Better Plan, Wisconsin

PROPOSED WIND FARM REGULATIONS

SOURCE: WFRV GREEN BAY

BROWN COUNTY, Wis. (WFRV) -- A proposal from an area lawmaker will make it even harder for wind farmer developers to build in the state. This after two developers recently pulled the plug on projects in Northeast Wisconsin.

David Enz built his home for his family back in 1978. But last month he and his wife decided they could no longer stay.

"Started feeling pressure in my ears, feeling pressurized, started feeling unstable," Enz said.

Enz attributes the symptoms to the eight wind turbines that were built last fall about a half mile from his house.

"It gets to the point where your body just does not want to be here, it just can't be here," said Enz.

Today, State Senator Frank Lasee introduced legislation that would require developers to keep turbines at least 2,250 feet from a person's property unless there's permission to build closer.

Right now, they need to be at least 1,250 feet from homes. Earlier this year, Governor Scott Walker said he wanted to change the law to 1,800 feet.

Senator Lasee says that's not enough.

"Two thousand fifty feet is a reasonable distance that will help preserve their health and safety because of shadow, flicker, noise and I believe there is either magnetic or electric noise that causes health problems for people," Lasee said.

Last month, two wind farm developers pulled out of projects in both Brown and Calumet Counties, saying the current regulations already go too far.

According to Senator Lasee, the strict regulations aren't what's driving companies away from projects here in Wisconsin. He says it all comes down to money.

"Many utilities are no longer paying premiums which drive up our electric costs for wind energy so they're having trouble getting a contract that would pay," Lasee said. "I think they're using this as an excuse."

Enz hopes the Senator's proposal can prevent other families from going through what he has.

"We have a house that we can't live in," he said.

Enz and his wife have been staying with their children for the last few weeks. Senator Lasee is circulating the bill in the senate and assembly.

LASEE BILL WOULD CHANGE RULES FOR WIND ENERGY SYSTEMS

Sen. Frank Lasee is circulating for co-sponsorship a proposal revising PSC authority over wind energy system siting. Basically, the bill requires owners of a large wind energy system to design and construct the system so a straight line distance from the vertical center line of any turbine in the system to the nearest point on the property line be at least one-half mile. The distance could be shorter if the system owner and property owners agree to a lesser distance. The bill also changes the distance from the vertical center of any turbine to the permanent foundation of any building.
 
Link to PDF of the proposed bill:
http://thewheelerreport.com/releases/April11/0415/0415lrb1507.pdf
 



NOTE FROM THE BPWI RESEARCH NERD: This story could have been written about any Wisconsin community targeted by wind developers: Sneak into a community and offer the big landowners big money to agree to host turbines and most importantly keep their mouths shut about the plan. These moves are straight from the wind developers playbook.

PUTTING THE WIND UP THEM

SOURCE: Goulburn Post, www.goulburnpost.com.au

March 30, 2011

by Alby Schultz

There was a public meeting in the small town of Boorowa in my federal electorate of Hume a short while ago.

A good percentage of the population packed the ex-services club to hear first-hand about the rumours swirling through the community that this area was to be the site of a massive wind generation project.

There were audible gasps from the audience as it was revealed that the project was indeed real, that it would span some 35 kilometres and involve the construction of more than 100 turbines.

There were more gasps when it became apparent that the wind energy developer had actually been in negotiations with some of their neighbours for many months.

The meeting heard that the farmers who had been quietly persuaded to host the turbines would reap tens of thousands of dollars in rental a year.

They heard about pilots who wouldn’t fight fires or dust crops if they had to fly in the vicinity of the giant swirling blades.

They heard about possible health effects for those on neighbouring land ranging from heart palpitations to migraine headaches.

But this is not an argument against wind power. It is also not a criticism of farmers who have struggled through a decade of drought and see the way clear to make some alternative income.

There may indeed be areas where wind turbines can be built and where the impact is minimal. But there are many areas where they should not be constructed. As things stand though I truly fear our rural social capital – as fragile as our topsoils – is in places being chopped to pieces by turbine blades.

We need to start by calling a spade a spade. These turbines are not ‘farming’. That is Orwellian nonsense. This is industrial scale power production in green clothing. These are major commercial developments and should be considered in the same way as any major development.

A decade ago wind turbines were almost human in scale. But the turbines which some of the Boorowa farmers will have built near their homes (the closest will be just over a 1000 metres away) are truly gargantuan. If one of these turbines was standing on Sydney Harbour, its blades would be well clear of the top of the Harbour Bridge.

I warrant that should a neighbour decide to build a two storey extension overlooking the backyard of one of these Sydney bureaucrats there would be an immediate cry of “you can’t destroy my amenity and land value like that!”

And yet when a farming community raises concerns about mega turbines they are labelled ‘nimbys’ (not in my backyard).

Local decision making must be put back into prime place. At present it is hopelessly biased towards the developer. The state government boasts that large wind developments are considered ‘critical infrastructure’ and given the red carpet treatment with a guaranteed four month approval processes.

Communities are provided just 30 days to digest and provide comment before the Minister gives the project a tick. Better still the states should all revisit the National Wind Code which the Howard Government proposed in 2006 and which they rejected.

The code would have seen legislation eventually produced right around the country better protecting local community rights.

Wherever large wind generation projects arrive the plot is predictable. A wind company identifies an area with good wind resources and reasonably close to the national grid. They begin quiet negotiations with landowners.

In my view, these power companies preying on landholders who in most case have had no cash-flow as a result of nine years of heartbreaking drought. Well down the track others in the community find out.

Those who have done the deals face bitterness and anger. Those who missed out feel betrayed and angry. Sydney based bureaucrats need to understand the impact this has in small rural communities.

There is precious little interaction when you live on a property an hour or more from your rural centre – perhaps just at special events or football or cricket matches. Wind turbine money in my electorate has poisoned those relationships.

Families stop talking to each other. Animosity and bitterness run deep. Whole rural farming communities are fractured and it lasts for years. The NSW Industry Department’s website says that whilst planned or operating wind power installations in NSW will deliver 960 megawatts at present there is potential to grow that to 3000 megawatts (a 300 per cent increase)!

The implication of that for rural communities in Hume, and elsewhere, are truly frightening unless we give local communities far more say over whether or not they want wind turbines of this scale in their area.



ROTOR CRASHES AT IBERDROLA WIND FARM IN NORTH DAKOTA

SOURCE: North American Wind Power

March 16, 2011

NAW has learned that a rotor came crashing to the ground at the 149.1 MW Rugby Wind Power Project, located near Rugby, N.D. The wind farm, owned and operated by Iberdrola Renewables, consists of 71 2.1 MW wind turbines, which were manufactured by Suzlon Wind Energy Corp.

According to a local resident, the incident occurred around 2:30 p.m. local time on Monday. There were no reported injuries.

Dan Smith, a local commercial photographer who has photographed the wind project from its early stages, says the wind farm's technicians told him that the incident may have stemmed from a failed braking mechanism.

"It looks like the braking mechanism failed, and the rotor gained speed, flexed and hit the tower and sheared off the mounting plate at the hub where it connects with the nacelle," Smith explains.

He adds that the rotor appeared to scrape the tower on its way to the ground, which could require the tower to be replaced as well.

READ ENTIRE STORY AT NORTH AMERICAN WIND POWER WEBLINK

CLICK ON THE IMAGE BELOW TO WATCH A SIMILAR ROTOR COLLAPSE AFTER WIND TURBINE BRAKES FAIL

From Illinois

WIND FARM PLAN SHOCKS BOARD

Source www.saukvalley.com

16 March 2011

BY DAVID GIULIANI,

MORRISON – Some Whiteside County Board members are upset that they hadn’t been informed about the possibility of wind energy development in the county.

A couple of weeks ago, a county official told a board committee about a company’s plans for wind turbines north of the village of Deer Grove and extending west of state Route 40.

Deer Grove, 11 miles south of Rock Falls, has a population of about 50.

Apparently, some board members didn’t know of the proposed project until they read about it in the newspaper.

At the board’s monthly meeting Tuesday, member Bill Milby, whose district includes Deer Grove, said a number of people have contacted him expressing their concerns about the proposed wind farm.

Milby said he wished he would learn of such developments from the county, rather than the newspaper.

Stuart Richter, the county’s planning and zoning administrator, emphasized that the county hadn’t received an application from the company, Ireland-based Mainstream Renewable Energy. He said he expected to receive the application in September.

“It’s not a big secret,” he said, adding that he hadn’t seen the layout of the proposed wind farm.

Board member Jim Duffy asked whether the wind farm would be rushed through the board at the last minute.

“I certainly hope not,” Richter responded. “This is all new to us, but we won’t be reinventing the wheel.”

Board member Jon Hinton suggested the county put a hold on all permits for a while, adding that he hadn’t known about the proposed wind farm until recently.

Members asked what would happen when companies abandoned their turbines.

Richter responded that the county would enter into separate agreements for such issues. He said some counties require companies to post money to be put in escrow to cover the costs of the eventual decommissioning of their turbines.

During the public comment portion of the meeting, Sterling resident Amanda Norris, head of the local Sauk Valley Tea Party, said she and her husband recently bought land near Prophetstown and planned it to use for recreational purposes.

“This leaves us very concerned about protecting our property rights,” she said. “Having a turbine only a few hundred feet from our property would make it worthless to us. How does Whiteside County intend to protect the rights of property owners such as me and my husband?”

Whiteside County doesn’t have any wind turbines, but Lee and Bureau counties have had them for years. Those counties have been embroiled in bitter debates because many residents find the turbines noisy and unsightly, and say they cause health issues.

Mainstream is planning 190 turbines for the local project, which would include Bureau, Lee and Whiteside counties. Most of the turbines would be in Lee County, but company representatives wouldn’t say how many would be in each county.

The representatives confirmed that they planned to apply for permits in the three counties in the coming months.

DOCTOR'S LETTER FEATURES IN SENATE INQUIRY

SOURCE: The Courier (Ballarat) through National Wind Watch

March 12 2011

By Brendan Gullifer,

A letter from Ballarat GP Scott Taylor to Waubra wind farm operator Acciona has been submitted to the Senate inquiry into wind farms.

In what is believed to be the first public statement by a local health professional on the issue, Dr Taylor says there is a “strong correlation” between symptoms of three of his patients and the operation of turbines at Waubra.

Dr Taylor outlines symptoms suffered by former Waubra residents husband and wife Carl and Sam Stepnell.

“In the last six months the Stepnells have had increasing problems including increased feeling of pressure in their head and ears, a feeling of uneasiness and frequent waking at night,” Dr Taylor wrote in September, 2010.

Dr Taylor, who works at Ballarat Group Practice in Victoria St, said the Stepnells’ symptoms “significantly improved” when turbines were not in operation for two weeks, but worsened again when the turbines came back on line. He said the Stepnells noticed they had “significantly less problems” when away from the turbines on holidays, and had no previous history of symptoms presented.

“I also confirm that I have one other patient who lives at Waubra on a 10 acre farm who is distraught with exactly the same symptoms as the Stepnells,” Dr Taylor wrote.

“I believe from the circumstantial evidence that there is a strong correlation between their symptoms and the operation of the turbines nearby.”

While a number of local doctors have been treating Waubra residents, this is believed to be the first public confirmation by any local GPs of concern over the link between wind turbines and health.

The letter was submitted by the Stepnells as part of their submission to the Senate inquiry. The Stepnells moved from Waubra last year, saying their home was uninhabitable due to turbine noise.

A spokesman for Acciona said: “It is not appropriate for Acciona to share the details of sensitive personal correspondence, nor will we comment on submissions to the Senate Inquiry which is currently underway. However we can say that we have received no medical or scientific advice with any evidence that positively links the operation of wind turbines to adverse health effects.”



WHY NOT TO DISMISS HEALTH IMPACTS OF WIND TURBINES

 SOURCE: Climatide, climatide.wgbh.org

 March 12, 2011 By Heather Goldstone,

The wind energy movement bills itself as an integral part of efforts to reduce fossil fuel usage and curb climate change while helping build the new green energy economy. But complaints about adverse health impacts – loss of sleep, headaches, depression – have surfaced in communities around the world where wind turbines are located in close proximity to homes, including here on Cape Cod. In their efforts to dismiss claims of adverse health impacts caused by nearby wind turbines, the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) comes out looking more like big industry than grassroots environmentalist.

I was a toxicologist in a former career, and I see a lot parallels between this debate and debates about the toxicity – or not – of chemical pollutants. So, here are three reasons not to dismiss complaints about wind turbines drawn from the environmental movement and the science of toxicology.

Argument: It’s all in their heads

An AWEA-commissioned review of the science surrounding wind turbines, sound, and health asserts that the main impact of wind turbine noise is to annoy people:

A feeling described as “annoyance” can be associated with acoustic factors such as wind turbine noise. … Annoyance is clearly a subjective effect that will vary among people and circumstances. … the main function of noise annoyance is as a warning that fitness may be affected but that it causes little or no physiological effect. Protracted annoyance, however, may undermine coping and progress to stress related effects. … The main health effect of noise stress is disturbed sleep, which may lead to other consequences.

And yet, they draw a line between “annoyance” and a health impact: (my emphasis)

There is no evidence that sound at the levels from wind turbines as heard in residences will cause direct physiological effects.

Rebuttal: Immune suppression

AWEA’s argument seems to hinge on dismissing annoyance as a subjective, emotional response and, thus, dismissing the secondary health effects of annoyance. But consider this: certain chemicals can alter the immune system, impairing its ability to fight off infections. This might not be a problem if we lived in germ-free bubbles (i.e. not a direct health problem). But in the real world, the increased risk of infection poses a serious health threat. Not satisfied?

There are also deeper flaws in AWEA’s argument:

• As discussed earlier this week, the word “annoyance” as it is used by several researchers addressing the wind turbine issue has a technical definition that encompasses “a significant degradation of quality of life.”
• Sleep disturbance and deprivation need not be a secondary effect of stress; noise at levels typically produced by large turbines is capable of partially or fully waking a person. Prolonged sleep deprivation constitutes a medical issue in itself, and is also a trigger for other health problems.
• Some residents report physical sensations – like ear popping – not related to stress. There is little or no scientific data to address these claims … a point I’ll get to shortly.

Argument: It only affects a small number of people

Dr. Robert McCunney is an MIT researcher and a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. He was a member of AWEA’s expert panel that reviewed the available science and determined that there is no evidence that wind turbines directly cause health effects. He has also provided expert testimony in court to that effect. He says it’s important to remember that most people aren’t negatively affected by wind turbines:

… at least in the studies that are available, the percentage of people who report annoyance in the proximity of wind turbines tends to be a relatively low… it’s not the predominant effect, and it’s not a majority of people who report these symptoms.

Furthermore, the AWEA report states that “a small number of sensitive people … may be stressed by the sound and suffer sleep disturbances,” citing above-average sound sensitivity, as well as personality traits and pre-existing negative attitudes toward wind turbines as factors predisposing persons to such impacts.

Rebuttal: Cancer clusters

To only consider impacts that affect the majority of people holds wind turbines to a standard that would be unthinkable for chemical pollutants.

Did drinking water contaminated with industrial chemicals give the majority of children in Woburn, Massachusetts leukemia? Or did chromium give the majority of people in Hinkley, California cancer? Absolutely not. If they had, documenting those cancer clusters would have been far more straightforward. But both were eventually validated and resulted in court settlements (check out A Civil Action and Erin Brokovich this weekend for the full stories, if you’re not familiar).

For that matter, is lead any less of a concern because it mostly impacts young children and unborn babies – a particularly sensitive portion of the population?

The standard is not a majority effect, but rather, a greater than expected occurrence of symptoms in any segment of the population, based on comparison with other turbine-free areas of similar geography, demographics, etc.

Argument: There’s not enough evidence

AWEA doesn’t deny that people living close to wind turbines around the world are reporting negative impacts. However, most of the surveys and case studies that currently exist are what scientists call anecdotal data – personal stories that have not been subjected to rigorous scientific investigation or the quality-control process of peer review. Thus, Dr. McCunney and the AWEA panel insist that there’s not enough scientific evidence to conclusively link wind turbine noise to health complaints.

Rebuttal: Precautionary principle

Here we can draw on an idea long embraced by the environmental movement and the scientific community (although less so industry or government) – that of the precautionary principle. The 1998 Wingspread Conference convened by the Science and Environmental Health Network crafted and adopted the following definition (my emphasis):

Where an activity raises threats of harm to the environment or human health, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically.

In this context the proponent of an activity, rather than the public bears the burden of proof.

The process of applying the Precautionary Principle must be open, informed and democratic, and must include potentially affected parties. It must also involve an examination of the full range of alternatives, including no action.

In 2005, UNESCO released a report aimed at clarifying when and how the precautionary principle should be applied:

The [precautionary principle] applies when there exist considerable scientific uncertainties about causality, magnitude, probability, and nature of harm;

This would certainly seem to be the current situation with regard to claims of health impacts caused by wind turbines. We do not yet have controlled, peer-reviewed studies that nail down exactly how many people are affected, what their symptoms are, when they began, and at what distances and sound levels they occur. Establishing the who, what, when and where of a problem will be an important first step before moving on to the more intricate questions of how and why. So there’s a long way to go before we reach a rigorous scientific understanding of the relationship between wind turbines and health. But the highly suggestive evidence at hand almost certainly meets the standards of the precautionary principle.