Better Plan, Wisconsin

CLICK HERE TO VIEW astonishing video of what is being called "the drunken windmill". What happens when a blade falls off an industrial scale wind turbine but it keeps on turning?

To get an idea of the scale of this turbine, note the height of the tree line.

Below:

Video from a public meeting in the rural Ontario towns of Fergus and Belwood where residents confront wind developers and hired PR people about a proposed project.

In the past, developers held open public meetings where they addressed the public directly. Now the approach is to hold an 'open house' --- no direct statements to the residents, but rather developers and hired PR people answer questions from residents one on one.

 THIRD FEATURE:

LANDOWNERS: EDUCATION IS THE KEY TO WIND POWER BENEFITS

SOURCE: Kearney Hub, www.kearneyhub.com

November 13, 2010

By LORI POTTER

KEARNEY — There’s a steep learning curve for landowners interested in attracting wind power projects, landowner group leaders said at this week’s Nebraska Wind Power 2010 Conference in Kearney.

“You’re gonna have to have persistence to go on,” said David Vavra of the Saline County Wind Association.

Landowners from six Saline County precincts joined his group. Vavra said developers are interested in contiguous properties, so significant numbers of participants are need to support a project.

An early question for group members was: “Do we want to look at these windmills the rest of our lives and our children’s lives?”

“That can be seriously tying up your property for a long time,” Vavra said.

The most important missions are to protect landowners from unscrupulous developers and make sure that everyone understands that wind energy benefits come with issues such as construction of access roads and the work required to negotiate equitable land leases.

“You can have one developer come in and hit all the high spots. That’s checkerboarding,” Vavra explained. Or two each can tie up enough easements to prevent either from developing a project, leaving things at a standstill.

“So you go en masse, rather than getting picked off one at a time, even though that’s counterintuitive for developers,” he said, telling landowners not to believe developers who say they won’t talk to organizations.

Vavra emphasized the need to raise the money necessary to hire an attorney specializing in wind projects. “This is too important,” he said. “You’re dealing with multimillion dollar companies. They’re like a 747, and you’re like a mosquito.”

Groups should get their own wind quality data and not depend only on developers’ studies, he added.

Jim Young and other members of the Banner County Wind Energy Association organized with the knowledge of what has happed during the past 50 years of oil development in the southern Panhandle. “Some people got taken advantage of,” he said. “We wanted to form an association so we didn’t have problems like what Dave (Vavra) was talking about.”

The Banner County group has involved landowners, the county board and Panhandle Resource Conservation and Development. Leaders talked to landowners in areas where wind projects have been developed.

Initially, letters were sent to county residents and landowner meetings were scheduled at the school gym. Eventually, the Banner County group formed a limited liability corporation.

“As Sen. Nelson said, ‘You need to hit this like a full-court press,’” Young said, adding that nothing gets done if everyone is bickering. “You’ve gotta respect what everybody else is saying and work together.”

There can be hundreds of questions to answer just in the fine print of a wind contract. Vavra said the issues include insurance, liability, decommissionings or defaults, crop or other damage, payment allocations, taxes, effects on Conservation Reserve Program contracts, and audit rights.

“If you don’t know (the answers), you’re gonna get taken,” Young said.

Nebraska Farmers Union Public Affairs Director Graham Christensen said one of the first wind project contracts he saw when he started with NFU was for one payment of $1,000 for a 55-year-lease. “That is totally unacceptable,” he said.

Lincoln attorney Andy Pollock of the Nebraska Energy Export Association said, “There are different cultures in every county … so you really need to explore that as a local organization. What’s right for you?”

That means finding the right developer and determining the necessary lease terms. “You’re in the driver’s seat,” Pollock said. “You have options. …. Developers want to be here.”

It also means choosing a way to fund the local group.

Young said Banner County used $100 one-time dues. Vavra said Saline County started with a $50 minimum plus 50 cents per acre with a promise to pay back any contributor who never gets any money from a wind project or related development.

Pollock cautioned landowners that public power districts control the transportation and sale of wind energy in Nebraska.

“Don’t get any notion in your head that you can go and sell (electricity) to the ethanol plant down the road,” he said. “That’s public power’s job.”

Vavra said local leaders must put the group’s needs ahead of any personal interests. “If you’re looking at dollars, this is not a get-rich-quick scheme … this is long term,” he said.

WIND FARM BACKERS FACE A LONG, COLD WINTER OF DISCONTENT

SOURCE: WBAY-TV, www.wbay.com

November 10, 2010 By Jeff Alexander,

It could be months before a decision is reached about a controversial plan to build what would be the state’s largest wind farm in southern Brown County.

Tensions are rising in the communities of Morrison, Hollandtown, and Wrightstown. The battle lines are drawn, and have been for a year now, throughout the farm lands.

“The fight is not over in my mind — or in reality. It’s not over,” Jon Morehouse said.

Morehouse leads a group of more than 200 residents opposing a plan by a Chicago-based company to erect 100 wind turbines.

The state’s Public Service Commission and lawmakers will have the final say, but Morehouse says he was told by several lawmakers Wednesday it could be spring before a decision is made.

But that’s not what Roland Klug is hearing. Klug says he’s already receiving money from a contract he signed to have two turbines on his property.

He says a project engineer told him construction will start soon.

“In the winter they’ll start getting the roads in and things, and I hope by next year this time they should be up,” Klug said.

Late Wednesday afternoon Action 2 News received word from the Public Service Commission that it’s still waiting for the wind farm developer, Invenergy, to complete its application for the project. The PSC says Invenergy withdrew its original application.

While Klug stands to make $18,000 a year for the use of his land, it’s coming at a cost. “My own kids don’t talk to me. It’s really hard.”

The wind turbine debate has become so heated and divisive here in southern Brown County, the principal of Morrison Zion Lutheran School says staff recently imposed a moratorium on students discussing the topic during school.

As residents wait for final word, opinions become stronger and wounds grow deeper.

“I think anything can be healed, but it has to be talked about,” Morehouse said.

But even that hasn’t helped so far.

SECOND FEATURE

NOTE FROM THE BPWI RESEARCH NERD: Below, another news story regarding the issue of conflict of interest between members of local government who have the power to push a wind project through and the wind developers who offer them lucrative contracts to help make this happen. This scenario is being played out in communities all over North America, including here in the Badger state.

While creating rules governing the siting of wind turbines, Wisconsin's  Public Service Commission had an opportunity to provide language which would protect communities from such conflicts of interest. The Public Service Commission declined to do so.

TEMPERS FLARE AT MEETING IN CAPE VINCENT: OPPONENT OF WIND CLAIMS BOARD ACTED ILLEGALLY

SOURCE: Watertown Daily Times, www.watertowndailytimes.com

November 11, 2010 

by Nancy Madsen, Times Staff Writer,

CAPE VINCENT — A Planning Board meeting devolved into physical confrontation between an opponent of industrial wind power projects in the town and Chairman Richard J. Edsall.

At the beginning of the meeting Wednesday night, Mr. Edsall asked for approval of the board’s minutes from a previous meeting.

Hester M. Chase, a community wind project supporter but opponent of the two industrial-scale projects, stood and said the board was not acting legally. The board’s bylaws say public comments “shall be received prior to the conduct of the regular business agenda.”

“We have the right to make comment,” she said. “We’re going to start getting our rights straight.”

The board members turned toward each other and spoke, apparently approving the minutes from Oct. 13. It is unclear whether they also approved minutes from an Oct. 27 meeting with Acciona Wind Energy USA, developer of St. Lawrence Wind Farm. During the Oct. 27 meeting, the board accepted a list of what remained to be done for a complete site plan from the developer.

That meeting was stopped for an hour by wind power opponents protesting action by the board, which has three members who have conflicts of interest with Acciona or BP Alternative Energy, the other wind developer in the town.

Ms. Chase had a different version of the minutes that included the topic of the protest and said the board had proceeded with the meeting while the audience was unaware of its actions.

“They’re so fraudulent that I just felt they should be corrected,” she said after Wednesday’s meeting. “The bylaws permit the public to speak before regular business is conducted and I wanted to correct those minutes.”

Ms. Chase said frustration at having unanswered questions on setbacks on wind farms and what the board will allow the developers to do led to her actions. The Planning Board has decided on rules to govern the approval process that include allowing two public hearings with comments limited to people who live within one-half mile of the project, she said.

“I was just stunned at how cavalierly or arbitrarily they were making things up,” she said. “I had held onto the hope that they were truly going to do right by their community. I see that they seem to be fulfilling loyalty roles to BP and Acciona, I guess.”

On Wednesday night, Mr. Edsall opened a public hearing on a subdivision without addressing Ms. Chase’s concerns.

“Mr. Edsall, you are out of order,” Ms. Chase said.

The public hearing, he said, was for comments on the subdivision only.

“These people have the right to due process,” Mr. Edsall said.

“How can you make decision on anything if the board is corrupt?” asked Michael R. Bell, Cape Vincent.

Mr. Edsall responded, “These people have followed the rules.”

The board held public hearings and voted on two subdivisions. The three members, Mr. Edsall, Andrew R. Binsley and George A. Mingle, did not have maps available to act on a third subdivision.

Mr. Edsall then told wind opponents that if they wanted to talk about wind power development, the earliest the board would hold a meeting on it would be February.

He then asked to adjourn the meeting.

“You cannot do that,” Ms. Chase spoke up. “You are despicable. You approved the minutes, which are totally, totally false.”

She moved toward the dais and began passing papers to the board members.

Mr. Edsall said, “When we have a wind meeting, you can talk about wind.”

Mr. Bell said, “It’s about procedure — this is about procedure.”

Ms. Chase said, “You just lied to the whole community.”

As Mr. Edsall moved off the dais, she stood between the desk and a table. She appeared to bump into him. Mr. Edsall threatened to call the police if she touched him again.

She said he bumped into her.

“Will you get out of my way?” he asked.

She refused, but eventually let him pass. As the board members left, some members of the public berated them for passing the minutes. About a third of the audience consisted of wind power supporters. Some of them told the vocal opponents to back down.



500 foot turbine, Shirley Wind Project, Glenmore, WI

CONTROVERSIAL SHIRLEY WIND FARM BEING TESTED

SOURCE: WTAQ.Com

GLENMORE, Wis. (WTAQ) - Wisconsin’s tallest wind energy turbines are being tested this week.

Eight windmills at the Shirley Wind facility south of Green Bay are expected to start making electricity soon. They could power 8,000 homes if they had to. But the state government is buying the electricity, to help reach a goal of having 20 percent of its power from renewable sources.

State official Dave Helbach says they’ll need just 4 percent more once the Shirley Wind project goes online.

The turbines stretch up to 500 feet in the air. And the developers, Emerging Energies of Hubertus, say they’ll harness more wind and create more electricity than conventional-sized turbines.

They’re the largest windmills ever made by Tower Tech of Manitowoc. And the group Renew Wisconsin says they would never have been allowed under the proposed new locating requirements proposed by the state Public Service Commission.

Michael Vickerman said the distance limits between the towers, farm houses, and fields would have put the Shirley Wind site off limits.

A state Senate committee recently reviewed the proposed limits, and told the PSC to come back with something different. That didn’t sit well with residents near the site in the town of Glenmore near Green Bay. They say they’ll hurt by the turbines’ noise and flickering shadows.

They put up a sign near one of the turbines which says, “Welcome to the Glenmore Wind Ghetto.”

NOTE FROM THE BPWI RESEARCH NERD: Clarification: According to this press release [CLICK HERE] The turbines for this project were made by a company in Germany called NORDEX and shipped to the US.

Better Plan is currently investigating allegations of conflict of interest between Glenmore Town officials and wind developer Emerging Energies. Public documents indicate that several of the hosts of the turbines may have had their mortgages paid off by Emerging Energies and that at least one Town official may have been given a free trip to Germany to visit the Nordex plant.

The Public Service Commission's proposed wind siting rules do not address the troublesome issue of conflict of interest. It is a common practice among wind developers to offer lucrative contracts to members of local government who have the land to host turbines, and who also have the power to push a project through.

Better Plan also has questions about the production capacity claimed for this project. Under favorable conditions, wind turbines are about 30% efficient. In the state of Wisconsin, that number is closer to 20-25%.

If one follows the numbers presented here by Emerging Energies, the turbines in Glenmore will have a 40% generating capacity.

Better Plan is unaware of any turbines in our state which have exceed 30% efficiency.

EXTRA CREDIT: One of the founders of "Emerging Energies is Bill Rackocy, who also sat on the Wind Siting Council and helped determine the siting guidelines for our state.

WIND ENERGY'S RIPPLE EFFECTS

 SOURCE: Star Tribune, www.startribune.com

November 8, 2010 By GARY CARLSON,

Once I learned how turbines can affect people, I had to speak up.

I just returned from a meeting of my county planning committee, where we debated the pros and cons of our neighbor’s proposal to put up two 400-foot wind turbines, with the closest about 1,300 feet from our property line. My family lives on a bluff on the edge of Northfield. I cannot sleep. It was my first contact with any kind of city or county planning, and the four-hour meeting was surreal. But let me step back and provide the background to this story.

I am an integrative physician who mainly works with patients suffering chronic problems. Often, they have seen many traditional doctors who have not been able to help them; they come to me as a last resort. They have “functional problems” — irritable bowel syndrome, chronic headaches, fibromyalgia. Often their doctors “can’t find anything wrong” with X-rays, blood tests or biopsies. But nonetheless these people are sick. Many of them are very sensitive to environmental stimuli, probably as an adaptive reaction to their chronic problems.

So back to the wind on the bluff. I also fancy myself an environmentalist. We placed a geothermal heat pump in our house 12 years ago when most people didn’t know what they were. I regularly walk the 6-mile round trip to work to save on CO2 emissions. So six weeks ago when we heard about the plan to put up these turbines, I was a little ambivalent. My brother, who lives nearby, didn’t like it. I have always liked wind power, and though I didn’t really want such large structures in my morning sky, I kind of let it go.

Then I got hit over the head. I was reading the New York Times and came upon an article about multiple lawsuits against wind farms all over the United States because of health concerns, and I said to myself, “What health concerns?” Three hours of intense Internet research later, I was shocked.

I know environmental sensitivity; these are the patients I take care of every day.

The last four weeks have been a blur. Getting up to speed on the science of sound and the medical research related to wind turbines has been exhausting, and in the process I have discovered the dark medical underbelly of industrial-sized turbines. They produce a lot of infrasonic and low-frequency noise. You don’t hear it, but it can make you sick. It is hard to put a number on how many people are affected, but some experts suggest that 15 percent of people living within one-half to one mile of one of these turbines will develop some sort of symptom. Sleep disturbance is the most common problem. If you are old, or young, tend to get carsick easily, or have a chronic medical disease, you are at higher risk. Some are affected so severely that they have to move.

Minnesota’s wind turbine setbacks are ridiculously outdated, although the Public Utilities Commission is trying to catch up. Some European countries have listened to their citizens and have moved setbacks to between half a mile and a mile. We listen to the big wind energy companies and are stuck around 500 feet.

There were five wind projects on the docket at the planning meeting, and I kept standing up with my two minutes of time for each of them trying to educate about infrasonic noise and about why we need to protect people with these setbacks. I think they thought I was a madman. I felt like a canary in the mine yelling, “Please, please — we can have wind turbines, but don’t place them closer then one-half mile from residences, or these people, especially vulnerable people, will get sick!”

We lost four and tied one (tabled for now). I felt devastated.

But don’t count me out, because this canary can still sing.

Gary Carlson is board-certified in family medicine, holistic medicine and medical acupuncture. He works at the Allina Medical Clinic in Northfield and the Penny George Institute for Health and Healing at the Abbott Northwestern Hospital.

SECOND FEATURE

“Infrasound: Your ears ‘hear’ it but they don’t tell your brain”

—Alec Salt, PhD, Department of Otolaryngology, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri, USA, at the “Symposium on Adverse Health Effects of Industrial Wind Turbines,” Picton, Ontario, October 29-31, 2010.  (See the Cochlear Fluids Research Laboratory site, and “Responses of the Ear to Infrasound and Wind Turbines.”

Highlights:

“Physiologic pathway exists for infrasound at levels that are not heard to affect the brain. The idea that infrasound effects can be dismissed because they are inaudible is incorrect.”

“A-weighted measurements tell you NOTHING about infrasound content.”

“A-weighted spectra totally misrepresent the effects of wind turbine noise (that includes infrasound components) on the ear.”

“A-weighted level readings (e.g., 42 dBA) are totally meaningless for assessing whether turbine noise is affecting the ear.”

Click here to download a PDF of Dr. Salt’s PowerPoint slides, from which the following text was taken.

·
Wind turbines generate infrasound.

Wind turbine infrasound is at levels that cannot be heard.

Widely cited interpretations:

• “If you cannot hear a sound … it does not affect you”—Leventhall G. What is infrasound? Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology 2007; 93:130–137
• “Infrasound is negligible”—DELTA. Low Frequency Noise from Large Wind Turbines 2008
• “Infrasound … is below the audible threshold and of no consequence”—Leventhall G. Canadian Acoustics 2006; 34:29-36.

This logic seems to be applied only to hearing. Consider other senses:

• Taste: If you can’t taste it, it can’t affect you? Can you taste salmonella?
• Smell: If you can’t smell it, it can’t affect you? Try breathing pure CO or CO₂
• Sight: If you can’t see it, it can’t affect you? Photokeratitis, “snow blindness”, “welder’s flash”, cataracts, sunburn: Ultraviolet (UV) light is invisible; even though you can’t see it, UV does affect you. UV can harm you.

“If you can’t hear it, it can’t affect you” is only true:

• if no other part of the ear is more sensitive than hearing, and
• if no other part of the body is more sensitive than hearing …
• and I will show this is not true.

Infrasound at moderate levels is detected by the ear.

Infrasound at levels generated by turbines affect the ear.

Vibrations cause a bending of the ear’s sensory hairs. The inner hair cells are connected to auditory (type I) nerve fibers that send signals to the brain. You “hear” with your inner hair cells.

Inner (IHC) and outer (OHC) hair cells respond differently as sound frequency is changed. IHC respond to velocity. OHC respond to displacement. OHC respond at approximately 40 dB below IHC sensitivity at 2 Hz.

Outer hair cells will be stimulated by wind turbine noise.  (See graph, below.)

Outer hair cells do not just detect sound:

For low-amplitude high frequencies, OHC elongate when hairs are bent outwards, which makes stimulus greater for IHC (amplifies signal).

Amplifier becomes less effective (less necessary) for higher level sounds, ineffective about 40 dB above threshold (Reichenbach T, Hudspeth AJ. Proc Natl Acad Sci U.S.A. 2010)

High-Frequency stimulus: OHC elongate; Vibration amplitude at the IHC is amplified.

At very low frequencies, we know that bending the hairs laterally causes OHC to contract.

Infrasound stimulus: OHC contract; Vibration amplitude at the IHC is reduced.

OHC are detecting low-level infrasound and actively canceling it for the IHC.

Physiologic pathway exists for infrasound at levels that are not heard to affect the brain. The idea that infrasound effects can be dismissed because they are inaudible is incorrect.

Infrasound => OHC => (via type II nerve fibers) subconscious brain: ear fullness, ear pressure, discomfort, alerting/sleep disturbance

A-weighting corrects a sound measurement to represent what is heard, based on the human audibility (40 phon) curve. At 1 Hz, −148 dB correction, equivalent to dividing by 25 million.

Effect of A-weighting wind turbine noise: Massive (140 dB) de-emphasis of infrasound component. A-weighting may represent what you hear—but hearing does not give a reliable indication of whether the infrasound is affecting your ears.

“A-weighting” principle applied to UV light is equivalent to adjusting sunlight spectrum for what is visible and then saying: “There is nothing here that can harm you. You don’t need sunscreen. You don’t need sunglasses. Go spend all day laying out in the sun.” This approach isn’t rational when applied to light, so why do we accept similar logic applied to sound?

Measuring visible light (e.g., photographs) tells you NOTHING about UV content. Similarly, A-weighted measurements tell you NOTHING about infrasound content.

A-weighted spectra totally misrepresent the effects of wind turbine noise (that includes infrasound components) on the ear.

A-weighted level readings (e.g., 42 dBA) are totally meaningless for assessing whether turbine noise is affecting the ear.

Documenting Wind Turbine Sound

• Most video cameras do not record the infrasound component of wind turbine noise.
• Speaker systems in TVs and computers cannot play back the infrasound component.
• Even if they did—you can’t hear it!
• Video recordings of wind turbines give no indication of the infrasound level being produced.
• Infrasound can only be measured with specialized instrumentation capable of detecting sounds down to approximately 1 Hz.

G-weighting weights infrasound components (excluding higher frequencies) according to human sensitivity curve.

G-weighted turbine measurements: For most of these conditions, the ear will be stimulated by the turbine noise. (Jakobsen J. Infrasound emission from wind turbines. Journal of Low Frequency Noise Vibration and Active Control 2005; 24:145-155.)

Other ways that infrasound could affect the ear:

Stimulation of vestibular hair cells (saccule, utricle).

• Vestibular hair cells are “tuned” to infrasonic frequencies.
• No-one has ever measured sensitivity to acoustic infrasound.
• Symptoms: unsteadiness, queasiness

Disturbance of inner ear fluids (e.g. endolymph volume).

• Low-frequency sound at non-damaging levels induces endolymphatic hydrops (a swelling of one of the fluid spaces).
• Infrasound does affect endolymph volume—it is the basis of a treatment for hydrops (Ménière’s disease).
• No one has ever measured what level of infrasound causes hydrops.
• Symptoms: ear fullness, unsteadiness, tinnitus

Infrasound—affected structures and long-term exposure effects, ranked by sensitivity:

1. Outer hair cells — “Overworked, tired, irritated” OHC, type II fiber stimulation
2. Inner ear fluid homeostasis — Volume disturbance, endolymphatic hydrops
3. Saccular hair cells — Stimulation
4. Other, non-ear, receptors — Stimulation
5. Inner hair cells/hearing — None

Sensitivity and sensations remain to be quantified: ear pressure or fullness, discomfort, arousal from sleep; ear fullness, tinnitus, unsteadiness; unsteadiness; stress, anxiety.

“Wind Turbine Syndrome” — You cannot hear what causes the symptoms!

We need more research to define the sensitivity of these processes.

Sounds you cannot hear …

• can affect you.
• can disturb you.
• can harm you.
• can cause disease: auditory and balance disorders, effects of sleep deprivation are serious (hypertension, diabetes, mortality).

Conclusion and Recommendations

For years, people have been told that infrasound you cannot hear cannot affect you. This is completely wrong.

Because the inner ear does respond to infrasound at levels that are not heard, people living near wind turbines are being put at risk by infrasound effects on the body that no one presently understands.

Until a scientific understanding of this issue is established we should not be dismissing these effects, but need to be erring on the side of caution.

For industrial turbines a cautious approach could require :

• setbacks of at least 2 kilometers (1.25 miles).
• in-home monitoring of both A-weighted (audible) and G-weighted (infrasound) noise levels 24 hours/day for all dwellings within 2 miles.
• health monitoring studies for those living within 2 miles (with consent).

Finally …

We need to stop ignoring the infrasound component of wind turbine noise and find out why it bothers people!

Wind turbine noise is not comparable to the rustling of leaves.

Editor’s note:  Our appreciation to National Wind Watch for re-formatting Dr. Salt’s talk in a Web-friendly manner.