Memorandum of a personal catastrophe (Mass.)
May 20, 2013
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Memorandum to the Massachusetts Dept. of Environmental Protection
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—Michael Fairneny (5/10/13)
This note is in regards to my wife’s hearing loss, the Hoosac Wind Project, and the current compliance testing done by Iberdrola.
My wife, Jo Ann, has been to an ear specialist on three different occasions within the past few months. (She has never had ear problems!). Her hearing has definitely been affected and deteriorating since her initial visit.
The debilitation happened so dramatically that the doctor had her have an MRI of her ears and head. The test evidently showed nothing significant, but the ringing/buzzing in her ears still persists each and every day we are home. This has caused her many sleepless nights and continues to wake her up.
She says she doesn’t look forward to coming home, being at home, gardening in our yard (which is her passion), and has been looking for an opportunity to work, live, and get away from our “dream home” of 29 years. When she is away at work or leaves for awhile, the symptoms dissipate and eventually go away, but I (we) are afraid the hearing loss could become permanent.
I find this situation very distressing and I ask you what solution would you suggest?
I am also having some sleep disturbance and headaches when I am home (not from her), and even if I wasn’t having symptoms, what choice do I have? We are now seriously considering Plan B. Unfortunately, we don’t know what that is.
I am now 60 years old with 4 grandchildren who all love it up here. What has been allowed to happen here is devastating to me and my family.
I still have a very hard time trying to see though and evaluate the true benefits of what seems to be very questionable science and obscure guidelines, without any proper governmental/state standards for siting/setbacks as well as noise pollution (audible and inaudible sound) to protect us. Aren’t we, the residents (citizens), part of the environment? Don’t we deserve to be protected, as well as the birds, the bats, and the earth?
Just because we have chosen to live in a sparsely populated, rural area and there are only a few dozen of us (that have not taken the money offered by Iberdrola’s so-called Good Neighbor agreement, but what I call a gag agreement), does that mean our health and well-being can be cast aside? That the agencies set up to protect us don’t even have in place adequate standards/protocol to evaluate the technology that has been jammed down our throats: Why?
I’ll tell you why! Money! Big money! This is not fair. This is not right to have our “pursuit of happiness” thrown out the window. If we can’t feel safe in our own home, then how can we be happy? Isn’t this our right?
How can it be acceptable that (1) the only sound test done is paid for by the developer, (2) the acoustic firm is chosen by the developer, (3) monitoring sites are selected by developer, (4) positioning/placement of monitoring devices is chosen by developer, (5) stablished DEP procedures (however inadequate) are totally disregarded by developer, (6) interpretation of data is done by the developer?
I am asking for proper testing. This means current standards are to be followed (i.e., attended monitoring, proper intervals, duration and times of testing, assurance of maximum output and speed of turbines, etc). Also essential is that the new, current knowledge for infrasound and low frequency noise be included.
I am no sound expert, nevertheless I am very much aware of my own headaches and symptoms as well as what my wife of well over 30 years has been experiencing day after day.
We want an explanation and relief! We want our peaceful world back!
Please help!
Comment by Sharon Eddy on 05/20/2013 at 9:47 pm
Dear Michael and family,
I just turned 60 and went through 3 yrs of hell with 3 turbines here in W. Falmouth, MA. I suffered with vertigo, ringing in the ears (tinnitus), sleeplessness (kept a sleep log for 3 mos.), and various other ailments. These have subsided, though not completely disappeared, since the town does not run them at night and has slowed them down.
We vote tomorrow to see how our fellow human beings decide our fate. I have fear. My sweat, blood and years went into this house, which I designed and helped build. To see it stripped from me would cause me great harm emotionally and physically. I feel like a prisoner awaiting the guillotine.
I pray you find an answer as it IS WRONG for the fox to be running the chicken coop.
Sincerely,
Sharon Eddy
Comment by Kaz on 05/20/2013 at 10:14 pm
Och, Michael…
My heart goes out to you and your wife. Truly, I feel for you. I have many good friends who are suffering in much the same way that you and your wife are. It’s not fair. In my humble opinion, what is being done to you is criminal in nature. Don’t ever doubt that the wind industry knows—and has known—what the impacts of their projects are.
And they pushed them through, anyway, counting on the fact that citizens wouldn’t already have knowledge, common-sense and integrity in place as their armor.
I respect your reasonable tone and your requests for unbiased sound testing. But in all honestly, my friend, your pleas for a fair shake won’t make any difference. Not as it pertains to your current circumstances, anyway.
I’ve always been an advocate for working “within the system.” But over the course of 4 years of immersion in the wind debate, I’ve come to realize that playing by rules designed by government (and the corporate interests that rule it) doesn’t work. The industry flaunts those rules and plays dirty. How well has being reasonable and playing by the rules worked for those of us striving for an ethical solution to this growing problem?
It hasn’t worked. Your own circumstances prove that.
Michael, it’s okay to get mad.
That’s all I’m saying.
If there is something substantive that I can do to help you and your family, please feel free to contact me. I’m never more than a few hours away from roomomove@tds.net.
From Lexington Township, Maine…
Kaz
Comment by Marshall Rosenthal on 05/20/2013 at 10:20 pm
Mike, as I told you earlier, this letter has to go everywhere. It just confirms what I have been saying. The available clinicians, in this case the hearing specialist, are clueless about the impact of wind turbine-generated ILFNs on human hearing, let alone the numerous other illnesses that are the result of the brain being degraded by toxic acoustic environments.
The greenwashed medical community is barking up the wrong tree, making misdiagnoses. The hearing specialist said that your wife’s tinnitus and hearing loss are probably the result of her driving from uplands to lowlands and up again to get home. Why did this onset wait twenty years and the arrival of the wind turbines to begin to manifest? Come on!
We have been wasting our appeals on the deaf ears of the politicians and their errand boys at the Mass. DEP and CEC. The Governor speaks to us privately and makes sympathetic noises. I understand the he and Speaker of the State (MA) Senate, Therese Murray, are just now returning from their trip to Ireland to see how they are destroying their beautiful land and people for the sake of imagined windpower profits. How can we expect any relief from those sociopaths?
It is time for a great change. The ruling varlets must be driven from office. It is time to restore human decency. It is time to ban Industrial Windpower.
Comment by Andreas Marciniak on 05/21/2013 at 6:19 am
Dear Michael and family,
My heart goes out to you and your wife and anyone else that has to put up with this! From my own experience, I need to tell you both to get out of there. It will NOT get better you will NOT get used to it. The longer you’re there, you the less chance you have to get over it, to the point you will find other places that never troubled you, before, will affect you—even little things like a party with your friends will become intolerable.
I wish you all the best.
Good luck from a Wind Turbine Refugee.
Comment by sue Hobart on 05/21/2013 at 7:46 am
Sounds familiar. So familiar I abandoned my home. I have no advice other than keep telling your story.
The future will prove the truth of the symptoms we have and what we are going through … we probably won’t still be alive when it does.
I used to like my life … now I hate it. All the efforts I put into it are now in vain.
But I got 5 seconds on the Greater Boston show. That is about how much consideration we are going to get from Massachusetts. All they want is their Green Merit badges… (I never much went for jewelry myself….)
We are the slaves melting the gold for their jewelry…
Sorry, it’s going to be a long day … today is the Falmouth vote and I am already sick to my stomach.
Hope life is better on the other side … Gotta hope for something …
Comment by Shellie Correia on 05/21/2013 at 8:22 pm
It breaks my heart to hear the sadness in the words of people who have been subjected to the cruel injustices that come, part and parcel, with the onslaught of industrial wind turbines.
Governments all over the world have used legislation similar to Ontario’s Green Energy Act, which gave the greedy wind companies permission to destroy the very fabric of rural Ontario. Rural residents, young and old, are considered collateral damage in this scam. We are standing in the way of big money, a license to steal, and they will not take the health and welfare of the victims of this fiasco into consideration. It is all about the almighty dollar, and health was never a concern for these corrupt individuals.
If we do not elect a group of sane, sensible individuals to govern, we are all in big trouble. The wind scam itself, is definitely NOT SUSTAINABLE!
I am the mother of a 12-year-old son with sensory processing issues, which makes noises seem much different for him. Continuous, repetitive noise and infrasound—such as the turbines make—would be very harmful to my son. Even a letter from his specialist, along with many peer-reviewed articles on the subject, will not make them pay attention.
Countless times, I have contacted the very government that is supposed to protect us, especially our children, and they refuse even to respond to my calls and letters.
It is a terrifying state we are in, and it is going to get far worse if it is not stopped now. We cannot afford to allow this to go on any longer. It is destroying us physically, emotionally, financially, and in many other insidious ways.
Trust in government? Absolutely not, they have proven they do not deserve it.
Comment by Itasca Small on 05/22/2013 at 3:24 am
As I read this tragic letter and the informed comments, I am reminded of one fact above all else:
Evil knows no compassion, no sympathy; feels no empathy. Every human being who hears the respectful pleas all of us have offered our local governmental officials, and then our state and national elected representatives, our local news media; and callously, capriciously, with willful disregard, dismisses our suffering or our prior warnings against further wind turbine siting, is living submersed in evil. Whatever his conscious intent, his actions are nothing less than evil.
Willful blindness includes conspiracy to perpetuate the status quo. These people across-the-globe who are deliberately, with malice aforethought, subjecting humans and animals to truly life-destroying torture will not stop of their own volition. They will not stop voluntarily, minus a Miracle from God.
The only means by which this Evil Scourge will be defeated is – in answer to prayer – God opening the hearts, minds, and souls of the indoctrinated citizens of every besieged nation, that they will hear and believe the real facts, as reported by those who know the truth.
We have to do more! We have to accept Reality and escape to safe havens; to save our lives, and to live to fight another day. We have to recuperate and embrace the resolve to seek ways to reach our fellow-man – those who are ignorantly indoctrinated, not those who have thrown in their lot with the developers and the lying purveyors of wind energy as pollution-free – Savior of Earth.
We have to think outside-the-box! When the unaligned, innocent, indoctrinated actually hear the truth, they are appalled. We need to figure-out how to reach these people on a large scale, and press inroads to spread the truth along their personal networks. I just had a new thought!
What about the online social networks? An orchestrated campaign of posts, comments, shared posters, links to the more-informative websites – such as, WTS.com, etc., may be a viable means to seed the networks with facts that would gain attention and break-through the indoctrination walls.
Harvest will not come unless seed is sown!
Online websites are terrific for those of us already seeking the facts and desiring to keep abreast of the latest revelations, but, those who are not already seeking to expand their knowledge are not going to find our sites in droves. Cold use of search engines does not find the truth without clever keywords.
Social networking may be the answer! We must stop “preaching to the choir” – begin to reach the ignorant, in earnest!
Michael and Jo Ann, it pains me to add my voice to the other excellent, knowledgeable advice given above, but, as a reluctant member of the Wind Energy Refugee Class, I echo the warning:
Get out!!! Get out, NOW!!! It will only get worse!!! It will not resolve itself in the toxic soundshed of the IWTs!!! If you want to LIVE, YOU MUST LEAVE!!! Unless the IWTs are TURNED-OFF, you CANNOT WIN this battle!!! Your brain is being damaged every moment you are exposed to ILFN!!! The memory, concentration, comprehension, and general thought processing WILL decline, AND YOU CANNOT STOP IT!!!!!!!
The worse your brain gets, the longer it will take to recover, especially if you have to move to a new location that includes SMART Meters, other ILFN present in suburban and urban areas, modern Air Conditioning Units that run on variable speed motors, ceiling and other fans, etc., and high-voltage transmission lines [yes, they DO perceptibly affect you, especially when you are sensitized by ILFN. My mother, sister, 3-year-old niece, and infant nephew were subjected to their crackling corona in 1975, and right now, I am within 100 feet of them at my sister’s home, and my recovery is fraught with effects from them and all the other sources named above.] But, it is still MUCH BETTER than the toxic IWTs!!!!!!!!
There is HOPE! I was so badly affected, I can attest that even from the level of Addison’s Disease, ESCAPE from the IWTs is the beginning of Recovery.
As I have done here before, I must, once more, thank Calvin Luther Martin for befriending me with true compassion when I first wrote a comment on WTS.com. Without his candid, forthright, stark honesty, telling me I had to “GET OUT OF THERE!!!” “NOW!!!” I don’t know if I would have escaped in time to save my life!!! Addison’s IS life-threatening! My logical thinking capability was so compromised, I was determined to stay and keep fighting from within the “Lion’s Den.” Praise the LORD for Calvin, Dr. Pierpont, and my sister, Billie Jeanne, who has given me refuge.
Whatever you have to do, you MUST accept the fact: until the turbines stop turning, your days are numbered! If you have family safe from the Scourge, they must quickly understand that if they want to continue to have you in their lives, if they don’t want to watch your certain decline and demise, they must do whatever they can to help you escape.
Calvin put a name to the Scourge, Infrasound is, Homo’s Achilles Heel. Homo [Homo sapiens sapiens – modern man] is deliberately destroying himself by Infrasound! He is culpably guilty of destroying God’s lesser creatures along with himself.
Don’t let yourselves be accomplices to your own homicide.
Itasca
Wind Energy Refugee, Navajo County, Arizona
From my sister’s home in Mesa, Arizona, U.S.A.
Comment by Itasca Small on 05/22/2013 at 3:45 am
Small correction and peripheral comments: in the bracketed comment regarding high voltage transmission lines, I missed adding, “…nephew, and I were subjected to their crackling corona…”
And, since I’m making that correction, I will add the fact that we had our world-class Nubian Dairy Goats with us underneath the high-voltage lines. Their health declined quickly, along with our own; the normally quiet Baby William, cried incessantly inside the metal trailer home.
The goats’ perfectly straight faces twisted to visible crookedness, they became unsteady on their naturally strong, healthy legs, and when my sister and I milked the does, we could feel the coronal current in their udders.
We could also feel the current in the metal trailer door and the refrigerator door. So, research may have missed the effects, but close-enough proximity to generators or carriers of various types of waves, subjects living cells to adverse effects. IWTs are not the only insidious threats to Life on Earth.
A very wise doctor advised us to tape a quarter (they were silver-based then) on our sternums. This relieved the adverse effects, miraculously with William, until we could escape permanently.
Itasca
Comment by Jane on 05/22/2013 at 1:14 pm
We moved my in-laws 3 miles away from their home that was 1/2 mile away from a wind farm last summer.
Father-in-law’s tinnitus has now gone. And not come back.
Comment by Itasca Small on 05/23/2013 at 2:01 am
Jane,
Thank you very much for telling us about helping your in-laws move far enough away to find relief.
Praise the Lord!
Itasca
Comment by sue Hobart on 05/29/2013 at 9:28 pm
You must leave there my friend…Your wife won’t get better and the situation may become irreversible. Just trust that we know what we are talking about. it happened to me and I stayed too long.
I am getting better but I am not OK…
Hope Of change won’t make your wife better. Only leaving will…Its physical not mental… cannot control her condition with denial.
I have spent too much time finally realizing that my own denial contributed greatly to my continued suffering.
Once you realize the turbines make you sick it is YOU that continues to torture yourself by going back there.
But you do have a choice… all but a VERY HARD choice …To stop the torture there today and refuse to go back there.
Yep, its painful, expensive, unfair, unjust, aggravating and straight up shitty to have to do it… but bottom line…You have to do it.
Go… then file the lawsuits. Tell your story.. Scream it to the mountaintops if you must but…
Fight from a safe distance and accept the reality that wind turbines have toxified your life….YOU KNOW it..dont you?