The Foundation’s CEO, Sarah Laurie, Bachelor Medicine, Bachelor Surgery (Flinders University) was invited by the President of the ASA, and the Director of Acoustics Standards Dr Paul Schomer to make a presentation at the Acoustical Society of America Conference held at Pittsburgh, USA on 21 May, 2015, and to attend a special meeting to discuss research directions and priorities.

The Acoustical Society of America (ASA) is the largest acoustic society in the world, with a broad range of views readily available at major biannual conferences, with one of the most respected scientific journals in the world. The acoustic aspects of industrial wind turbine impacts on humans, and indeed options for mitigation of that noise, are major journal and conference discussion topics.

Unfortunately the CEO was unable to attend in person, however fortunately Professor Robert McMurtry, from Canada, made the presentation on her behalf.

The following Briefing Notes were prepared as Comments for Discussion, in advance of the conference, to be used as discussion points in determining the priority directions for further wind turbine noise and health research at the special research meeting convened after the conference session on Wind Turbine Noise. They have been made publicly available at the request of health, research, and acoustic colleagues working in this area.

COMMENTS FOR RESEARCH MEETING IN PITTSBURGH,
21^st May, 2015

re priority directions for wind turbine noise and health research 

The following comments would have been made in person had I been able to attend this meeting in Pittsburgh. I would be delighted to discuss them further with interested parties, and hope they are useful.

follow to read more: Waubra Foundation, 2015

PDF – Pittsburgh-Powerpoint-FINAL-with-references Pittsburgh-Powerpoint-FINAL-with-references

A wind turbine project near Ostrander Point was brought into question by some local turtles.

HENRY COUNTY, OH (Toledo News Now) –Imagine being awakened in the middle of the night by a wind turbine. It was happening for years to several residents of Ridgeville Township near Archbold until they got fed up and turned to Call 11 for Action for help.

“Sometimes it’s really shrill and loud, other times it just hums,” said Joni Decator, who lives on County Road U. “But when it’s shrieking, you can’t even hear to talk to someone on the patio.”

Decator says she can hear the noise from inside her home, too, even with the doors closed and the air conditioner from PortableACNerd.com running.

“In the spring, we don’t open our windows at night because we can hear it,” said neighbor Mandy Walker. “It’ll wake you up. It’s loud enough to wake you up at like 3 in the morning when it starts in.”

Walker and her family have a clear view of the turbine from the house they moved into nine years ago. They say the problem started in the summer of 2012 and prohibits them from even spending time outside at their pool.

read more and watch news report: Posted: May 21, 2015

Open Submission: Risk of Harm to Children and Industrial Wind Turbines

The appeal decision has been released in the case against the Niagara Regional Wind Corporation.  Mothers Against Wind Turbines Inc. and its supporters are reviewing the document and will be releasing a statement in due course.  

Mothers Against Wind Turbines Inc.

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Local residents will be able to block all future onshore wind farms under new measures to be fast-tracked into law, the new energy secretary has announced. “It will mean no more onshore wind farm subsidies and no more onshore wind farms without local community support.”

Amber Rudd revealed she had “put a rocket” under her officials to “put the local community back in charge” of their own neighbourhoods.

In an interview with The Sunday Times she also said the Tory government would kick-start a shale gas revolution and loosen rules so it could be extracted from under national parks.

No subsidies will be paid to operators of new onshore wind turbines under legislation to be included in the Queen’s speech. The legislation, which Rudd is “hopeful” will be law by the middle of next year, will ensure that consent for new wind farms will have to be given by a local council planning authority, which will be duty-bound to consult residents. Under current planning rules, big onshore wind farms are handled by a central government national infrastructure body that can ignore the wishes of local people.

Rudd said: “It will mean no more onshore wind farm subsidies and no more onshore wind farms without local community support.

read more: Date: 17/05/15 Tim Shipman, The Sunday Times

In 2008, I visited my Mum’s new dream home in the country for the very first time. A beautiful little house, standing proudly on its own, near Cape Bridgewater in Victoria, Australia. Built by Irish settlers, now Heritage listed, it is a solid little house, built to last, and importantly, strong enough to withstand the savage winds that often hit this part of the coastline.

On my first visit, I was very excited by the surroundings, and had never been anywhere quite like it. And now it was my Mum’s home. A whole new world was waiting to be explored and enjoyed by us as a family.

Below are some first impressions of the house, the landscape, the wildlife around it. And below these I will include the important point of this post.

readmore: https://finchertrist.wordpress.com/2015/05/03/abandoning-a-dream/

Haldimand County will be receiving a hefty settlement from Samsung Renewable Energy for road repairs in the county.

“We’re settling out the road use agreements for (Samsung’s) wind project and transmission lines,” Tyson Haedrich, Haldimand’s director of engineering services, said to councillors on May 5.

Staff said the company has agreed to cut the county a cheque for $3.3 million. This is on top of the $500,000 that Samsung already gave the county for road repairs last fall.

The settlement comes after Samsung finished building 67 wind turbines in the South Cayuga area, as well as installed 111 poles along Haldimand Road 20.

Last fall, the company began restoring the roads it damaged during those projects, but the work wasn’t done fast enough for staff.

“They were doing the road restoration work, and as council remembered, the work was going slowly,” Haedrich said.

With Samsung footing the entire bill, county staff and the company agreed to share the task of repairing the roads, and Samsung gave Haldimand $500,000 to get started. Continue reading Samsung Renewable pays Haldimand $3.8M for road repairs →