7/30/10 Wind Turbine troubles North of the border AND Like a bad neighbor (especially in Rock County, Wisconsin) Acciona is there AND The moon is made of green cheese, economic recovery is made of green jobs
Dr. McMurtry on wind turbine concerns.
Click on the image above to hear why this Canadian doctor is concerned about the current state of wind turbine siting regulation.
NOTE FROM THE BPWI RESEARCH NERD:
Contracts signed by local landowners in Rock County were sold when Acciona bought the rights to develop an industrial scale wind project from fledgling wind developer, EcoEnergy.
EcoEnergy did not disclose how much profit they made from selling local contracts to the Spanish wind industry giant, but local landowners will not see a higher payout as a result, or an option to get out of the contract.
Five continguous Rock County townships have adopted ordinances that require wind developers to site turbines at least 2640 feet from non-participating homes.
In a matter of weeks, the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin will issue wind siting rules that will overturn those ordinances along with those of many other Wisconsin Towns and Counties.
Better Plan Wisconsin [BPWI], has repreatedly asked Acciona about its plans for the wind project in Rock County which at one time included siting 67 industrial scale wind turbines in the Town of Magnolia's 36 square miles.
Acciona has thus far failed to respond.
Landowners who signed contracts with EcoEnergy early on are now angered to find that the offer of a reported $4,000 per turbine per year is far below the going rate being offered to farmers in other communities in our state.
Some have expressed a desire to get out of those contracts and renegotiate something on par with what other wind developers are offering. Others want out because they have witnessed the damage and fragmentation of farm fields left behind by wind development in other parts of our state and want no part of it.
Still others have seen their families and communities torn apart by this issue and no longer feel that it is worth it.
However, landowners in Brown and Columbia Counties are finding out just how hard it is to get out of the contracts they signed at the kitchen table with the once 'friendly' wind developer.
Doing business on a handshake has long been the tradition in rural Wisconsin.
It was something that worked well before out-of-state wind developers began to show up at farmsteads with big promises and iron clad contracts.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, like a bad neighbor, Acciona is there too.
The Dean Report
(Posted July 28, 2010)
Within weeks of the towers first being turned on, Noel Dean began suffering adverse health effects. Australian newspapers quoted Dean this way: "I was waking up two days in a row with headaches, I'd have to take Panadol but they'd be gone by dinner time.
When the wind is blowing north I got a thumping headache, like someone belted me over the head with a plank of wood and I didn't know whether to go to the hospital or what to do. You couldn't really work."
Other symptoms he and his wife experienced included general malaise, nausea, sleeplessness and general uneasiness.
By July, the Deans had packed up and left their farm.
Around the same time, an investigation of wind farm noise complaints was underway in New Zealand. Residents living near the towers in New Zealand were filing complaints of sleep disturbance, annoyance, anxiety and nausea. As more people in both Australia and New Zealand became comfortable in talking about their health concerns a picture began to emerge that researchers found unusual. There were compelling similarities between experiences in two totally different countries, totally different environments and totally different turbines.
Audible wind farm sound and consequential sleep disturbance, annoyance and anxiety responses were similar for people in both countries. These effects were also experienced even under situations of near inaudible wind turbine sound.
The concerns of the Deans and others living within 3500 meters of operational wind farms triggered more than twelve months of intensive study by a group of 4 qualified researchers.
The result is The Dean Report, a detailed peer-reviewed analysis of the sound levels near the Dean's properties and the potential adverse effects of wind farm activity on human health.
Dr. Robert Thorne PhD[1], who authored the report, based his findings and conclusions on extensive field work, personal investigations, case studies and the development of sound analysis methodologies. He told Windaction.org that "the Dean Report, in its various forms, has been placed in evidence subject to cross-examination before a Board of Inquiry and formal wind farm hearings for the purposes of peer-review and critique. A hypothesis as to cause and effect for adverse health effects from wind farm activity is presented."
In news reports today, wind farm operator, Acciona Energy, insisted "there is already enough existing credible evidence proving there are no health effects from wind farm noise."
We respectfully disagree. The Dean Report makes clear we are only just beginning to understand problem.
[1] Dr. Thorne is a principal of Noise Measurement Services Pty Ltd in Australia. He holds a PhD in Health Science from Massey University, New Zealand. His professional background is the measurement of low background sound levels and the assessment of noise as it affects people.
Windaction.org wishes to express its thanks to Dr. Thorne and Mr. Dean for sharing the Dean Report with us and permitting us to provide its content to our readers.
SECOND FEATURE:
“It’s easier to make the case” about jobs, Viard said, “than it is to say ‘Is wind energy or offshore oil drilling what we should be doing?’”
“The jobs argument is very popular,” Viard added. “It is very annoying to economists.”
As the Senate rushes toward a vote on oil spill legislation, those seeking changes in the bill are loading their arguments with a potent political word: jobs.
The oil and natural gas industry warns that aggressive regulation of oil drilling could kill industry jobs and those beyond the petroleum sector. Renewable power advocates argue that omitting needed climate policies from the Senate bill threatens existing green jobs and fails to bolster those that could be created.
“People want jobs, and all the more so in a situation like this,” with an ongoing recession, said Alan Viard, an economist who is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. “It naturally has a political resonance.”
But Viard and other economists warn that the jobs arguments is flawed. Industries tend to look only at a policy’s impact on one sector, ignoring the broader economic impact. And they avoid a tough examination of other factors that should dictate policy decisions, such as whether something is worthwhile and what are all the costs.
“It’s easier to make the case” about jobs, Viard said, “than it is to say ‘Is wind energy or offshore oil drilling what we should be doing?’”
“The jobs argument is very popular,” Viard added. “It is very annoying to economists.”
Jobs arguments long have been made to buttress and condemn many proposed policies and became more impassioned with the recession and high unemployment. The 2009 stimulus bill passed on promises it would create jobs. It included grants, loan guarantees and other incentives meant to drive job creation, particularly in the clean energy arena.
President Obama earlier this month promoted his policies as having helped workers. While the White House has not estimated how many clean-energy jobs its policies have spawned or protected, it said that overall the Recovery Act has saved or created 2.5 million to 3.6 million jobs (Greenwire, July 15).
Democrats, renewable energy sectors and environmental groups promote the potential for “green job” creation as one of the reasons passage of climate legislation is crucial. Climate legislation now appears dead for this session, but as the oil spill bill moves forward, the jobs argument thrives.
Denise Bode, CEO of the American Wind Energy Association, on Tuesday decried Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s plan to omit from the bill a renewable electricity standard, a national mandate requiring utilities to use some green power(Greenwire, July 27).
“We are going to see jobs lost,” Bode said. “We are going to see manufacturing facilities not built in the United States. For 85,000 people employed by the wind sector,” she said, “this is about survival as an industry.”
Clean Energy Works, an alliance of about 60 groups that want climate legislation, on Tuesday sent an e-mail to reporters with the subject line “CEOs: Obstruction of Climate Bill Sends Jobs to China, Dollars to Enemies, Increases Pollution at Home.”
The fossil fuel industry also is talking jobs, asserting that over-regulation of the sector could be devastating for workers.
“This would cut domestic production, kill American jobs, slow economic growth and cost billions in federal oil and natural gas revenues,” said Jack Gerard, American Petroleum Institute president and CEO, about a proposal to lift limits on petroleum company liability for oil spill damages (Greenwire, July 27).
“Majority Leader Reid suggests his bill will create 150,000 new jobs,” Gerard added, “but our analysis indicates that failing to develop in the deepwater of the Gulf of Mexico will cost more than that — 175,000 jobs, the majority of them in already hard-hit Gulf Coast communities.”
Any new jobs?
The reality, economists said, is that although a recession can temporarily shrink the number of jobs, there are roughly the same number of people working at any given time. Government policies can shift where those jobs exist, but for the most part not eliminate or create them, they said.
“Arguments about … the job-creating or job-destroying effects of climate legislation, those sort of miss the point,” said Chad Stone, chief economist at the nonprofit Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “A transformation to a green economy would change the composition of jobs in the economy, not the aggregate number of jobs.”
Wind’s trade group argues that an renewable electricity standard would provide long-term stability for the industry and encourage private investment, leading to job growth. But that fails to acknowledge that policy could hurt jobs elsewhere, like in the coal industry, said Adele Morris, policy director for climate and energy economics at the Brookings Institution.
“The wind people, they want to focus on the gross jobs in their industry, not the net jobs across the economy,” Morris said. There may be other reasons to want wind versus coal jobs, she said, but that is a different argument.
The wind group disagreed.
“There are differences from one technology to another, and renewables tend to be more job-intensive energy sources,” AWEA said. “A critical portion of the jobs we are talking about here are manufacturing jobs, to make the 8,000 components that go into a modern wind turbine, and to create a U.S. supply chain here in the U.S. for wind and other renewable energy manufacturing.
“If those manufacturing jobs aren’t created here, they will go in Europe or China,” AWEA added. “Winning the clean energy manufacturing race is the critical opportunity right now with the RES.”
For environmental goals to succeed, Morris said, the power made from green sources has to be as inexpensive as possible. That means making the technology in the least expensive place possible. She did not say where that might be.
“Any policy that’s designed to drive manufacturing toward more expensive locations is ultimately going to undermine the environmental goal,” Morris said.
When government policies eliminate some jobs, over the long run the labor market adjusts, Morris said.
“The people who are employed in that industry eventually migrate to other sectors,” Morris said.
Larger effect
Over the short term, however, economists acknowledge adjustments can be painful to some workers and regions. The extent of that impact is open to some debate.
The American Petroleum Institute argues that an extended moratorium on deepwater oil drilling, or changes in tax law that make drilling less profitable, will eliminate jobs in the oil industry and well beyond it.
A report released Tuesday by the industry trade group says that more than 175,000 jobs would be affected annually by those kind of policies. It looked at the period from 2013 through 2035.
API reaches that number in its report by combining workers in three groups. It said that 30,183 oil company jobs would be at risk with a long-term moratorium. The analysis then adds in jobs indirectly connected to the industry, like workers with companies that make a product used in oil drilling or who work for a support company, like operators of contracted drilling rigs. That is another 63,207 positions, API said.
But the API report sees the affected employment pool as even bigger than those groups. The API study also includes all of the jobs that are affected by how oil company and ancillary business workers spend their wages. Those workers eat in a nearby restaurant, for example, and the report counts the job of the cook as also being relevant, said Kyle Isakower, API’s vice president of regulatory and economic policy. Those jobs, called the “induced effect,” total 82,051.
“Contrary to popular belief, the benefits of oil and gas development and production are not restricted to a narrow sector of the economy,” the API report says. “Rather, its impacts are broad-based benefiting manufacturing, construction, real estate, finance and insurance, health and social services among others.”
The same could be said of all jobs, some economists said. There is only so much money being spent in society at any one time, Viard said, and how it is spent has effects on different people.
“It’s absolutely true if I spend a dollar on offshore drilling instead of spending it on a hamburger, that is going to have a whole series of ripple effects,” Viard said. But the induced effect of not spending that dollar on the hamburger “is equally wide,” he said.
If an oil company did not spend money on drilling, Viard said, it might choose to return it to shareholders, who might spend it elsewhere or invest it, which could drive down interest rates and benefit home buyers.
“Everything affects everything,” Viard said. “There’s no way to trace where that money would go, but it would go somewhere, and wherever it went it would create jobs, direct, indirect and induced.”
Not all jobs have equal positive impacts on society, Isakower said.
“While there will be an induced effect for any job, some jobs have greater induced effects than others,” Isakower said. Oil industry jobs are among those that benefit many others, he said, because “they do tend to be higher-paying jobs than the national average.”
A moratorium could cause short-term pain to oil industry jobs and support businesses, Morris said, because those jobs tend to be concentrated in a few geographic areas.
“Workers can’t instantly change what industry their skills are suited to,” Morris said, and small businesses that service the oil drilling sector cannot quickly relocate.
“There’s no question that in the short run there can be economic disruption,” Morris said. “That doesn’t mean by itself [that a moratorium] is a bad policy. We could be buying time to prevent further economic degradation down the line.”
Economists argued that policy decisions should not be made solely or even largely on the basis of whether they will hurt or help jobs.
“Otherwise,” Viard said, “we would still have the horse-and-buggy industry because we didn’t want to lose horse-and-buggy jobs.”
The BPRC Research Nerd
in Wind farm birds, Wisconsin wind siting council, acciona, acciona contracts, accionia wind, health effects, win farm wildlife, wind farm bats, wind farm compensation, wind farm complaints, wind farm contract, wind farm health effects, wind farm health effects. wisconsin wind farm, wind farm lese, wind farm property valuses
|
Comments Off
7/29/10 TRIPLE FEATURE: What part of NOISE don't you understand? AND Last gasp for local control? Kewaunee County joins Brown County in adopting a wind power resolution AND Brown County Board of Health and Human Services formally adopt guidelines for siting wind turbines as the Public Service Commission is set to take over wind turbine regulation in rural communites.
SCIENTIST CHALLENGES THE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM THAT WHAT YOU CAN'T HEAR WON'T HURT YOU
July 28, 2010
A wind turbine is a rotary device with a gigantic propeller as big as a football field that turns in the wind to generate electricity. Although wind turbines are more often found in Europe than in the United States, they’re rapidly becoming more popular here as a “green” energy source. Most people consider that a good thing, except the rotors of wind turbines also generate noise, particularly in the infrasound range, that some people claim makes them feel sick.
Since frequencies that low can’t be heard, many scientists who study hearing have assumed they can’t have any effect on the function of the ear. But a little known phenomenon related to the infrasound generated by wind turbines is making some scientists challenge the common wisdom that what we can’t hear won’t hurt us.
Infrasound is a subset of sound broadly defined as any sound lower than 20 Hertz (Hz), which is the lowest pitch that most people can hear. It’s all around us, even though we might only be barely able to hear a lot of it. The whoosh of wind in the trees, the pounding of surf, and the deep rumble of thunder are natural sources of infrasound. Whales and other animals use infrasound calls to communicate across long distances. There is also a wide range of manmade infrasounds, for example, the noise generated by industrial machinery, traffic, and heating and cooling systems in buildings.
Alec Salt, Ph.D., is an NIDCD-supported researcher at Washington University in St. Louis who studies the inner ear. For years, he and his group have been using infrasound as a way to slowly displace the structures of the inner ear so that their movement can be observed. In their experiments, infrasound levels as low as 5Hz had an impact on the inner ears of guinea pigs.
“We were doing lots of work with low-frequency tones,” says Salt, “and we were getting big responses.” What they were observing in the lab, however, didn’t jibe with the scientific literature about hearing sensitivity, which was in general agreement that the human ear doesn’t respond to anything as low as 5Hz. Since human ears are even more sensitive to low frequencies than guinea pig ears, that didn’t make sense.
Salt and a colleague conducted a literature search, focusing not on papers about hearing sensitivity, but on the basic physiology of the inner ear and how it responds to low-frequency sounds. During the search, Salt found anecdotal reports of a group of symptoms commonly called “wind turbine syndrome” that affect people who live close to wind turbines.
“The biggest problem people complain about is lack of sleep,” says Salt, but they can also develop headaches, difficulty concentrating, irritability and fatigue, dizziness, and pain and pressure in the ear.
Continuing his search, Salt began to see a way in which infrasound could impact the function of the inner ear, by the differences in how inner ear cells respond to low frequencies. In function, our ear acts like a microphone, converting sound waves into electrical signals that are sent to the brain. It does this in the cochlea, the snail-shaped organ in the inner ear that contains two types of sensory cells, inner hair cells (IHCs) and outer hair cells (OHCs). Three rows of OHCs and one row of IHCs run the length of the cochlea. When OHCs are stimulated by sound, special proteins contract and expand within their walls to amplify the vibrations. These vibrations cause hairlike structures (called stereocilia) on the tips of the IHCs to ripple and bend. These movements are then translated into electrical signals that travel to the brain through nerve fibers and are interpreted as sound.
Only IHCs can transmit this sound signal to the brain. The OHCs act more like mediators between sound frequencies and the IHCs. This wouldn’t matter if the OHC behaved the same way for all frequencies—the IHCs would respond to what the OHC amplified—but they don’t. It turns out that OHCs are highly sensitive to infrasound, but when they encounter it, their proteins don’t flex their muscles like they do for sound frequencies in the acoustic range. Instead they actively work to prevent IHC movement so that the sound is not detected. So, while the brain may not hear the sound, the OHC responses to it could influence function of the inner ear and cause unfamiliar sensations in some people.
Salt and his colleagues still aren’t sure why some people are sensitive to infrasound and others aren’t. It could be the result of anatomical differences among individual ears, or it could be the result of underlying medical conditions in the ear that cause the OHCs to be ultrasensitive to infrasound.
Regardless, it might not be enough to place wind turbines further away from human populations to keep them from being bothersome, since infrasound has the ability to cover long distances with little dissipation. Instead, Salt suggests wind turbine manufacturers may be able to re-engineer the machines to minimize infrasound production. According to Salt, this wouldn’t be difficult. “Infrasound is a product of how close the rotor is to the pole,” he says, “which could be addressed by spacing the rotor further away.”
COUNTY BOARD APPROVES WIND TURBINE ORDINANCE
SOURCE: Kewaunee County News, www.greenbaypressgazette.com
July 28 2010
By Kurt Rentmeester,
A week after the Kewaunee County Board approved a wind power resolution, some leaders question why it’s being done if a state Public Service Commission that sets such requirements is only weeks away.
In addition to new PSC requirements, Kewaunee County Supervisor Chuck Wagner said the county can’t regulate town zoning.
“The county rule is a recommendation. My problem is it’s all irrational hype. These people are making recommendations without having any significant data to back them up,” Wagner said.
The resolution addresses the same concerns that the towns of Carlton, West Kewaunee, Two Creeks, Mishicot and Two Rivers approved last month, as they are part of a proposed area for 111 wind turbines established by Oregon-based Element Power.
Wagner suggested tabling the resolution until July 18, but the board adopted the resolution on a 17-3 vote, with support from County Supervisors Jim Abrahamson and Bruce Heidmann. County Supervisor Jan Swoboda moved to adopt the resolution and Donald Delebreau seconded it.
“My intention was to give the support to town of Carlton and I felt there was no reason we don’t support other communities,” Swoboda said. “The PSC obviously will do what they think is best for the state.”
County Supervisor Linda Sinkula supported the measure in a Health Board resolution July 13 before bringing it to the board.
“At least it’s letting our legislators know there’s a concern and that we’d just like them to look at this,” Sinkula said. “We’d like them to look at the PSC rulings before they’re approved.”
Wagner said supporters have not investigated where the state and the municipalities are on these issues. He also said the state comment period is over and the state Legislature this year will not be back in session.
Supervisor Bruce Heidman said the measure needed to be rewritten.
“It was poorly written. That was my main problem with it,” Heidmann said. “There’s was nothing specific about the setbacks and other aspects of the resolution.”
County Supervisor Jim Barlow said the county needed to act on the resolution to make its case to state legislators.
“In part, if the PSC is going to have a ruling by the end of August, we can’t wait because they’re going to have something by the end of the month,” Barlow said. “We need to do what we can. Unfortunately, all we can do is end a resolution expressing some of our wishes.”
Residents speak
Andy Knipp, a town of West Kewaunee resident, said his greatest concern about wind turbines involve is the health impact on residents and on land values.
“Before anyone allows this to be built, the residents want to know what impact it will have on property values,” Knipp said.
Tina Steffen, a town of West Kewaunee resident, asked the county board to fight on her behalf to establish a policy to protect residents from the impact of wind turbine expansion.
“We have a Smart Growth Plan in the township,” Steffen said. “I’m not allowed to put a 50-story building up. These towers are 50 stories high and they’d be going up in an agricultural zone.”
Mike Paral of Kewaunee said costs for renewable energy were handed down from Madison, but local governments are nearly broke. The state can’t use taxes anymore, he said.
“Now I’m not against wind power,” Paral said. “You can have all the wind power you want — where it belongs. There are a lot of areas in the United States that have wide-open areas that have a thousand of these. Wisconsin is not one of them, much less Kewaunee.”
SECOND FEATURE
Download the resolution from the Brown County board of health and human services by CLICKING HERE
The BPRC Research Nerd
in BCCRWE, Brown County, Invenergy, Kewaunee County, Wind farm, Wind farm health effects, health effects, wind energy, wind farm brown county wisconsin, wind farm health effects, wind farm noise, wind farm noise, wind farm setbacks, wind farm wisconsin, wind farm wisconsin pSC, wind turbine
|
Comments Off
7/28/10 DOUBLE FEATURE: Wind foxes finalize rules for hen house, and they look just like the old ones that have caused so much trouble for residents of rural Wisconsin AND Yet another wind turbine blade failure in an Invenergy wind project
What happens when rules are written by those who stand to gain financially from the outcome?
Wind siting council member Larry Wunsch has been living with a 400 foot tall wind turbine sited just 1100 feet from his door for over two years.
Council Member Dwight Sattler lives about half a mile from the closest turbine to his house. He says he can sometimes hear them, but at half a mile it doesn't bother him.
At half a mile, no problem. At 1100 feet, the noise is bad enough to cause the Wunsch family to put their home up for sale.
Longer setbacks and lower noise limits mean greater protection for rural Wisconsin residents, but less money for those with financial interests.
Should the wind siting council consider what Larry Wunsch has to say when creating siting recommendations for our state?
Or should they follow Wind Sitng Council chairman Dan Ebert's lead and gloss over the issues to speed up the process in order to create guidelines which protect business interests instead of residents of rural Wisconsin?
SECOND FEATURE:
ANOTHER 'CAUSE UNKNOWN' TURBINE BLADE FAILURE IN ILLINOIS
SOURCE: The Times, mywebtimes.com
July 27, 2010 Dan Churney,
Barbara Ellsworth was troubled, but not surprised Saturday morning when she spotted a broken blade on a wind tower near her home.
“We thought, ‘Hah! We knew that would happen.’”
Ellsworth and her husband Mike live three miles south of Marseilles on East 2450th Road, about 1,200 feet from a wind turbine and about 2,500 feet from one of the two towers damaged during the weekend, possibly by high winds. Chicago-based Invenergy Wind operates the string of towers that run through southeastern La Salle County.
The BPRC Research Nerd
in Dan Ebert CREWE, Dan Ebert WPPI, Dan Ebert wind development, Larry Wunsch, Wisconsin public service commission, Wisconsin wind farm, wind farm complaints, wind farm legislation, wind farm setbacks, wind farm shadow flicker, wind ordinance, wind siting council
|
Comments Off
7/26/10 TRIPLE FEATURE: From open arms to balled up fists: Wisconsin resident comments on living in a wind project under construction AND Why he left the family farm: Wisconsin resident lays out his first-hand experience with wind development. The majority of the Wind Siting Council looks the other way
PUBLIC COMMENT TO PUBLIC SERVICE COMMISSION FROM RESIDENT OF PSC APPROVED GLACIER HILLS PROJECT CURRENTLY UNDER CONSTRUCTION:
To the landowners in the Ledge Wind Project:
If you believe wind turbines are a good fit for a farm operation, a free source of clean energy, and a benefit to your community, I invite you to come to the Glacier Hills Project and witness the total devastation occuring during construction.
Seeing firsthand what is happening here would turn any responsible landowner's stomach.
Heavy rains have created erosion that will take years to repair.
The number of huge construction equipment and trucks burning fuel is staggering.
Good productive farmland is being ripped apart, and will never be the same.
The level of disgust is even affecting the most loyal supporters of this project.
Hatred of this project is growing worse as each day passes, and we will be forced to live with this for the rest of our lives, all because a few irresponsible landowners, myself included, were taken in by wind developers lies.
All this for chump change.
I affirm that these comments are true and correct to the best of my knowledge and belief.
Gary Steinich
Cambria, WI
SECOND FEATURE
TESTIMONY
Comments submitted by Wisconsin resident, Joe Yunk, to the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin, July 2010
My name is Joe Yunk; I currently reside at the address of N2630 Townhall Rd in Kewaunee County.
My prior address was North 7905 County Trunk P, Algoma, Wisconsin which was in the Wisconsin Public Service (WPS) wind farm by Rio Creek, Wisconsin. I moved from the Algoma address to my current address on or about October 2009 to get away from the effects of the WPS wind farm.
I have been following the current proposed Element Power LLC (EEP) wind farm development that I now find myself living in.
I want you to know what I went through while living in the WPS wind farm. I am hopeful that this information will help you make the right decisions with regard to any PSCW approvals for any other wind farms in Wisconsin.
I would hate to see other peoples’ lives to be as negatively affected as mine has been as a result of living in a wind farm. There is no doubt in my mind that I will relive the awful experience once again if the EEP wind farm for Kewaunee County is approved.
In 1998 the WPS wind farm construction began about 300 yards from my home. I had built this home in 1980 on 6.5 acres of land which was our home farm that I lived on all my life. I was born on November 28, 1954. I had two turbines within one-half mile, one of those turbines was about 1,300 ft from my house and 600 ft from my property line.
In the summer of 2000, the turbines of the WPS wind farm began operation. Inasmuch as I had lived on this farm all my life, I knew the neighbors well, and it wasn’t long after the turbines began operating our lives began to change.
In conversations with my neighbors, I learned, they too were experiencing constant disturbing noise, shadow flicker and just the constant presence of the turbines. By presence I felt uneasy and irritated by the size and closeness of these 220 ft. turbines.
All the people living in this wind farm were guinea pigs/lab rats, no one knew what we were in for. It was in the fall of 2000 when neighbors and families began to divide over the effects of the wind farm. And that continued throughout the time I lived there.
When the turbines began to operate, a hotline was established directly to WPS to report any problems.
I had beef cattle for about two years prior to the turbines operating and never lost any animals. However, shortly after the turbines began to operate, I had beef cattle become ill and die. I reported this on the WPS hotline and nothing was done. I lost ten animals valued at $5,000 [each] over a two year period and couldn’t afford to continue.
Because of noise complaints to WPS, within a year, two families’ homes were purchased by WPS and demolished.
Additionally, at the same time WPS was settling nuisance suits with other neighbors. They were offering to buy out my neighbors but offered prices way below market value to stop the complaints.
However, they never offered me any buyout opportunity and I wanted out! It was hard for me to leave my home place of 54 years. Over time, however, living with the constant sleep deprivation and irritation of the noise and flickering I decided to sue WPS to have them pay me fair market value for my home so I could afford to move.
I knew that I might be risking everything I had worked for all my life, but I didn’t care at this point. I didn’t even try to sell my place outright because I didn’t want anyone else to have to live as I did in this wind farm. I really wanted WPS to buy me out and to demolish the home.
I retained an attorney and filed suit with WPS. Shortly after, WPS offered me $110,000 on my property that appraised for $168,000. I decided not to take their offer, but proceed with the suit.
I gave deposition in the summer of 2008, we were scheduled to go trail in September 2009 and WPS offered me a settlement in August of 2009 for $163,000. With this settlement I was responsible for my attorney fees. My attorney advised me to accept this offer. After paying my attorney fees, I ended up with $158,000.
Later, my home and property were listed with a real estate agency for sale by WPS for 30% below the appraised value.
From my experience in living in this wind farm, it is apparent that setback away from property lines is absolutely necessary. I could hear the turbines a mile away from my house. The PSCW’s standard setback from a property line should be 1.5 miles.
Now, my new home and property on Townhall road is within the confines of the EPP proposed wind farm. I`d like to know what you recommend I do now?
WIND TURBINES IN THE NEWS:
Annie Hart Cool of Falmouth said a turbine was erected within 1,500-feet of her home and has disrupted her husband’s sleep so severely he’d forced to sleep in the basement. He is an air-traffic controller, she added, and can’t afford to lose sleep. And the turbine is absolutely adversely impacting property values, she said.
“Wind turbines are like living next to a train or a dump,” Cool said. “These are realities, I’m a real person and this is really happening to me.”
SOURCE: State House News Service, www.wickedlocal.com
The BPRC Research Nerd
in Columbia County, Fond du Lac County, Invenergy, Kewaunee County, Life in a wind farm, Noise, We Energies, Wind developers behaving badly, Wind farm construction, Wind rules PSC, Wisconsin public service commission, Wisconsin wind farm, element energy, health effects, property values, wind developer, wind farm accidents, wind farm contract, wind farm health effects, wind farm lawsuit, wind farm noise, wind farm noise, wind farm ordinances, wind farm property value, wind farm shadow flicker, wind farm sleep deprivation, wind farm wildlife, wind siting rules legislation and policy, wisconsin wind farm complaints, wisconsn wind siting council
|
Comments Off
7/24/10 Double Feature: WRITING THE WIND RULES: The World Health Organization says one thing, McFadden says another: Which recommendation carries more weight? AND Is something is rotten in Denmark?
In this short clip, Dr. Jevon McFadden pushes for a noise level that may be more beneficial to wind developers than residents of rural Wisconsin.
If the World Health Organization says nighttime noise levels should be 40 decibels or less why is he recommending a louder noise limit?
Does he know something they don't?
Unfortunately for residents of rural Wisconsin, no one is asking the question.
NOTE: TO VIEW HIGH QUALITY VIDEO OF THE COMPLETE WISCONSIN WIND SITING COUNCIL MEETINGS, VISIT THE GREAT WISCONSIN EYE WEBSITE BY CLICKING HERE
SECOND FEATURENEIGHBORS ON THE BARRICADES AGAINST
WIND TURBINES IN DENMARK
SOURCE: Jyllandsposten: http://jp.dk/indland/article2131636.ece
July 24, 2010
By Peter Skeel Hjorth
The postcard image of Denmark in harmony with wind turbines has shattered.
Protests from more and more Danish neighbours of wind turbines on land have stopped wind power projects and made local politicians reluctant to approve licences. This is evident from a front page article in yesterday’s edition of Jyllandsposten which is one of the country’s biggest national newspapers.
Denmark has up till now systematically been highlighted as the good example where the population live in harmony with more than 5000 wind turbines that produce 20 per cent of the country’s electricity. The postcard image of Denmark with Vestas and Siemens as the main producers of wind turbines has shattered.
Several places around the country see acrimonious conflicts between the authorities and neighbours of wind turbines, writes Jyllandsposten.
The case about a national test centre is not the only example of growing resistance. With a broad majority behind it in the Danish parliament the government will build a test centre for seven 250 meter high sea wind turbines in Northern Jutland and clear 5 square kilometres of forest area to create the right wind conditions. For more information click here www.nationalttestcenter.dk.
One of the strongest critics of Danish wind power, the well-known journalist and columnist Claes Kastholm Hansen, calls it a democratic scandal.
“People are thoroughly fed up having their property devalued and their sleep disturbed by big wind turbines 130 and up to 200 meters high” , says the chairperson of a new Danish national association to Jyllandsposten.
The association was started about a year ago. 40 Danish protest groups have already joined, and more are on their way. Several places protests have put a stop to the erection of wind turbines or made the council exercise restraint, writes the newspaper. On Sealand the Swedish energy giant Vattenfal has been forced to abandon the erection of three huge wind turbines. A narrow majority in the local council voted no to two of them after severe pressure from protesting neighbours.
The BPRC Research Nerd
in Jevon McFadden, Wisconsin wind farm, Wisconsin wind power, wind farm complaints, wind farm noise, wind farm ordinances, wind farm shadow flciker, wind farm wildlife, wind siting council wisconsin, writing the wind rules
|
Comments Off