When Big Wind tried to build a windplant in Meredith, NY, the result was a community-wide brawl. “Windfall” documents the brawl. The film premiered at the Toronto Film Festival earlier this month. It’s getting a lot of positive attention. Look for it in a theater near you.
Click here for a review by Robert Bryce.
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—Barry Funfar (9/28/10)
I am an abutter to what the Town of Falmouth, Massachusetts, calls their WIND 1—their first wind turbine, a 1.65MW Vestas 400 foot tall goliath. Since it went into operation in early 2010, quite a number of us abutters have suffered serious medical detriments and a gigantic loss of quality of our lives from the noise impact of this machine.
My own home is 1662 feet from the turbine, and the effects of the sound on me have caused
These ailments are well documented by my medical providers.
Editor’s note: The following document was furnished to WTS.com by Chicago professional real estate appraiser, Michael S. McCann, CRA. Click here for the entire report and here for another of his reports.
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—Michael S. McCann, CRA
McCann Appraisal, LLC
Chicago, Illinois
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Summary
1. Residential property values are adversely and measurably impacted by close proximity of industrial-scale wind energy turbine projects to the residential properties, with value losses measured up to 2-miles from the nearest turbine(s), in some instances.
2. Impacts are most pronounced within “footprint” of such projects, and many ground-zero homes have been completely unmarketable, thus depriving many homeowners of reasonable market-based liquidity or pre-existing home equity.
3. Noise and sleep disturbance issues are mostly affecting people within 2-miles of the nearest turbines and 1-mile distances are commonplace, with many variables and fluctuating range of results occurring on a household by household basis.
4. Real estate sale data typically reveals a range of 25% to approximately 40% of value loss, with some instances of total loss as measured by abandonment and demolition of homes, some bought out by wind energy developers and others exhibiting nearly complete loss of marketability.
5. Serious impact to the “use & enjoyment” of many homes is an on-going occurrence, and many people are on record as confirming they have rented other dwellings, either individual families or as a homeowner group-funded mitigation response for use on nights when noise levels are increased well above ambient background noise and render their existing homes untenable.
6. Reports often cited by industry in support of claims that there is no property value, noise or health impacts are often mischaracterized, misquoted and/or are unreliable. The two most recent reports touted by wind developers and completed in December 2009 contain executive summaries that are so thoroughly cross-contingent that they are better described as “disclaimers” of the studies rather than solid, scientifically supported conclusions. Both reports ignore or fail to study very relevant and observable issues and trends.
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Where: The Waring House Inn and Conference Center, Picton, Prince Edward County, Ontario, Canada
When: October 29-31, 2010
Sponsored by The Society for Wind Vigilance.
Experts from the United Kingdom, USA and Canada will explore the constellation of illnesses reported by many people living close to industrial wind turbines.
Speakers include Christopher Hanning, MD (UK), Michael Nissenbaum, MD (USA), Carl V. Phillips, PhD (USA), Alec Salt, PhD (USA), John Harrison, PhD (Can), Robert Bryce (USA), Rick James (USA), Robert McMurtry, MD (Can), and Arline Bronzaft, PhD (USA).
Keynote speaker is Nina Pierpont, MD, PhD (USA)
Download the full program here. Click here for Press Release. Download registration form here.
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Editor’s note: We include “fracking” for natural gas on the website because natural gas exploration often goes hand-in-hand with industrial wind energy—many communities find themselves confronted by both horrors. Witness the experience of Meredith, NY, as described recently by NY Times columnist Stanley Fish. Big Wind and Big Gas employ the same sleazy techniques for “winning the hearts and minds” of local town boards and property owners.
Watch this video. Before you do, re-read Jonathan Swift’s “Modest Proposal” (1729)—it’s short— “for preventing the children of poor people in Ireland from being a burden to their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the public.” (Yes, Swift wrote “Gulliver’s Travels.”) Swift proposed that indigent Irishmen raise their children as a culinary delicacy for wealthy Englishmen.
I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled.
Bizarre, right? Insane, right? Don’t worry, Swift (an Irishman) wasn’t being serious; he was lampooning the British government and aristocracy.
Fracking is right up there with Swift’s “Modest Proposal”—except fracking isn’t satire. It’s insanity that’s being performed as I write these words. It’s happening in the southern tier of New York State. (Nina & I live in New York State.) Fracking is used extensively out west, and is now invading the Marcellus Formation, a colossal shale seam (impregnated with natural gas) beneath the Appalachians.
Industrial wind turbines in our backyards and fracking compounds pouring through our faucets: a madness of Swiftian proportions. The only difference being that Swift’s madness was a harmless jest.
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—Editorial, Industrial Wind Action Group (9/23/10)
Editor’s note: Click here for the original article, which includes hotlinked references.
Senate Jeff Bingaman, chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, signaled he’s determined to see a national renewable portfolio standard (“RPS”) passed in the Senate before the members recess for the fall campaign season. Joined by majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and twenty other co-sponsors including three Republicans: Sens. Sam Brownback of Kansas, Susan Collins of Maine and John Ensign of Nevada, Bingaman introduced new RPS legislation that will require retail suppliers of electricity to secure a percentage of their generation from renewable energy resources.
Bingaman’s apparent explanation for pushing the bill now, according to a press announcement this week, is hardly convincing: “I think that the votes are present in the Senate to pass a renewable electricity standard. I think that they are present in the House. I think that we need to get on with figuring out what we can pass and move forward.”
Is that the best he can muster to justify a mandate for purchasing renewable energy and setting aside 15% of the electricity market solely for wind, solar, and other preferred forms of generation?
Perhaps he’s relying on AWEA’s Denise Bode to make his case with her boast that a national RPS “is the single most important thing we can do to grow jobs here in the United States and keep 85,000 American wind energy workers on the job.” Denise must have missed the latest press on green jobs that explained, again, how the hype surrounding green projects is not matching reality. What’s missing entirely in the discussion is how much a 15% RPS will cost the American ratepayers and how many jobs in every other sector in the country will be lost due to higher energy rates.
—Stanley Fish, NY Times (9/20/10)
A few years back, a column I wrote recounting a successful effort by an alliance of citizens to beat back wind-turbine interests in Andes, N.Y., provoked a massively negative response. I was accused (a) of elevating the views I enjoyed from the windows of my second home above the interests of the society in encouraging green energy, (b) of displaying the usual latecomer’s indifference to the needs of the locals who had been living in Andes forever and (c) of not knowing what I was talking about when I described the construction (massively disruptive), effects (awful on land, animals and people), contribution to the grid (minimal) and financing (tax credits and accelerated depreciation rates) of the 400-foot-high towers with a 52-foot circumference base and blades 130 feet wide whooshing through the air at 178 m.p.h.
At the time of that earlier column, Meredith, another small town in Delaware County, seemed to be going in the other direction; the prediction was that the wind companies would succeed there.
But it didn’t turn out that way, and a new film by Laura Israel that premiered at the Toronto Film Festival on Sept. 10 tells the story of what happened. The film is called “Windfall,” a pun on the fate of the wind project (it fell) and on the initial hope of some of Meredith’s residents that unanticipated revenue had fallen into their laps along with the opportunity to do the right environmental thing.
Editor’s note: Click here to read the article in the original, where you will find the graphs and charts and hotlinks. None of those are included in the following reprint.
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TRUTH & CONSEQUENCES
Energy journalist Robert Bryce recently broke the news to mainstream American media. In a hard-hitting article published in the Wall Street Journal, he reported the findings of a Colorado energy research study, which earlier this year concluded that industrial wind technology in the regions of Colorado and Texas it sampled neither reduced carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the production of electricity nor rolled back consumption of fossil fuels.
The raison d’être of the wind industry is to abate significant levels of the greenhouse gas emissions many feel are causing precipitous and adverse warming trends in the earth’s climate. Wind technology is also sold as an alternative source of power to coal-fired plants. Therefore, the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), the trade organization for a constellation of limited liability wind companies, did not exactly welcome Bryce’s report with arms open. Instead, AWEA spokesman Michael Goggin penned a stern riposte, which alleged that Bryce and others skeptical about the efficacy of wind technology were “lobbyists” for the fossil fuel industry, spreading lies “to avoid losing market share to wind energy,” and compared Bryce and a range of people and organizations to the groups and pundits from the tobacco industry who once told Congress there was no causal link between cigarettes and cancer.
Click here to donate to the Ian Hanna Wind Turbine Lawsuit.
Editor’s note: The following was written by a German woman, Jutta Reichardt, on reading the heartrending series of letters written by the Canadian nurse, Norma Schmidt, “They have made my life a living hell.” It leaves one wondering if there is any end to this wind turbine-induced hell. Clearly, it knows no national boundaries. Clearly, it is heartless and mindless. Let these plaintive letters bear testimony to the grotesquerie of building infrasound/low frequency noise-generating machines next to people’s homes. History will look back on this madness for what it is: the wind energy mass hysteria which crushed people like Nurse Norma Schimdt and Jutta Reichardt. Brutal madness.
—Jutta Reichardt (click here for video of Mrs. Reichardt)
I am deeply touched by the experience of Norma from Ontario and the conversation between you.
How to repeat the situation of victims of wind power around the world. . . . My husband and I had the same eye-opening experience when we read Dr. Pierpont’s “Wind Turbine Syndrome” and discovered all of our symptoms, which several doctors did not understand or couldn’t explain to us during the last 13 years.
The same great sadness for the lost paradise, which we have built up over the past 16 years. The same daily discussion, whether we are going to finally be healthy again. Whether we can leave all to start over again (difficult at our age) or if we hold on another 10 years and then try go into early retirement.
Editor: The following correspondence between WTS.com and this Canadian nurse, Norma Schmidt, is typical of emails we get from around the world. The correspondence is reprinted with Mrs. Schmidt’s permission.
Dr Pierpont,
I am an individual who is suffering the effects of living surrounded by 110 industrial wind turbines. They have made my life a living hell. I will not go into details here. I have done everything in my power to try to to get the company to listen to my complaints and help me, to no avail. As the 2 year mark is approaching I must pursue a legal action or accept these turbines. (After 2 years, if one does not take legal action, in Ontario, the law considers that one has accepted the turbines.) Unfortunately, my health will not allow me to stay in my home of more than 3 decades.
I will be attending the conference in Picton, Ontario, October 29-31, 2010. As you will be attending this conference, I was wondering if you would do a private consultation for me. I know I have Wind Turbine Syndrome. I have the symptoms. Your consultation would help me with my legal battle.
I am rather frail right now. I have to go to another house to sleep and gain weight. I have lost a total of 19 lbs. due to the nausea and vomiting from migraine. I feel so hopeless and helpless, with nowhere to turn most of the time. The stress this past year and 10 months has been enormous.
—Michelle Besaw, Plattsburgh Press-Republican (9/13/10)
CLINTON—Noise was the big issue during the Wind Facilities Planning Board’s recent public hearing, and it wasn’t the noise coming from the 40-plus people packed into the Town Hall.
The meeting, which was set to address local concerns with variance requests from Horizon’s Marble River wind farm project, focused on noise issues surrounding Noble’s wind farms and the fear that this project will only bring the same problems.
Chad and Rose Garrow shared a complaint that the noise study done on the current turbines was unfair due to reported battery malfunctions.
“I’m getting vibrations, and I haven’t slept in I don’t know how long,” Mrs. Garrow said. “But I don’t think anybody’s looking out for our interest.”
Editor: The author refers to these mammals as “whales.” Technically, they are indeed whales, but they are more commonly referred to as porpoises. Porpoises are a species of whale.
—P. Gosselin, NoTricksZone: Climate Science News From Germany (9/8/10)
Earlier today German Radio reported that an unusually large number of dead whales have washed up on the North German Baltic beaches over the last 2 weeks.
Now some believe that a newly installed Baltic 1 offshore windpark consisting of 21 2.3-MW turbines may be responsible, according to reports.
I searched the Internet for more information, but the story appears to be bottled up for now. The online dnews.de has a small report.
It writes that according to the German Marine Museum, 12 cadavers have appeared so far. According to whale researcher Stefan Bräger:
“This high frequency is extraordinary. It is unclear what the cause of death could be, and it cannot be determined due to the extent the whales are decomposed. Researchers believe that it’s due to biological reasons. Young whales and mothers are especially vulnerable shortly after birth. They do not exclude the possibility that the construction of the windpark near the Darss peninsula may have been a factor.”
The windpark was just completed and is operated by energy giant EnBW.
Last month . . . Denmark’s giant state-owned power company, Dong Energy, announced that it would abandon future onshore wind farms in the country. “Every time we were building onshore, the public reacts in a negative way and we had a lot of criticism from neighbours,” said a spokesman for the company. “Now we are putting all our efforts into offshore windfarms.”
—Andrew Gilligan, Sunday Telegraph (9/12/10)
To green campaigners, it is windfarm heaven, generating a claimed fifth of its power from wind and praised by British ministers as the model to follow. But amid a growing public backlash, Denmark, the world’s most windfarm-intensive country, is turning against the turbines.
Last month, unnoticed in the UK, Denmark’s giant state-owned power company, Dong Energy, announced that it would abandon future onshore wind farms in the country. “Every time we were building onshore, the public reacts in a negative way and we had a lot of criticism from neighbours,” said a spokesman for the company. “Now we are putting all our efforts into offshore windfarms.”
Even as parts of the British Government continue to blow hard for wind, other countries seem to be cooling on the idea. This summer, France brought in new restrictions on wind power which will, according to the French wind lobby, jeopardise more than a quarter of the country’s planned windfarm projects.
—Monique Aniel, MD, and Steven Thurston (9/10/10)
Co-chairs, (Maine) Citizens Task Force on Wind Power
The revelation that Vinalhaven’s turbines are out of compliance with Maine’s noise regulations comes as no surprise! It confirms that the noise prediction model used by the wind industry is flawed.
Problems with turbine noise are not limited to the prediction model used by the industry. Maine’s current noise regulations do not consider the unique noise produced by wind turbines, do not recognize the quiet nighttime background sound levels of rural areas, nor do they conform to the World Health Organization recommendations for nighttime noise levels. As we have suggested since last October in meetings with senior policy adviser Karin Tilberg, other cabinet members, before an unreceptive Legislative Council, and the Joint Committee on Utilities and Energy, it is imperative that Maine’s outdated noise regulations be amended.
On February 19, 2010, at a State House press conference, we called upon Governor Baldacci to issue an immediate moratorium on wind turbine projects pending a thorough review of turbine noise issues. At that time, the governor through a spokesperson, rejected this thoughtful plea from his citizens. In view of the findings from Vinalhaven, once again we urge the Governor to declare a moratorium on all wind projects.
Editor: The following paper was given at a wind turbine noise symposium, “Where Now with Wind Turbine Impact Assessment?” The Thistle Hotel, Birmingham, UK, 9/9/10.
—Ron Williams (9/9/10)
I am Ron Williams and I live with my wife Jill at the northern end of the Lake District, which has been our home for 36 years.
I have a number of issues with regard to how the nearby Wharrels Hill development is disturbing my life, but I must limit my presentation to concentrate on how the impact of noise from these turbines has affected the quality of our lives and those of friends and relations who visit or stay at our home.
We live 833m (1/2mile) north of the turbines so when the wind is from the SW quarter, the resulting relentless, repetitive, swoosh, swoosh, swoosh . . . , as each blade breaks the wind flow past a tower, three times a revolution, is extremely stressful. The frequency of the swooshes, being similar to the human pulse-rate, is one of which the individual is very conscious and involuntarily your mind constantly attempts to correlate the two and you just await the next agonising swoosh. This incessant low volume regular beat is totally unbearable–which amounts to mental torture. At night, when the ambient noise level from traffic on the nearby A595 is low, the effect is obviously worse. Being a serious claustrophobic and asthmatic, I can’t sleep with the bedroom windows closed, so, in an attempt to alleviate the problem I have been prescribed sleeping tablets. Obviously, the effect of these is time-limited, therefore, should I need to get out of bed during the night, the suffering starts again. On almost a third of nights my sleep pattern is completely disrupted and I awake totally unrefreshed.
—Jon Boone, Ph.D. (Maryland)
One of the genuine problems with engaging industrial wind is the way its spin doctors have hitched the technology to a sense of the public good, much in the way tobacco ads did 50 years ago. This was the final plank in the foundation enabling this daffy Enronesque technology, which is so inimical to modern power performance.
Politicians can support it because they can point to the totemic size of the turbines as symbols for challenging the status quo and for their commitment to a better world, knowing there’s no accountability and certain that industrial wind will only reinforce the status quo.
The media can support it because it provides an English cozy melodrama, providing counterpoint to Big Energy (coal and oil) but in a cartoonish Road Runner/Wily Coyote kind of way (the good guys vs the bad guys)—all to keep people entertained so they’ll stay tuned and to maintain cheap production costs.
And, not least, the big energy companies like GE, AES, Florida Power and Light, and BP (which control 90% of the continent’s industrial wind projects) can pretend that wind is a competitor while milking wind as both a massive tax shelter generator and as a public relations bonanza (and, of course, using wind’s energy credits to avoid cleaning up their dirtiest burning plants).
Click here for article in The Wall Street Journal (9/9/10)
Rensselaerville, New York, Wind Study Committee
Overall Recommendation: Industrial Wind Power installations within the town of Rensselaerville should not be permitted. Download the full report here.
The key reasons for these recommendations:
Where: The Waring House Inn and Conference Center, Picton, Prince Edward County, Ontario, Canada
When: October 29-31, 2010
The Society for Wind Vigilance is pleased to announce our first International Symposium.
The Symposium will feature expert speakers from the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada who will provide important information relating to health issues reported by people living too close to industrial wind developments. International experts including Dr. Christopher Hanning, M.D. (U.K.), Michael Nissenbaum, M.D. (U.S.A.), John Harrison, Ph.D. (Can) and Arline Bronzaft, Ph.D. (U.S.A.) will discuss the effects of wind turbine noise on sleep, impacts on children and the urgent need for human health research.
Keynote speaker is Dr. Nina Pierpont, M.D., Ph.D. (USA)
Who should attend?
Download the full program here. Click here for Press Release. Download registration form here.
FRIDAY October 29 PM
12:00 pm – Registration begins
Editor: This video was made at a large anti-wind turbine gathering (and concert) in Sweden, August 29, 2010. This speech was given by Mrs. Jutta Reichardt, descrbing the wind turbine experience in Germany, wherein she declares that there is tremendous opposition to the Big wind program in Germany. She also describes the Wind Turbine Syndrome being suffered by her and her husband.
—Brian MacQuarrie, The Boston Globe (8/30/10)
VINALHAVEN, Maine—Three white wind turbines, their 124-foot blades stretching 39 stories high, churn out more electricity than is used on this picturesque, pine-studded island off mid-coast Maine. Some residents call them objects of graceful art, others point to lower utility bills, and the environmentally conscious hail the benefits of clean energy.
But to some families living near the land-bound turbines, which began spinning in November, the blades signify something else.
“That noise is so insidious that you can feel it,’’ said David Wylie, 62, a transplant from Concord, Mass., who has owned property on the island since 1992. “I didn’t come up to Vinalhaven to live next to a dishwasher.’’
—Chad Pepin
My name is Chad Pepin. I live in Webster, Massachusetts. Douglas, a neighboring town, has proposed an 11-turbine, 2.5 Megawatt Wind Farm literally in my back yard.
My 1-acre house lot borders the Douglas town line. If the project comes to fruition, I’ll be faced with a 492-foot turbine less than 1400 feet from my house, with another 4 turbines within 2000 feet. Niether I, nor any of my fellow Webster residents, will receive any benefit from this project. Douglas will receive the TIF tax incentives, but Webster will get nothing. I am not allowed to vote at Douglas’s town meetings.
When this frustration topic comes up in conversation, I get quickly classified as a “NIMBY” activist—a radical, selfish resident who doesn’t want change. “Not In My Back Yard.”
I have to wonder exactly when it became radical to stand up for one’s rights. The day we stop having the right to defend our homestead is the day we are Communists. I didn’t get that memo.
Editor’s note: Notice that this woman describes her abrupt awakening at night by saying she “jumps up.” Many other WTS victims describe the same experience. Clinically this is known as a “fight or flight” response. People are suddenly awakening in a panic. Dr. Pierpont explains the inner ear clinical mechanism for this. It’s classic Wind Turbine Syndrome.