind farms in the area are collaborating with the state Game Commission to work carcass-combing into daily operations.

"If you look at a map and see where the mountains are, everything funnels through Somerset," said Tracey Librandi Mumma, the wildlife biologist who led the March commission report on bird and bat mortality. "If I'm out driving ... I wonder, 'How many are being killed at that one?' "

Bats are nature's pesticide, consuming as many as 500 insects in one hour, or nearly 3,000 insects in one night, said Miguel Saviroff, the agricultural financial manager at the Penn State Cooperative Extension in Somerset County.

"A colony of just 100 little brown bats may consume a quarter of a million mosquitoes and other small insects in a night," he said. "That benefits neighbors and reduces the insect problem with crops."

If one turbine kills 25 bats in a year, that means one turbine accounted for about 17 million uneaten bugs in 2010.

Bats save farmers a lot of money: About $74 per acre, according to an April report in Science magazine that calculated the economic value of bats on a county-by-county basis.

In Allegheny County, bats save farmers an estimated $642,986 in a year. That's nothing compared with more agricultural counties in the region such as Somerset ($6.7 million saved), Washington ($5.5 million) or Westmoreland ($6.1 million).

Lancaster County? You owe bats $22 million.

In all of Pennsylvania, bats saved farmers $277.9 million in estimated avoided costs.

Initially, the "Economic Importance of Bats in Agriculture" article was meant to attract attention to the white-nose fungus virus that is wiping out entire colonies of bats across the country.

"We were getting a lot of questions about why we should care about white-nose syndrome," said author Justin Boyles, a post-doctoral fellow in bat research at the University of Tennessee. "Really, it's the economic impact that makes people listen."

The white-nose syndrome is compounding the wind turbine problems, having killed more than a million bats in the northeastern United States since 2006. It surfaced in Pennsylvania in 2008 and has killed thousands of in-state bats.

Meanwhile, the same creatures that save Pennsylvania farmers millions of dollars each year are also costing energy companies some big bucks as they try to stave off a mass execution beneath the blades.

Technology is being developed on sound generators that would deter the creatures from getting too close with a high-pitched noise only heard by bats. Some studies suggest that a slowdown in blade speed would reduce mortality.

But new technology is expensive and a blade slowdown would reduce the number of megawatts produced.

"All these options cost money," said Ms. Librandi Mumma, and it can be a tough sell to the private industry handing over the information that helps in the research. "You don't want to penalize the hand that's giving you the data."

Companies that have signed a Game Commission cooperation agreement must foot the bill for the commission's pre-construction reconnaissance and post-construction monitoring. The cost of the process varies, but the research can last several months and involve extensive habitat monitoring.

Under the agreement, each site conducts two years of mortality monitoring, sending a lucky employee out every day from April to November to comb the six meters around each turbine for carcasses. The employees are tested to see "how good they are at finding dead things," said Ms. Librandi Mumma.

"We got a dead snake once, because it was on the road and they were just collecting everything dead," she said. "It wasn't because the wind turbine killed it. The guy was just being thorough."

Some retrievers aren't so good.

"The average person finds 30 percent of the carcasses that are under a turbine," said Ms. Librandi Mumma, so the commission has come up with an algorithm that accounts for the missing bodies.

Agents will leave a carcass on the ground and note how long it takes to disappear -- this provides some insight on how many carcasses are unaccounted for because of living animals that have a taste for decomposing flesh.

Some wind companies with Pennsylvania operations have already seen seven-figure expenses on account of the bat problem.

NextEra Energy Resources, which operates the Somerset wind farms visible from the Pennsylvania Turnpike, has five active sites in Pennsylvania but did not participate in the Game Commission study.

The company monitors its mortality rates in house and funds outside research to reduce bird and bat deaths at its sites, said Skelly Holmbeck, environmental business manager at the Juno Beach, Fla.-based firm.

The funding program involving nine different research facilities is "in the millions overall," she said.

Migratory research that precedes any construction can employ bird watchers, nets or tape recorders designed to read the local ecosystem.

PPL Renewable Energy LLC of Allentown had planned on installing four turbines at its Lancaster County wind farm, but went with only two after sensitive avian populations were found nearby.

"There were design aspects that we elected not to use," said spokeswoman Mimi Mylin. "Some construction sites use lattice towers, but those can become roosting sites" for birds.

It's not just bats that are dying around wind turbines. An estimated 1,680 birds were killed by turbines last year, according to the state Game Commission report.

The disparity in mortality stems from biology. Birds typically crash into the blade and die from blunt force trauma, while bats suffer from a condition called barotrauma. It's the bat equivalent of the "bends" that scuba divers can suffer if they surface too quickly.

The rapid drop in air pressure around the blades causes the bats' lungs to burst, and they collapse with no ostensible lacerations or scars on the body.

"They just look like they're sleeping," said Ms. Librandi Mumma.

Bats must fly very close to the blades for their lungs to burst, and some researchers say the lights around the turbines might attract insects, which in turn attract bats.

Barotrauma in bats was only discovered in 2008, when a Canadian biologist thought to dissect one of the unblemished carcasses turning up at wind farms across North America.

"It was an 'a-ha' moment," said Ms. Librandi Mumma.

The turbine problem has yielded some other, unexpected contributions to bat research.

One carcass hunter in central Pennsylvania found a Seminole bat felled by barotrauma under the blades. Seminole bats live in the southeastern United States and rarely show up in Pennsylvania.

"It's like a double-edged sword," said Ms. Librandi Mumma. "You're excited because it's a new bat, but it's a dead one."

The Seminole specimen was kept on dry ice in a small styrofoam container by a commission employee and handed over to Suzanne McLaren, the collection manager at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History's research center in East Liberty. They met in the Ligonier Diamond town square -- home to a postcard-perfect gazebo and lots of sunlight -- for the transfer.

The bat, which may have traveled here from as far as Florida, found its final resting place in a freezer in East Liberty.

 



8/21/10 When it comes to safety concerns regarding Big Wind, are conclusions based on Sound Science or "Sound's good"?

Wind turbines bring a big change to small midwestern towns.NOTE FROM THE BPWI RESEARCH NERD: Dr. Douglas Zweizig, who authored this letter to the Wisconsin State Journal is Professor Emeritus of Library Sciences and Information, University of Wisconsin. He also serves as Planning Commissioner for the Town of Union in Rock County and is on the Wisconsin Wind Siting Council which has spent several months reviewing data and creating wind siting rules for our state.

Journal, health agency wrong about turbines

Wisconsin State Journal, madison.com 21 August 2010

The State Journal’s editorial Wednesday, “Science says wind power safe,” provides false reassurance to its readers about the dangers of living in the vicinity of large wind turbines.

The “science” trumpeted in your editorial comes from an inadequate literature review conducted by under-qualified staff at the Wisconsin Division of Public Health — a staff that has not conducted a survey of the hundreds of people in Wisconsin now living in the vicinity of large wind turbines. They have not spent one overnight in a wind farm, the time when the most troublesome noise occurs.

Instead of caring for the difficulties of Wisconsin citizens and directly addressing the numerous complaints of sleeplessness and the ailments that result from disturbed sleep, the division has instead prepared a report from its undiscerning reading of the literature. It has told those suffering these effects that they have no complaint, and then the division has promoted this callous position to the press.

Wisconsin deserves better care from its Department of Health Services.

— Douglas Zweizig, Evansville