3/9/10 DOUBLE FEATURE: Grease is the word: What's that on the turbines? AND Town of Morrison to Wind Developer Invenergy: What part of NO don't you understand?
Grease and oil on Fond du Lac County turbine towers.
Home in a Fond du Lac County wind project: February 2010
Morrison residents reject wind farm in 245-18 vote
Vote asks Town Board to block proposal for 54 turbines
SOURCE: Greenbay Press-Gazette
By Tony Walter
March 9, 2010
MORRISON — Town residents voted decisively against wind turbines Monday night.
Packing the gymnasium at Zion Lutheran School, residents and property owners campaigned against the effort of Chicago-based Invenergy LLC, whose project is in the hands of the Public Service Commission. In all, 20 people spoke, and only one supported the wind turbines.
The Town Board meets at 7 p.m. today, but Chairman Todd Christensen said the wind turbine issue will not be on the agenda.
He said it will likely be addressed at the annual town meeting in April.
Jon Morehouse, a 20-year-resident of Morrison, proposed the four-part strategy that would:
The meeting began with residents voting overwhelmingly to allow only themselves and Morrison property owners to speak, although representatives of Invenergy were in attendance.
The speakers emphasized health and economic issues in protesting the fact that some residents have signed contracts to have wind turbines built on their property.
Curt Skaletski said property values would plummet.
"I do not want to see 25 percent of my property value stolen," he said.
Kristin Morehouse, a Morrison property owner, urged support for the purchase of a manure digester that she said would be more effective and consistent than the wind turbines. She said the wind turbines would put the town's water resources at even greater risk.
Resident Don Hoeft said the town should at least seek a delay in the construction of the turbines until more evaluation is completed.
"It's a system that scars the environment, scars the landscape and pits neighbor against neighbor," Hoeft said.
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3/8/10 DOUBLE FEATURE! What part of NOISE don't you understand?
Home in a Wisconsin wind project: Fond du Lac County: Photo by Jim Bembinster
There are health concerns with turbines
Source: Greenbay Press Gazette
By Carl Johnson
March 8, 2010
GREENLEAF — As our technology has developed progressively larger refrigeration, ventilating, air conditioning units and now 1.5-megawatt wind turbines, a new form of noise pollution is an environmental factor — low frequency noise (LFN) emitted by huge industrial machines.
Significant levels of LFN can enter a home, and, with prolonged exposure, can cause sleep disturbance, headaches, tinnitus, fatigue and stress levels that can lead to cardiovascular disease. This cluster of symptoms appears in peoples' health complaints, nationwide and in other countries, where these industrial giants are built in close proximity to people.
Setbacks of industrial turbines, in the wind energy factories the Public Service Commission has most recently approved, have ranged from 1,000 to 1,250 feet from a dwelling. This is an attempt to reduce audible higher frequency noise, but no standard is applied for potentially harmful exposure to LFN.
Wind energy developers dismiss LFN health risks and contend that no research is necessary. There is now an accumulation of engineering and medical data that could be used by urban and rural municipalities to establish noise codes to protect the health of Wisconsin's citizens from all sources of LFN.
Are the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin and governmental bodies charged with protecting us listening?
SECOND FEATURE
ARE WIND FARMS A HEALTH RISK?
SOURCE: Governing.com
Are Wind Farms a Health Risk?
Wind energy is blowing hot right now. Nationwide, wind farms are bringing in renewable energy and jobs, such as in Montana, as detailed in "Propelling Growth." Overall, wind turbines in the United States generated 52 billion kilowatt hours in 2008, which is enough to serve 4.6 million households, according to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). And demand is growing: The number of wind turbines in the U.S. nearly doubled between 2006 and 2008, according to the DOE.
But it isn't all good, according to Dr. Nina Pierpont, who has studied families living near wind turbines. Pierpont found that there are enough negative effects to warrant calling them "Wind Turbine Syndrome," because the symptoms form a consistent pattern from person to person, she says. "A syndrome really means the description of signs and symptoms that occur together and are not yet tied together as a clear disease."
One resident of Mars Hill, Maine, which has hosted a wind farm since 2007, wrote to Pierpont about her experience: "The noise created by the turbines can be unbearable at times," says Wendy Todd. "It causes disruption to sleep patterns, stress and anxiety to most who live downwind of the project. For some it causes headaches, pressure or ringing in the ears, inability to concentrate, feelings of unease, and dizziness. … I am not talking about a simple nuisance, this is about life-altering changes to the environment that can literally make people sick and change the way you live in your home and use your land. A large number of the families affected have considered leaving their homes."
In his testimony to the Michigan Public Service Commission in December 2009, Dr. Malcolm A. Swinbanks said low-frequency noise can induce feelings likened to seasickness. "Like seasickness, the sensitivity of different individuals varies enormously," he says, "some being immediately sensitive, while others can barely detect anything." Swinbanks says he stood beside two people in a place where low-frequency noise was present; one person couldn't really hear anything, while the other felt ill and wanted to leave.
Pierpont's research also finds similar inconsistencies. Further, some of her subjects note that their symptoms come and go according to the wind's direction and strength, blade spinning speed, which way the turbines are facing and particular sounds coming from the turbines. Ultimately, Pierpont says, low-frequency noise or vibration tricks the body's balance system into thinking it's moving-like seasickness, as Swinbanks suggested.
Wind turbine companies have dismissed the problem, saying people are simply making the symptoms up because they just don't like the turbines. According to a February 2009 article in Ontario, Canada's The Windsor Star, Brian Howe, a consulting engineer in acoustics for HGC Engineering, said Ontario's guidelines for turbine noise are adequate and consistent with Health Canada studies, and that most people near wind turbines aren't complaining about the noise.
But Tracy Whitworth, a teacher in Clear Creek, Ontario, has multiple complaints: Her home sits among 18 turbines, all within a 1.8-mile radius and the closest about one-quarter mile from her back door. "What most don't understand is that it is the low frequency waves you cannot hear that are so debilitating to one's health," she says. "I have developed tinnitus in my ears. I hear and feel the pulsating of the turbines and buzzing in my ears. I also feel the pulsating in my throat and chest. I have nausea, dizziness, significant hearing loss, itchy eyes … heart palpitations, achy joints, short-term memory loss, severe sleep deprivation on a regular basis."
The solution to the problem, say medical experts, isn't to stop harnessing wind's energy, but to place the turbines a certain distance away from where people live. In flat terrain, the turbines should be placed at least 1.25 miles away from where people are located, according to Pierpont, and at least 2 miles away in mountainous terrain, where the turbines are usually on ridges.
This distance from wind farms that residents should maintain, Pierpont says, is probably the most important thing for people to know. "When the wind farms are coming to their communities, they need to know what kinds of distances to ask for," she says. "I think government should be involved in having proper setbacks in place, because that's always a governmental issue whether local or state, and in funding further research."
5/5/10 The noise heard 'round the world and a look at the future for rural Wisconsin
The landscape in this video looks remarkably like that of the Butler Ridge wind project in Dodge County, Wisconsin.
Click on the image below to see video from Butler Ridge. The setbacks in this project are 1000 feet from non-participating homes.
At present there are just over 300 wind turbines in Wisconsin. To meet the recommendations of The Governor's Task Force on Global Warming, an additional 14,000 will need to be sited by 2025.
5/6/10 Wisconsin Public Television's 'In Wisconsin' looks at high bat mortality near wind turbines in our state
SOURCE: Wisconsin Public Television
Click on the image above to watch. For those whose internet connections are too slow to watch video, Click here for a transcript Wisconsin Public Television
CLICK HERE to download the post construction bat and bird mortality study for the We Energies Blue Sky/ Green Field project in Fond du Lac County. The bird and bat kills in this project are by far the highest ever recorded in the midwest.
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3/5/10 The attack of the 650 foot turbine
This is the Enercon E-126, the first wind turbine with 6 MW rated power, rotor diameter: 126m (413ft), hub height: 135m(450ft). Two of these giant wind power units have been built for testing at an onshore location, Rysumer Nacken, near Emden, in the northwest of Germany.