Suggested information sent in by Cobequid Area Wind farms: here are two reports made for the Canadian Wind Energy Association and conducted by Howe Gastmeier Chapnik Ltd (HGC)
Report on Infrasound, published November 29 2006
http://www.canwea.ca/images/uploads/File/CanWEA_Infrasound_Study_Final.pdf
This report acknowledges that infrasound is produced by turbines, but human health is not affected. There are many reports to dispute this assertion:
http://www.icsv12.ist.utl.pt/papers/session.php?id=10
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=10189173&dopt=Citation
http://kirbymtn.blogspot.com/2006/04/vibroacoustic-disease-and-wind.html
Best practice guidelines, published February 14th 2007
http://www.canwea.ca/images/uploads/File/CanWEA_Wind_Turbine_Sound_Study_-_Final.pdf
Note pages 14 and 15 in Review of Canadian Experience when it is suggested that complaints from noise are much reduced if setbacks are at 1000m or more.
AWPC/CAWF is proposing to be only 500m away from our homes.
The report also talks about how good public relations are essential.
Ahem!
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7 comments:
From his beloved and cherished generational family farmhouse in rural Nova Scotia, a topic usually captioned under the word "sanctuary" writer Harry Bruce scribbles an opinion piece for the Chronicle Herald about rich people resisting wind turbines placed near their summer residences. It is an unsympathetic view. Anne Murray, he says, is a rich woman who doesn't want to see turbines when she is out playing golf, and there there is the "rich Senator Ted Kennedy" and the "Cape Cod elite", they too trying to preserve their water front views from "their yachts or summer mansions". What is out your kitchen window, Harry? What can you see past the orchard? Anne Murray's complaint may sound as futile as Lucy Maud Montgomery's did about automobiles ruining her beloved Island, but for you to conclude you have no opinion on this very hot topic is the height of hypocricy. Next time you flee Vancouver or Ontario, desperate for the tranquility of home, you just might find your bliss destroyed by 28 massive blinking, pulsating, strobing, boot in a washer thumping wind turbines swhooshing round and round 24/7. Being neither rich or elite, should you dare protest this invasion, you'll just be guilty of NIMBY and urged to think of the loss of your home as a necessary sacrifice to help save the planet.
Don't let it happen, Harry. The pen is mightier than the sword. It is high time you got off the fence.
Joanne MacPherson
As I rub my eyes after having read all that very interesting information published by our frineds in Portugal I am still at an impasse. You see Lisa in the reports that you posted its focus was mostly on occupational exposures. The environmental ones were for the poor family that lived near the grain terminal and a few others I am sure. Now the one, which I am sure you are holding onto dearly is the poor family surrounded by windmills where the LFN was higher than that from the grain terminal. This may be true, but I believe you should read between the lines. The press release of May 31, 2007 states that ILFN inside the windmill surrounded home are larger than those.....by the port grain terminal. There are two very important points missing here Lisa. One, which is the crux of the case is how close are these machines. A house surrounded by windmills can be taken literally as being right on top of the house. The make and model and age of the machines is also not mentioned. Even though it mentions that they are recently installed industrial machines it doesn't mention if they are direct drive or gearbox generators or if they are retrofit. All very important points. Also your own portuguese "Doctors" that you have consulted or just pirated their papers state that at 80 dB to 110 dB SPL that the acoustic stimuli were tolerated without annoyance. Well whatever that means it sounds pretty clear that at those levels, which is the high end of the Vestas machines, you would NOT fall ill to VAD.
Now the two CANWEA papers that you have provided clearly support the developer and I am glad that you have provided these, because these are the experts, not you. Even though they mentioned 1000m setback as being one that would eliminate opposition they did in their conclusion state that 1000M is not well founded and would duly hamper the wind power industry....acceptable separation distances are....300-600 m.
You are going to have to stop this nonsense of trying to make someone else's work look like it is supporting your movement. Most of us here have half a brain and are able to read between the lines.
Also stop trying to one-up your European counterparts by proposing a 2 Km setback when they only wanted 1.5 Km. Actually make up your mind is it 1 Km or 2 Km now hmmmm!
By the way public relations 101 - when dealing with people, organizations or special interest groups that clearly oppose your projects development and who cannot be swayed follow the rules efefcting your project as proposed by the government of the day and stand by them!
This report has been prepared and paid for by the wind industry(those who stand to make money from these "farms".)
Its content and presentation is with this in mind.This tactic has been used successfully by the cellphone industry.
Reference to infrasound created by turbine blade rotation as being comparable to that created by nature-wind/waves/etc. is deceptive.
Natures sounds are spontaneous and random.Life has evolved to exist in this ambiant background.
The turbine created infrasound is a constant continous low frequency tone - varying little.
It is an unnatural obtrusion in a quiet rural setting like Pugwash.
Their closing statement-"there is no evidence to suggest infrasound from wind turbines causes issues with respect to human perception or health" is deceptive.
The authors of this report were not paid to study health effects.They are not professionally qualified to make these types of judgements .
They are acoustic engineers.They were hired to measeure sound levels.The expression don't bite the hand that feeds you would be at play here.
There's no mention of the effects of infrasound resonating the rooms in a house and amplifying it's effects.
There's no reference to the phase cancellation or reinforcement effects possible from a grid of these with distance and orientation and only passing reference to beats or modulation oddities.
The charts make no mention of wind speed,distance from the turbines,the amount of ambiant noise at the same time
The charts are based on A-weighted ("makinig it and innapropriate descriptor of infrasound")not linear sound pressure levels.
All around the world there are reports of people having difficulty living near these installations because of unexplainable health problems and who return to normal when they relocate.Just the same with some living near cellphone towers!That industry has become very proficient in telling us there are no health risks although there is 50 years of research telling us artificially created electromagnetic radiation is capable of altering natural life processes.
The human body is an incredibly complex organism.
Thru a process of "tuned" resonance a constant sound of certain frequency will vibrate a mass /air space/fluid/etc.
Constant frequency infrasound will shake you somewhere within just like it does with the windows and light fixtures as mentioned in this report whether you "discern it" or not.
The military has experimented with it for its ability to incapacitate an enemy from a distance and for crowd control.
Levels around a windfarm may not be as great however the priniple is the same and it is not known exactly why it has this affect or how constant low levels can affect one in the longterm.
People living in cities are constantly exposed to a mixture of sounds.The drug indusrty sucks a lot of money out of them for some of their unexplained problems.Ask anyone when they leave the city how they feel and often you'll hear the words" relieved"
The bottom line would be to locate these as far away as can be done rather than force residents to be experimental test objects so someone can make money and appease a short sited ill-guided political mandate.
The planet is not going to die if this doesn't get built here.There's other more suitable locations.
The planet will die if we let clean energy projects get stalled like this one!
If people were really concerned about saving the planet they would go out a buy a small wind turbine (on sale at canadian tire this week) and install it on their roof.
They would soon learn that the wind doesn't supply all their electrical needs and would learn to use less.
A developer could supply a single larger turbine to a neighbourhood and all could enjoy the turbines swooshing around and the relief knowing that they were saving the planet.--and make money selling the excess electricity ??? to their neighbours at the same time!
......and the distribution and road building costs would be le$$ and with less co2 being created also,and the line losses would be less so there would be more to go around,and with the passionate concern of those wanting to save the planet-why they could donate the land to build them on.
This would bring you the cheapest per kilowatt price on the planet as quick as you could sign up.
gotta couple million bucks?, go ahead and make it happen!
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