Updates

Noise generated by wind turbines and its propagation to nearby dwellings is a serious problem in turbine siting that I discussed in my comments to the Planning Board last week. I've been studying the problem for a while and just received the following email:

Yes! windpower: you should be calling the "Doc" on this 50 decibel thing, here's FOUR charts I easily found on the internets, with web addresses. Don't allow him continue the misdirection, you should make this part of his rhetoric more well known.

'Doc:' 'Yer STILL cheatin.'
Sincerely, JT

Click here to read my response to JT, which includes the 4 charts he mentioned. Further documentation related to the problem of noise is available in two evaluations, just completed by Richard Bolton this week, addressing Hessler's noise reports in the Lent/Pine Hill SDEIS and Dutch Hill Wind DEIS, respectively.

An article in yesterday's Bangor Daily News about UPC's Mars Hill Project reports the reaction of neighbors when the turbines were started up:

"They turned on tower Number 9, and almost immediately it made enough noise that it was like, ‘Oh my gosh, that can’t be right,’" Wendy Todd said.

"It all depends on the wind speed and direction, but the best way to describe it is you step outside and look up thinking there’s an airplane. It’s like a high-range jet, high-low roar, but with the windmills, there’s a sort of on and off ‘phfoop ... phfoop ... phfoop’ noise."

That’s one "phfoop" or more every two seconds as the turbine’s three blades rotate from 10 to 22 revolutions per minute. It’s loud enough, Todd said, that she can hold her cell phone outside her home and the person on the other end of the call can clearly hear the sound.

Read the whole article, then the comments that follow. Is this really what we want in Cohocton?

Labels: Noise