1/11/09 Why are residents living in the footprint of the just approved Glacier Hills wind farm worried? Ask our neighbors to the north.
Scroll down to next post to read about the Public Service Commission's Glacier Hills decision.
Wind power takes a blow around Minnesota
David Brewster
Star Tribune [source]
January 11, 2009
ELKTON, MINN. -- Every sunny morning, shadows from the massive rotating blades swing across their breakfast table. The giant towers dominate the view from their deck. Noise from the turbines fills the silence that Dolores and Rudy Jech once enjoyed on their Minnesota farm.
"Rudy and I are retired, and we like to sit out on our deck," Dolores said. "And that darned thing is right across the road from us. It's an eyesore, it's noisy, and having so many of them there's a constant hum."
Just as they are being touted as a green, economical and job-producing energy source, wind farms in Minnesota are starting to get serious blowback. Across the state, people are opposing projects worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Opposition is also rising in other states. It's not likely to blow over quickly in Minnesota, which is the nation's fourth-largest producer of wind power and on track to double its 1,805-megawatt capacity in the next couple of years.
To be sure, many people who live more than half a mile from machines are not bothered by noise, and those with turbines on their property enjoy an economic windfall. They typically sign 30-year easements and receive up to $7,500 a year for each turbine on their land.
But the Jechs do not own the land across the road, where a turbine stands about 900 feet from their 100-year-old farm home east of Austin. Flickering shadows from the 122-foot blades make east-facing rooms seem as if someone is flipping a light switch for hours at a time. "We can pull our drapes, we can put earplugs in, or we can wear dark glasses, I guess, but it doesn't really make the problem go away," said their daughter Patti Lienau.
After complaining to the developer, they received two large evergreen trees to partly block the view, and $3,000 a year to compensate for the noise. But Lienau said that no money can restore tranquility for her "shell-shocked" 85-year-old father, who struggles with panic attacks and anxiety.
"I'm not against wind. They're going to put them up whether I like it or not," said Katie Troe, leader of Safe Wind for Freeborn County. "What we're asking is that every turbine be looked at and placed correctly."
Rural area not the same
The rising numbers of complaints have taken Minnesota regulators by surprise.
"I've been doing this for 14 years and people are raising issues I've never heard of," said Larry Hartman, manager of permitting in the state's Office of Energy Security.
For the most part, said Hartman, wind farms have been welcomed by struggling farmers and revenue-hungry counties. However, some projects are drawing fire, often from non-farmers who built country homes and commute to nearby cities.
"The rural area isn't what it used to be anymore," said Kevin Hammel, a dairy farmer about 9 miles east of Rochester, where wind developers are active.
Hammel supported wind generators initially, but changed his mind after a developer took him and a busload of neighbors to visit a wind farm. The tour made him feel like he was in an industrial park, he said. Yet others admire the sleek, graceful turbines with towers up to 325 feet tall, topped by generators the size of a bus.
Federal subsidies and state mandates for utilities to produce more electricity from renewable sources are accelerating wind farm development.
The nature of noise
Minnesota regulations require that wind turbines be at least 500 feet away from a residence, and more to make sure sounds do not exceed 50 decibels. In most cases, that amounts to at least 700 to 1,000 feet, depending upon the turbine's size, model and surrounding terrain. Whether 50 decibels is too loud depends upon individuals, who perceive sound differently, but it approximates light auto traffic at 50 feet, according to wind industry reports.
Critics say setback distances should be tripled or quadrupled. Nina Pierpoint, a New York physician who has examined the issue, describes "wind turbine syndrome" with symptoms that include sleep disturbance, ear pressure, vertigo, nausea, blurred vision, panic attacks and memory problems.
Last month, the American and Canadian Wind Energy Associations released a report that reviewed those claims and said they lacked merit.
Rita Messing, a supervisor at the Minnesota Department of Health, co-wrote a report last July to help guide the state on noise decisions.
Wind turbines emit a broad spectrum of sound, she said, including higher frequencies covered by state noise regulations and lower frequency sounds that are not. Her report does not recommend changes in the state noise rules, but notes that local governments can impose longer setbacks.
That needs to happen, said Tom Schulte, who's upset about a proposed wind farm near his new home in Goodhue County. "When I built this house, the county told me where to build: how far from my neighbor, how far from a fence line, how far from a feedlot, and out of 23 acres there wasn't a whole heck of a lot of land left where I could have put a house," Schulte said. "And yet somebody can plop a 400-foot-tall turbine 500 feet from my house and the county steps back and says they don't have any say about it."
Changes ahead?
The debate over noise and setbacks will drop into St. Paul this month when the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission takes up the matter. Comments filed by 16 wind developers said the state's noise rules and setback distances do not need to be changed, that "shadow flicker" from rotating blades can be solved by better modeling and siting, and that there's no evidence that low-frequency sounds affect human health.
Others are not convinced and want Minnesota to reevaluate the rules. People who live near wind turbines are "experimental subjects, who have not given their informed consent to the risk of harm to which they may be exposed," said Per Anderson of Moorhead. He postponed plans to build a house on land near three proposed wind farms in Clay County.
Some people challenge the industry's claim that 50 decibels is no louder than light traffic or a refrigerator running. Brian Huggenvik, who owns 17 acres near a proposed wind farm 2 miles from Harmony, said he has driven to various wind farms and listened to the noise to judge for himself. Huggenvik, an airline pilot, said turbines can also produce a whining sound, similar in frequency to a jet engine idling on a taxiway, though not as loud. "It's not like living next to a highway with constant sound and your mind blocks it out," he said. "It's something that you just can't get used to. It is a different kind of sound."
Bill Grant, executive director of the Izaak Walton League's Midwest office, said that all energy sources impose certain costs and inconveniences. If there are legitimate conflicts about wind turbine noise and public health, the siting guidelines should be revised, he said.
But Grant cautioned against putting severe restrictions on a renewable industry that offers so many benefits. "What people who want to scale back wind are overlooking is the number of deaths that occur annually from air pollution from coal plants," he said.
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1/11/09 A tale of two windfarms and an extra 250 feet: PSC approves Glacier Hills Project AND Brown County Invenergy Ledge Wind Project moving "Full Speed Ahead"
PSC Approves wind farm in Columbia County
By Jane Burns,
Wisconsin State Journal,
January 11 2010
The state Public Service Commission on Monday gave verbal approval to Wisconsin Electric Power Co.’s request to construct a new wind electric generation facility in Columbia County at a cost of between $335 million and $435 million.
The Glacier Hills Wind Park, with 90 wind units, is planned for the towns of Randolph and Scott in the northeast part of Columbia County. It will be the largest wind farm in Wisconsin, said PSC chairman Eric Callisto.
Construction is expected to begin this year with completion set for late 2011.
Documents associated with WEPCO’s applications can be viewed at http://psc.wi.gov/. Enter case number 6630-CE-302 in the boxes provided on the PSC homepage, or click on the Electronic Regulatory Filing System button.
SECOND STORY
PSC imposes bigger setbacks for Glacier Hills turbines
Thomas Content
Journal Sentinel, www.jsonline.com
January 11, 2010
We Energies will be allowed to build its wind farm northeast of Madison, but commissioners attached conditions designed to blunt the impact of turbines on nearby homes.
During a meeting Monday afternoon approving the project, commissioners imposed a 1,250-foot setback between turbines and the houses of residents who aren’t hosting turbines. Members of the Public Service Commission also agreed to set special summertime noise restrictions, limiting how loud the turbines could be at night.
We Energies had proposed a 1,000-foot setback, and the PSC estimated its restriction imposed Monday would disqualify 15 turbine sites the utility had selected. It’s unclear how many of the 118 total sites that the utility has identified would be affected by the bigger setback, utility spokesman Brian Manthey said.
However, commissioners rejected by 2-to-1 a proposal that would have required the Milwaukee utility to make “good neighbor payments” to property owners who aren’t hosting turbines.
Eric Callisto, PSC chairman, said the payments would be appropriate given the concerns raised by homeowners who live near wind turbines, but commissioners Mark Meyer and Lauren Azar said the amount of the payments would be difficult to calculate. Azar said authorizing the payments would put the agency on a “slippery slope” in terms of setting a precedent for other cases.
Two of the three commissioners also recommended that We Energies use a more comprehensive bidding process for future wind projects.
The commission will discuss that and other issues further when the PSC takes up its final decision on the case at a meeting tentatively set for Jan. 20.
THIRD STORY:
PSC approves Glacier Hills without Invenergy agreement
January 11th, 2010
We Energies can build the 90-turbine Glacier Hills Wind Park in Columbia County without a requirement to buy power from Chicago-based Invenergy LLC.
The Public Service Commission of Wisconsin on Monday approved the We Energies’ proposal, expected to be the largest wind farm in state history. Commissioners denied a request by Invenergy that the project only be approved if We Energies agrees to also buy power from Invenergy’s yet-to-be-built, 100-turbine farm near Green Bay.
The Chicago firm last year filed as an intervener in the PSC review of Glacier Hills to help finance the Ledge Wind Farm proposal. Invenergy argued an agreement to buy power from Ledge could generate money for the project and help We Energies advance toward its state-set goal of generating 10 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2015.
The three commissioners Monday said Invenergy was trying to get a fair shake for its project. However, the PSC review of Ledge might not end until much later this year, and commissioners agreed there is an obvious timing problem.
“We’re not here to negotiate or set terms,” said Commissioner Mark Meyer. “The Invenergy project is not something that’s real yet.”
Mark Leaman, Invenergy’s senior vice president, said after Monday’s meeting that he is disappointed by the decision.
“There wasn’t a level playing field this time around,” he said. “(We Energies) did not put out a request for proposals for power purchasing, and the only way for us to get into the discussion was by filing as an intervener.”
However, Leaman said, he was reassured by the commissioners’ discussion about requiring utilities to put out RFPs for long-term purchased-power agreements as part of proposing future projects.
PSC Chairman Eric Callisto said Invenergy’s request sparked important debate about purchased power.
A state administrative rule requires utilities consider purchased-power agreements as an alternative to building new power plants. However, Callisto said, he wants to discuss refining the RFP process to include an analysis of how much renewable power is needed to meet state goals as well as a third-party analysis of associated agreement costs and evaluations of agreements extending beyond 20 years.
The commissioners Monday declined to agree on any of those terms, but will discuss them in the next week. The details are expected next week when the PSC issues its final report on Glacier Hills.
We Energies spokesman Brian Manthey said the decision will not stop the company from talking about future agreements with Invenergy.
Invenergy, meanwhile, is discussing agreements with other utilities to try to finance Ledge’s construction. Leaman would not provide the names of those utilities or the project’s price tag, but said the company will continue trying to acquire state approvals.
“We won’t start construction until we have a power sales contract,” he said. “But (We Energies) and other utilities will need renewable energy in the future. Today’s decision won’t stop us moving forward.”
===================================
PSC’s final order expected next week
We Energies got an initial green light for its proposed 90-turbine wind farm, but a final order to build will not be issued until next week.
The Public Service Commission of Wisconsin on Monday approved the utility’s proposal to build the Glacier Hills Wind Park in the towns of Randolph and Scott. However, commissioners said they want 10 more days to discuss project details, including turbine placement and whether the PSC should require utilities request proposals for purchased-power agreements from electricity providers.
PSC spokeswoman Teresa Weidemann-Smith said commissioners want to iron out those details for the final report, which is expected Jan. 22. She said the commissioners’ approval likely will not change.
“The project is a go,” Weidemann-Smith said.
But We Energies also has to review some of the commissioners’ suggestions, such as requiring 1,250-foot setbacks instead of the utility’s proposed 1,000-foot setbacks from buildings. If the changes go through, the utility might have to reduce the number of turbines it intends to build.
“It’s difficult to comment on everything that was discussed today,” said We Energies spokesman Brian Manthey. “We still have to take a look at everything that was said today and determine how that impacts the project.”
The wind farm could cost up to $434 million and generate up to 209 megawatts of electricity, depending on what kind of turbines the utility uses.
FOURTH STORY:
Despite setback, Brown County wind farm "full speed ahead"
By Scott Williams,
January 11 2010
A developer who wants to build a major wind farm in Brown County said today it would persevere despite state approval for a competing project in Columbia County.
Invenergy LLC had asked the state Public Service Commission to reject the We Energies project in Columbia County or approve both projects jointly.
Chicago-based Invenergy is seeking state approval for the Ledge Wind Energy Project, which would include 100 turbines south of Green Bay in the towns of Glenmore, Wrightstown, Morrison and Holland. It would be the first large-scale wind farm in Brown County and the largest anywhere in Wisconsin.
The Public Service Commission today approved the slightly smaller Glacier Hills Wind Park, rejecting Invenergy’s request to be involved in that development.
Invenergy senior vice president Mark Leaman later expressed disappointment, but said that the company would still pursue state approval for the Brown County wind farm.
“We’re moving full speed ahead,” he said.
Invenergy has said that Ledge Wind Energy Park could be in operation by 2011 and that it would generate enough electricity to power about 40,000 homes.
EARLIER NOTE FROM THE BPWI RESEARCH NERD: The Public Service Commission of Wisconsin has voted to approve WE Energies’ proposed Glacier Hills Wind Plant in Columbia County. They indicated their intention to approve the project early in the hearing, but asked for some conditions, including an increasing the setback from non-participating homes from 1000 feet to 1250.
The conditions did not include property value guarantees or good neighbor agreements for non-participating residents. There was discussion about asking the utility about doing something for two non-participating families that will have over seven turbines within 2640 feet of their homes. It was suggested that the utility either buy their homes or come to some sort of financial agreement with the homeowners.
The 90 turbine wind farm will be sited in the towns of Randolph and Scott.
Scroll down to see maps of homes and turbine locations for this project.
More on this developing story as information becomes available.
1/10/10 Monday, Monday. The PSC decides on the fate of residents whose homes are inside of the Glacier Hills Project
WISCONSIN WIND TURBINE NOISE LOG, TOWN OF BROWNSVILLE, WI.Sunday, January 10, 2010:7:45AM. Wind SW 6 knts, 18 rpms @ 1000’ from turbine 4. dBA 51.8, dBC 67.0. Wind is low, blade speed high, low ambient sound, therefore very loud turbine sounds.Turbines 4, 6 & 73 loudest, but also I hear 3a, 74a +. My wife did not sleep well and was up several times “trying” to get tired. Two other nights this week similar happenings for her. I woke up with a headache and it continues. Again, it is rare for me to have a headache.I would guess my cortisol level is again high as the last week or so my food seems like it is in my throat and I need to keep drinking water to keep the food down. My weight is getting close to my all time high.3:50 PM Wind SW, 18.6 rpms 14 knts, peak gusts 21. The sound of the wind is now loud so it covers much of the turbine sounds even though the jet sound is still heard. My wife just asked if the wind is strong because the ringing in her ears is loud.Yes, the volume of the ringing sound varies."---Gerry Meyer, Invenergy Forward Energy wind farm resident, Fond du Lac County, Wisconsin
"Let me be clear, however, as to why I’m here. I’m here because of people who are suffering as a consequence of being near wind turbines. Adverse health effects are occurring as we speak.
My proposal is this: Authoritative guidelines must be developed, and the only way to do that is a well-designed epidemiological study conducted by arm’s length investigators, mutually agreeable to all sides. That must be done – as well as check for low frequency noise. In the meantime, let us listen to and help the victims. Anything less would be an abandonment of responsibility by government."
---Testimony of Dr. Robert McMurtry to the Ontario Legislative Assembly Standing Committee. [Click here to read more ]
Glacier Hills Wind Farm: Yellow circles indicate 1000 setback around non-paticipating homesPSC ruling expected on Glacier HillsState regulators on Monday will rule on We Energies' $413.5 million proposal to build the largest wind farm in the state.
The Milwaukee utility is proposing a 90-turbine wind power project, the Glacier Hills Wind Park, northeast of Madison. It would be the largest wind farm in the state, slightly bigger than the 88-turbine Blue Sky Green Field wind farm We Energies began operating near Fond du Lac last year.
Glacier Hills would generate enough power over a year to supply 45,000 typical homes, the utility says.
The proposal has run into opposition from local residents who are concerned about the impact of wind turbines on their property values as well as a Chicago wind-power developer that is proposing an alternative project.
We Energies needs this and other renewable energy projects to be built in order to comply with a state mandate that 10% of Wisconsin's electricity come from renewable power sources by 2015.
A provision in the proposed Clean Energy Jobs Act, introduced this week, would accelerate that mandate, requiring the utility to meet that 2015 requirement two years earlier, in 2013. The bill would require that the mandate ramp up so that 25% of the state's power supply would come from wind turbines, biomass projects and other renewable power sources by 2025.
In the Glacier Hills case, the environmental group Clean Wisconsin is calling on the Public Service Commission to require the Milwaukee utility to shut down some of its older coal-fired power plants as a way to help it comply with renewable power mandates.
Shutdowns would make it easier to attain renewable targets and may be in order, the group says, because decreasing power sales linked to the recession and the addition of power plants in Port Washington and Oak Creek mean the state no longer faces power supply challenges.
The state Public Service Commission last month agreed to open an inquiry into whether the state's utilities should have to shut down or idle older plants because of the state has an ample supply of power.
Meanwhile, Invenergy LLC of Chicago is asking that the commission, if it approves the We Energies project, also require the utility to enter into negotiations to buy power from Invenergy's proposed wind farm in southern Brown County. Invenergy built the Forward Wind Energy Center near the Horicon Marsh.
We Energies spokesman Brian Manthey said the utility believes it has made the case for Glacier Hills.
"It's definitely one of the best locations in the state to build a wind farm," Manthey said. There's a nearby link to the high-voltage transmission system, he said, and "it's a good wind resource and low population density. That all points to why this is a very, very good location."
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1/7/09 You say 'Annoying' and I say 'Disturbing"
Fond du Lac County, Wisconsin. Photo by Jim Bembinster
Annoyance; Another word for torment
Last September, Concerned Citizens to Save Roxbury and others filed an appeal of the Maine Department of Environmental Protection's (MEDEP) final order approving the Record Hill wind energy facility proposed for Roxbury, ME.
The appeal challenged the permit on a number of important issues including MEDEP's reliance, in part, on claims made by Maine's Center for Disease Control that there is "no evidence in peer-reviewed medical and public health literature of adverse health effects from noise generated from wind turbines other than occasional reports of annoyances."
The near identical conclusion was published in the industry-funded report released earlier this month which stated that while noise and vibrations emitted by industrial wind turbines may be annoying the towers posed no risk to human health and any allegations of adverse health effects were as yet unproven.
We were particularly struck by how both sources characterized turbine noise as merely 'annoying' prompting us to investigate further.
According to Dr. Michael Nissenbaum, the word 'annoyance' has been "misinterpreted by the wind industry and the Maine CEC to mean an inconsequential disturbance" thus failing to comprehend the health significance or severity of the 'annoyance' in medical terms.
"Substitute 'disturbance' for the word 'annoyance'", he said, "and things look different."
Dr. Alice Suter, the distinguished acoustician in the area of hearing conservation and noise control appears to support Dr. Nissenbaum's position. In her 1991 paper entitled "Noise and Its Effects" she wrote:
"Annoyance" has been the term used to describe the community's collective feelings about noise ever since the early noise surveys in the 1950s and 1960s, although some have suggested that this term tends to minimize the impact. While "aversion" or "distress" might be more appropriate descriptors, their use would make comparisons to previous research difficult. It should be clear, however, that annoyance can connote more than a slight irritation; it can mean a significant degradation in the quality of life. This represents a degradation of health in accordance with the World Health Organization's (WHO) definition of health, meaning total physical and mental well-being, as well as the absence of disease."
We asked acoustics expert George Kamperman[1], who has over 50 years of experience in the area of community noise, to help us understand what Dr. Suter meant by her statement that other descriptors "would make comparisons to previous research difficult."
He responded with this important historical perspective:
In the mid-50s (last century) BBN performed numerous community noise surveys. Residents were requested to answer a simple questionnaire to rate their outdoor environmental noise exposure on a scale from one to five. A rating of "1" meant the noise level was acceptable and a rating of "5" was recorded by persons very upset with the noise level outside their home prompting repeated calls to complain.
Two different noise acceptance rating scales evolved from the noise surveys. The initial presentations showed the percent "Highly Annoyed" (%HA) versus noise level (dBA). The field survey responses at "1" translated to 0% HA and responses of "5" became 100% HA. Over the next couple of decades the percent "HA" evolved into "Community Reaction" ranging from 'No Overt Reaction' to 'Vigorous Actions with Threat of Legal Action'.
Fifty years ago noise 'annoyance' seemed an appropriate term.
This was also a couple of decades before OSHA. We were not exposed to jet aircraft except in the military. We did have guns and drop forge hammers but very little ear protection was even available. Our primary concerns were adequate sound isolation in multifamily housing and commercial office buildings plus good speech communication in lecture halls.
Mr. Kamperman added: "Dr. Nissenbaum has suggested wind turbine noise generates sleep 'disturbance' and not simply sleep 'annoyance.' I find this to be a very accurate distinction. The CanWEA report has sidestepped the obvious difference between noise annoyance and the noise disturbance associated with wind turbine noise immission."
Indeed!
According to Mr. Kamperman, Dr. Suter, Dr. Nissenbaum, and the WHO, the word 'annoyance' is an important technical term whose meaning should not be taken lightly. It would seem both MECDC and the wind industry are missing this point entirely.
Nonetheless, using the nomenclature offered by Mr. Kamperman, most would agree the individuals cited in this story are '100% HA'.
[1] Mr. Kamperman is a Bd. Cert. Member Institute of Noise Control Engineers, Fellow Member Acoustical Society of America, and Member National Council of Acoustical Consultants.
1/3/09: Yes living too close to turbines made her sick. Yes, the wind company admits they bought her house because of it. No, she can't speak openly about it.
Wind tower neighbor bought out for health reasons
by Chris Braithwaite in Barton Chronicle (Vermont)
Barbara Ashbee-Lormand traveled from central Ontario to central Vermont in late October to a discussion of an industrial wind turbine development proposed for the town of Ira, organized by Vermonters for a Clean Environment.
She’s a rare figure in the debate over the effects big wind towers have on people. She’s one of only two homeowners that a major wind company, Canadian Hydro Developers, has conceded it bought out because of their complaints that the huge gadgets proved to be impossible to live with.
Ms. Ashbee-Lormand has an important story to tell, but she didn’t tell it at that October meeting in West Rutland. Nor did she tell it during an interview in her real estate office in Orangeville, a town of about 15,000 that sits 50 miles north and a little west of Toronto.
That was part of the deal, when Canadian Hydro bought her home.
“I cannot talk about my personal experience,” she said at the outset of a brief interview. “If you want to call it a gag order, so be it.”
Ms. Ashbee-Lormand clearly believes that wind towers pose a threat to human health, but she can’t say why. It might have been that frustration that briefly reduced the crisply tailored businesswoman to tears during the meeting in her office.
But she could refer this reporter to a colleague, retired pharmacist Carmen Krogh, who is under no such constraint. Ms. Krogh was a featured speaker at the West Rutland meeting. She says that Ms. Ashbee-Lormand and her husband found the wind towers so intolerable that they moved out of their house and slept in a tent in the backyard.
They lived in Amaranth, a rural township north of Orangeville that is host to 22 industrial wind turbines. After Canadian Hydro bought them out, they moved to the nearby township of Mono. Moving out of a house into a tent makes little sense, unless the effects of low-frequency sound from the turbines are taken into account.
“Low-frequency noise can be more disturbing inside a house,” Ms. Krogh said in a recent interview. “The house can act as a receptor.” In the tent, Ms. Krogh suggested, the couple coped with the noise of the turbines, “but the other component was reduced.”
Ms. Krogh says that Ms. Ashbee-Lormand is just one of more than a hundred Ontario residents who, in response to her questionnaire, have reported that nearby wind turbines do them harm.
That’s enough, she argues, to justify a thorough-going, well funded study of the effects wind turbines have on some of their human neighbors.
“My personal position is that we really need to pause until we do some very good studies,” she said. She compares such a study to the search for side effects that is undertaken before a potent new drug is released for general use.
In the field of wind energy, she notes, “it has been a very difficult situation, because a lot of investment has already taken place.”
Ontario alone, she estimates, has between 500 and 600 working turbines.
Absent the sort of study, the wind power industry is free to make statements like this one from the Canadian Wind Energy Association, to the Orangeville Banner: “We say it’s quite conclusively demonstrated in the peer-reviewed scientific literature that there’s no causal linkage that’s been found between sounds from wind turbines and human health.”
The industry’s stand on the matter, and its apparent determination to tie financial settlements to gag orders, isolates people who do suffer side effects.
In Amaranth, Ms. Ashbee-Lormand recalls, “We were experiencing problems, and being told we were the only people in the wind farm who were having problems. They really do try and keep it quiet.” Then Ms. Ashbee-Lormand saw Helen Fraser on television, talking about the problems that led her and her husband, Bruce, to sell their home.
The Frasers lived in the neighboring township of Melancthon, which hosts the majority of the 133 towers in Canadian Hydro’s “Eco-Power Center.” They are the other family whose home, the utility acknowledged utility to Banner reporter Richard Vivian, it purchased as a result of the residents’ health complaints.
The four other homes it bought, Canadian Hydro told the Banner, were needed for storage and to house construction workers.
Ms. Fraser disputes that vigorously. All the purchases, she insists, were due to residents’ complaints of health problems. One of them was a dairy farmer, she says, who complained that his cows stopped calving, and their milk production suffered accordingly. “He moved to Saskatchewan,” Ms. Fraser said.
Unlike Ms. Ashbee-Lormand, Ms. Fraser said she is barred only from discussing the terms of the purchase agreement, and can talk freely about what led to it.
The couple broke ground for their new home on County Road 17 on their second wedding anniversary in 1975. Built to their specifications, the five-bedroom home went up on a one-acre lot on the back corner of a farm that was then owned by Bruce’s parents. The stone facing on the front of the house came from the nearby farm of Helen’s parents.
They raised their four children in the house, planted scores of trees, grew bushels of potatoes in their vegetable garden.
When construction started on the wind turbines in 2005 the Frasers were interested and, Ms. Fraser insists, sympathetic witnesses.
Mr. Fraser, a retired crops expert for the province of Ontario, clocked a big gravel truck rumbling by the house every 30 seconds, hauling materials for the network of roads that crisscross the flat farmland around their former house.
He marveled at the scale of the project, the deep holes, 60 feet across, for turbine foundations that each absorbed truckloads of concrete and a tractor trailer load of rebar. The towers rise 256 feet, he said, and the turbine blades extend their height to 386 feet.
The closest tower is 1,410 feet from the house – “Much too close,” Mr. Fraser said on a recent visit to the site.
But before the turbines started turning in March 2006, Ms. Fraser insists, “I was still for them. I’m for green. We compost and recycle. I’m totally for green.”
Once the big blades began to turn, Ms. Fraser said, “I started to get headaches, then body aches, and a feeling like something was crawling out of my ear.”
Her problems varied with the direction of the wind, Ms. Fraser recalled. “If the blades were facing the house, I wrote the day off. I couldn’t concentrate. My heart would beat to the pulse of the turbines. We’d have to keep the windows closed.”
When the couple took a vacation to a beach on Lake Huron, she said, “all my symptoms, within 24 hours, cleared up.” When they came home, she said, the symptoms returned.
“If the blades were facing the northeast I wouldn’t sleep at all,” Ms. Fraser said. The family dog couldn’t sleep either, she said, “and nine times out of ten she’d pee on the floor.”
That August a 25-day trip to Canada’s east coast provided quick relief. “I never had aches, no ringing in my ears, nothing crawling out of them,” Ms. Fraser said. “Bruce’s blood sugar went back to normal.” Mr. Fraser is a diabetic, and at home his blood sugar levels had been all over the map.
“Back home we come and the symptoms started all over again,” Ms. Fraser said. “I started realizing this has to be the turbines. I started looking on the Net and found that this is a common problem. I said, ‘Okay, I’m not nuts.’”
Things got even worse with the arrival of winter, Ms. Fraser said. Coming from a lower angle, the sun shone through the wind turbines and cast their flickering shadows into the house.
The strobe effect gave her a pounding headache, Ms. Fraser said. “One day after 45 minutes I went to the basement – the dog beat me there. I thought the top was coming off my head. I was holding the sides of my head, my eyes were running, I was sick to my stomach.”
Beyond the physical symptoms, Ms. Fraser recalls a feeling of uneasiness. “You can’t get that anxious feeling out of yourself; feeling like you’re in an Alfred Hitchcock movie. It upsets your equilibrium.”
In 2007, on their thirty-fourth wedding anniversary, the Frasers moved into a house in the nearby town of Shelburne.
The company had made them an offer and, after talking to the grown children, all living in Toronto, the couple decided to take it.
“If we decided to keep the house, we wouldn’t be able to sell it,” Ms. Fraser said. “Basically I call it shut up money.”
Though she is free to discuss her experience with the turbines, and frequently does so, Ms. Fraser said she did agree not to testify in person at hearings on wind power that the Ontario Municipal Board was holding at the time.
“It was heartbreaking when we sold that house,” Ms. Fraser said. “Just heartbreaking.”
There were two years of extensive renovation before the Frasers stopped calling the Shelburne residence a house. With 25 friends and family sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner this fall, Ms. Fraser said, “we officially called it a home. It was a hard two years.”
Meanwhile an employee of Canadian Hydro lives in the couple’s old house.
It’s listed for sale in the Orangeville Banner, though the wind turbine that sits so prominently behind the house is somehow missing from the small photo in the newspaper ad. Though she can’t discuss the details of the original sale, Ms. Fraser noted that the asking price has, over time, drifted down from $298,000 to its present level of $284,900.
“If I had advice for any municipality,” Ms. Fraser said, “it would be ‘Please, please, please do the research on the health effects before you consider destroying people’s lives.’”