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From: "fmoose39@hotmail.com" <fmoose39@hotmail.com>
To: James Kotcon <jkotcon@wvu.edu>; Esq. William V. DePaulo <william.depaulo@gmail.com>; Energy Committee <EC@osenergy.org>
Sent: Wed, October 6, 2010 11:55:12 AM
Subject: Re: [EC] WIND AND NOISE

I live about 6 miles from 1 and 7 from another. I can hear them, see the lights, see the smoke, smell them sometimes, and when they start the scrubbed I can feel them. Maybe wind is bad but the ones I visited are not bad at the base but with acoustics bouncing off various items who know.
Bottom line all forms of power have side effects someone may not want. Even solar will have major problems when expanded to utility scale.

sent from my AT&T Smartphone by HTC

----- Reply message -----
From: "James Kotcon" <jkotcon@wvu.edu>
Date: Wed, Oct 6, 2010 10:42 am
Subject: [EC] WIND AND NOISE
To: "Esq. William V. DePaulo" <william.depaulo@gmail.com>, "Energy Committee" <EC@osenergy.org>

If only a coal-fired power plant were as quiet as a wind farm.

JBK

>>> "William V. DePaulo, Esq." <william.depaulo@gmail.com> 10/6/2010
8:51 AM >>>
For Those Near, the Miserable Hum of Clean Energy By TOM ZELLER
Jr.<http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/people/z/tom_jr_zeller/index.html?inline=nyt-per>
Published:
October 5, 2010

“In the first 10 minutes, our jaws dropped to the ground,” Mr.
Lindgren
said. “Nobody in the area could believe it. They were so loud.”

Now, the Lindgrens, along with a dozen or so neighbors living less than
a
mile <http://fiwn.org/> from the $15 million wind facility here, say
the
industrial whoosh-and-whoop of the 123-foot blades is making life in
this
otherwise tranquil corner of the island unbearable.

They are among a small but growing number of families and homeowners
across
the country who say they have learned the hard way that wind power —
a clean
alternative to electricity from fossil fuels — is not without
emissions of
its own.

Lawsuits and complaints about turbine noise, vibrations and subsequent
lost
property value have cropped up in Illinois, Texas, Pennsylvania,
Wisconsin
and Massachusetts, among other states.

In one case in DeKalb County, Ill., at least 38 families have sued to
have
100 turbines removed from a wind farm there. A judge rejected a motion
to
dismiss the case in June.

Like the Lindgrens, many of the people complaining the loudest are
reluctant
converts to the antiwind movement.

“The quality of life that we came here for was quiet,” Mrs.
Lindgren said.
“You don’t live in a place where you have to take an
hour-and-15-minute
ferry ride to live next to an industrial park. And that’s where we
are right
now.”

The wind industry has long been dogged by a vocal minority bearing all
manner of complaints about turbines, from routine claims that they ruin
the
look of pastoral landscapes to more elaborate allegations that they
have
direct physiological impacts like rapid heart beat, nausea and blurred
vision caused by the ultra-low-frequency sound and vibrations from the
machines.

For the most extreme claims, there is little independent backing.

Last year, the American Wind Energy Association, a trade group, along
with
its Canadian counterpart, assembled a panel of doctors and acoustical
professionals to examine the potential health impacts of wind turbine
noise.
In a paper published in December, the panel concluded that “there is
no
evidence that the audible or sub-audible sounds emitted by wind
turbines
have any direct adverse physiological effects.”

A separate study
<http://eetd.lbl.gov/ea/ems/reports/lbnl-2829e.pdf>financed by the
Energy Department concluded late last year that, in
aggregate, property values were unaffected by nearby wind turbines.

Numerous studies also suggest that not everyone will be bothered by
turbine
noise, and that much depends on the context into which the noise is
introduced. A previously quiet setting like Vinalhaven is more likely
to
produce irritated neighbors than, say, a mixed-use suburban setting
where
ambient noise is already the norm.

Of the 250 new wind farms that have come online in the United States
over
the last two years, about dozen or so have generated significant noise
complaints, according to Jim Cummings, the founder of the Acoustic
Ecology
Institute <http://www.acousticecology.org/>, an online clearinghouse
for
information on sound-related environmental issues.

In the Vinalhaven case, an audio consultant hired by the Maine
Department of
Environmental Protection determined last month that the 4.5-megawatt
facility was, at least on one evening in mid-July when Mr. Lindgren
collected sound data, in excess of the state’s nighttime sound
limits. The
developer of the project, Fox Island Wind
<http://www.fo