Letters From Wind Farm Neighbors Page 2

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Wind turbine disaster in Sweden - my thoughts
Email to Country Guardian (UK)

From: LOTTA NILSSON
Sent: February 21, 2002

I read Simon Jenkins¹ article "The ill-wind blowing through energy policy" with great interest as I can tell people what living with wind turbines is really like. Before you read this make sure that you are not among those who think (which is very normal for people over 20 ) like this " do not disturb me with facts I have already made my mind up" . Many environmentally concerned people have a tendency to react very strangely to what I am about to say but no one can learn anything new with that attitude or start to believe a different truth than the one we are used to, even though it might be very wrong. I was like most people positive to wind turbines when it happened to me. The only one I had seen was about 15 m high and I now realise that I did not know anything at that time of energy or wind turbine produced electricity. It is simply not the kind of things you think about on a regular day basis, at least not if you have a family, work and maybe a house. You simply do not think about these things. Diapers, dog food, friends and dinner are much more frequent in your mind - and so it should be.

No one should be forced to go through what we are going through. I wish no one the hell we are living in ! Do not let them fool you just to make money on your home and neighbourhood like they did to ours. Wind turbines close to your home is nothing but torture. It is amazing how people in general - just passing them once in a while by car - claim to know so much about wind turbines. It all changes rapidly when they themselves are threatened by an exploration or finally despite protests become close neighbours. Protests do not often help - the democratic rules and ordinary laws do not apply to wind turbines. Strange ! Then they, like we, find out the hard way that the noise is unbearable for human beings and that the shadows from the rotating blades in your home and garden drives you and your children mad. Just to look at the wind turbines rotating stresses you and finally you cannot stay in your own home. In Sweden many people have left their homes, many more are planning to. Nobody is interested in buying my house unless I make a huge reduction in the price. I know that it is difficult to understand what we are going through - but please try before it is too late for us all !!

What surprises us most - we who have already lost our peace and homes - is the ignorance and arrogant attitude we meet with from authorities that should support us and control our environment but how they in fact protect the business instead. For years we have been trying to raise the issue and slowly things are changing. It is not as popular to be "for" wind turbines any more. More and more people realise that wind turbines do make a noise and create visual problems. Wind turbines are a threat to the environment - not a hope for the future. The Danish government did finally find out what we have been saying for long time and what an expert on economy and electricity distribution could have told them 20 years ago and thereby saved billions (5,000,000 /year one estimate) of Danish crowns for the tax payers and consumers in Denmark. The problem is that no one wanted to hear the truth. Politicians have a green attitude as long as it gives them votes and they rather choose to keep their number of votes high than take care of the state finance and a good energy and environmental politics.

The wind industry and more or less serious "sales agents" are instead of the real experts suddenly advisers for the government and in Sweden as well , walking " like the child of the house" in and out from the department of Industry and Energy. No good decisions can rest on this kind of advice and consultation. Wind turbines are too expensive and give such a small and unreliable contribution of electricity that it even threatens the distribution network stability in Denmark. One windfarm was disconnected before Christmas to keep the network stable.

It is hard to understand how anyone can sell out the landscape and the people who live in it in this way. It is an absurd world we are living when people plan to put up thousands and thousands of these horrible things - higher than ordinary 20 - 30 floor buildings with rotorblades the size of jumbo jet wings rotating in beautiful silent lansdcapes - in the name of environment. I must wake up from this nightmare. People have gone mad !! Anyone who wants to check my story are welcome to Laholm, Sweden and other places in Denmark and Sweden.

M. Sc Lotta Nilsson
Marbäcksv. 17 Skottorp
Laholm
Sweden

 

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The Dark Sides Of Wind Power: Jan 26, 2005 from North Adams Transcript by Eleanor Tillinghast. "Noise may not be your first concern when looking at wind turbines, but for neighbors, it is tormenting..."

 

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The Pendleton Times
3 March 2005, p. 4

A letter from Linda Cooper quotes a resident of Tucker County, WV, as follows:

"I live in Tucker County approximately 1.5 miles from the Backbone Mountain wind turbines and have tried everything to get used to them. A brief visit to one of the viewing areas certainly gives no true impression of what it is like be forced to live with them. We have now suffered for three long years under their hideous shadows. They have taken over the entire landscape and are in our sight no matter where we go day or night, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The movement is impossible to ignore no matter how hard we try and the noise they make travels miles and miles down the mountains and hollows disturbing people who cannot even see them from their homes. I compare the noise to Chinese water torture or fingernails on a chalkboard or water dripping in a pan. Even on the calmest nights the endless drumming goes on; windows closed, pillows over the head, it is still inescapable. While we were led to believe this would be a clean, quiet, pristine, and environmentally-friendly way to address energy problems and give a huge boost to our ailing economy, I feel we have been tricked. There appears to be no recourse or plan to compensate us for property value losses, erosion of our quality of life, or mental anguish. Besides these 44 wind turbines, thousands more are in the pipeline! God help us!"

 

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Wind farm illness

Duncan Higgitt, Western Mail
Jun 6 2005

SIR - There seems to be a great deal of controversy about the effect of wind turbine noises on human health.

I can assure everyone who needs to know, that some people like myself have found it impossible to live near them.

I had lived on our family farm for 27 years. I was living in the community where I grew up and where some of my family still live.

We had invested a great deal of our time into our home, and had even built a retirement home for ourselves, the place where I wished to spend the rest of my life.

However, in 2001, three massive wind turbines were erected within a mile of our home.

I wasn't very concerned about them, at the start.

Having been in the best of health, thankfully, for most of my life, I couldn't understand why I was suddenly feeling very unwell for no apparent reason.

Racing pulse, heart palpitations, a strange churning in my head, a feeling of nausea, a terrible unease and a need to escape. Sleep became difficult too.

I visited my doctor on several occasions, but she found nothing. It took me about ten months to realise that there was a connection between my illness and the low-frequency noise emitting from the wind turbines.

At first I realised that, when I was away from home, I suddenly felt "normal" again which was a wonderful feeling, believe me.

I had suffered from tinnitus before this time and had been examined by a consultant at Glangwili Hospital. He gave me hearing tests and declared that I could hear very well, indeed especially in the low frequency range. Then I realised that when the turbines had their back towards me was when I felt most unwell.

I kept a diary of my illness, and I wrote to my MP.

I did not want to leave my home but eventually, after talking to another woman who had suffered the same symptoms as me, living near other turbines, I eventually had to face the fact the wretched things were there to stay and that we would have to move.

Now, 18 months later, after the trauma of leaving my home, I am again, thankfully, in the best of health.

Low-frequency sound sufferers exist. I also suffer from the low sound emitted by aeroplanes - before I can actually hear them I 'feel' them approaching, then I hear them and then I 'feel' them retreating.

Like everyone else I spoke to living near wind turbines, I could not hear any noise at all in the conventional way, not any sound at all. I have no axe to grind in this argument, I simply left.

But these wind turbines should not be built so near to people's homes.

GWEN BURKHARDT
The Nook, New Quay

 

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Re: Something In The Air

Sunday Telegraph Letters
Tony Middleton
12 September 2004

Your correspondent replying to David Bellamy's letter on wind farms says that he cannot hear any noise when standing underneath the blades of a wind turbine (Letter, Sep 5). This is a phenomenon well understood by developers who will encourage anyone threatened by a wind farm to seek out a convenient turbine and stand underneath it to satisfy themselves that there is no noise problem and thus no cause to object to their plans.

The reality of the matter is somewhat different. The noise perceived by those living within a mile or more of a wind farm, and particularly if downwind, is caused by the pressure wave that is generated each time a turbine blade passes the mast. For a single turbine these broad-band pressure fluctuations are not excessively intrusive, but where several turbines operate in proximity the pulses move into and out of phase, creating a doubling, tripling or more in the sound level, depending on how many turbines are grouped together.

Several low-magnitude pulse trains thus cause noise with an unexpectedly strong impulsive character whenever they synchronise. This is inaudible close to each individual turbine but is known to be the cause of considerable distress at greater distances. The effect is much more noticeable at night due to the greater differential between air flow at ground level and hub height and also the greater sound-carrying capability of the cooler night air.

The wind industry and the Department of Trade and Industry are not unaware of the problem but prefer to ignore it. Instead, they rely on research completed in 1997 that has little relevance to the serious low-frequency noise problems arising from the latest generation of monster wind turbines. This is disgraceful but sadly symptomatic of the whole wind power ethos.

 

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MAIWAG (Marton, Askam and Ireleth): ... we have four windfarms within a radius of less than 10 kilometres of our villages. Below is a reproduction of the letter allegedly sent out by the developers to local residents. What this letter does not make clear is the realities of living with turbines as neighbours and the affect that they have on both the local environment and the quality of life of local residents. Now that we have the experience of having an operating windfarm on our doorsteps we believe this letter was grossly misleading and is a completely unbalanced and unrealistic portrait of a windfarm development.