Intelligence creates good rulings

To the Editor:

A game changer to the industry you either love, or love to hate. Wind to electricity, so green and clean, but, not so quiet, it seems.

It’s summertime and camp owners and visitors are at Shagg and Concord Ponds. Their first introduction to a new neighbor, a wind energy facility atop Spruce Mountain. Some dozen letters of concern about the impact of this facility has been offered to the Woodstock Wind Committee from campowners on these two ponds.

What they have to say is no different than is heard when these wind energy facilities are erected too close to valued property. “The noise was so horrific at my camp that I couldn’t stay outside.” “What is most interesting to me is that they seem loudest on the calmer days. That is, if the wind is barely existent, I can really hear them roaring."

People expressed symptoms of sleepless nights and headaches.

What’s going on is a complex relationship between the sound/infrasound output from these huge wind turbines and human response as the sound/infrasound enters the ears.

Sound is obvious. Infrasound is not. Infrasound is at such a low frequency of sound waves, humans can’t hear it.

When one detects the sound from a turbine, even at a whisper level, we hear people say it is annoying. A study comparing wind turbine sound with aircraft, road traffic and railway sounds found people expressed annoyance to wind turbine sounds at much lower loudness levels than sounds from aircraft, road or railway.

Another study predicts 85 percent of the community will become highly annoyed when wind turbine sounds occur at the sound limit allowed by the DEP on the Spruce Mountain Project.

Infrasound studies on wind turbines have just recently begun. The evidence, so far, indicates that infrasound, the component most likely causing sleepless nights, headaches, dizziness, etc., carries further than the audible sound, and penetrates structures with amplification.

For those responsible for producing rules to govern the erection of wind turbines within your community, pay close attention to what people are saying about the sounds from the Spruce Mountain Wind Project. Evidence creates intelligence. Intelligence creates good rulings.

Dan McKay,

Dixfield