Monthly Archives: June 2018

Adverse Health Effects, Cost Benefit, Government Misrepresentation, legal challenges

Paying to Grease the Wheels of Justice

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Falmouth wind turbine 4.jpg

Falmouth wind litigation winds down

By Christine Legere |May 31, 2018 |Cape Cod Times

FALMOUTH — An eight-year legal battle between the town and residents who live near two controversial wind turbines at the municipal wastewater treatment plant off Blacksmith Shop Road has been brought to a close with the recent settlement of three remaining court cases involving monetary damages.

The town’s insurer paid the 10 complainants named in the suits a total of $255,000, according to Town Counsel Frank Duffy.

Eight litigants agreed to settlement amounts in March and have already been paid. Linda Ohkagawa, Kathryn Elder, Brian Elder, Todd Drummey, Terri Drummey, Robbie Laird, Mark Cool and John Ford each received $22,500.

While those amounts fell short of their legal expenses, the group decided to accept the payments.

“It was not wanting to pay any more for the grease to turn the wheels of the justice system,” Cool said. “Everybody was so tired.”

Diane and Barry Funfar agreed to a settlement amount last week as part of a separate nuisance complaint and will be paid in about a month. Each was awarded $37,500, for a total of $75,000.

That award won’t balance the financial books for the couple, who had to remortgage their home three times to cover the cost of their attorneys during years of court hearings.

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Adverse Health Effects, Animals and turbines, harm to wildlife, Health, Noise

International Wind Turbine Noise Conference 2019

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Enercon Wind Turbine- Niagara Wind  located in Southern Ontario

2019 Theme and Subjects

When: June 12-14, 2019   Where: Lisbon

Consolidating our Knowledge

In 2019 we would like to devote a part of the conference to consolidating what we know. As Bo Sondergard said when I suggested that to him “there is no single point in time, our knowledge is always on the move”. That’s true, but I think it would be a good time to try to pull together, perhaps in literature reviews, what we know about:

  • Propagation
  • Annoyance and other effects on people
  • Predicting background noise level
  • Amplitude Modulation
  • Modelling Source Noise

And, of course, what we don’t know – so where the research energy should go next.

Otherwise, we still want general papers and here are a few areas where more work is required:

  • Does background noise vary with seasons?
  • How well does background noise mask turbine noise?
  • Small turbines – they can be as much a problem as large.
  • Cyclical Pitch Control. Can it help reduce AM or overall sound power?
  • How do meteorological conditions affect propagation?
  • More dose response tests on turbine audible noise to allow us to produce more robust regulations.
  • More ways of reducing trailing edge noise.

And, of course any other subjects that are useful to further the knowledge of Wind Turbine Noise.

Dick Bowdler

May 2018

More Information: International Conferences on Noise 2019