Much
has been said recently in my town about the miseries of living a thousand feet
or more south-southwest of a large municipal wind turbine which is accused of
producing through intolerable sounds, pulsating pressures and subtle unmeasured
factors, a variety of serious illnesses among its neighbors. The complaints are
numerous enough and the complainants persistent enough that there can be no
denial that there is a problem for some, despite the distance between them and
the turbine. The solution, according to these critics, is to shut down the
turbines (the second has not yet been operated) or move them somewhere far
away. The cost to the town of either would be
significant, perhaps as much as ten to twenty million dollars, assuming a place
that is sufficiently remote is available somewhere within the town. (It is
not.) For the moment they are both shut down.
I
, too, live near a large turbine and have, with several colleagues experience
over three years with all the vagaries of such a machine. To be sure, the Woods Hole Research Center’s
100 kw turbine is substantially smaller than the 1.6 megawatt machine of the Town of Falmouth, but
it is still a large turbine, much closer to dwellings than the Town’s. The municipal turbine was quite reasonably placed
on town-owned land at what was thought
then to be a comfortable distance from any residence.
While
I think it fair to say that my experience reflects that of colleagues, I report
only my own. I live very comfortably
under the wind turbine, often quite literally under it, for we have held major
public gatherings on the grass in front of our main building, without even a hint of difficulty with sound
from the turbine directly overhead. Even in a high wind when the turbine is
turning at its maximum speed (held deliberately at about 60 rpm ) and making
the most power, the dominant sounds are
the wind in the trees and the traffic on the highway, two hundred feet or more
beyond the turbine below our building. On the SEA Campus 500 feet away the
sound of the turbine can be distinguished from other sounds but it never
dominates or intrudes. The general attitude there, amply reported to me from
diverse sources, some very enthusiastic, is to take encouragement from the churning
turbine, recognizing that each watt it produces displaces a watt from the
coal-fired plant on Brayton Point
near Fall River that showers
us all with mercury and soot brought on the south-westerly winds
directly from the plant. The mercury is
measurable in soils by intricare techniques, but the soot appears as a black
film to be scrubbed off the white decks and cabin of my boat weekly and
power-washed off twice annually. It comes perpetually in the rain. If it were
not for the boat I would have hard time proving its presence unless I were
hanging out wash regularly and watching it gray over time. Meanwhile, that soot
accumulates in our lungs with every breath.
The rustle of wind in the trees has always been reassuring and
refreshing; now there is a reason to look at the turbine and take courage that
the air is that much cleaner and….with more such innovations, will be cleaner
yet. Except that…..
To be sure, the
shadow of the blades produces a potentially troublesome flicker when the sun is
just right. No one enjoys the flicker and my office and our two buildings are
the major recipients. The flicker is greater, of
course when the sun is low in the
morning and throughout the winter. But in any particular place the flicker,
however distracting, is short-lived, for the sun moves rapidly. I find that we either
ignore the flicker or shut it out with window shades. It is no longer a problem
for anyone in our buildings that I am aware of. And in a short time, the sun
has moved. A neighbor with a glass wall in their house finds the flicker troublesome,
quite understandably. The turbine has been programmed to shut down for the times
the problem exists throughout the year.
Trees growing nearby will ameliorate even that problem in time.
The
sound is enough that when the turbine is
not operating, I notice and wonder and look for a reason. But there is no time
when the sound interferes with any function or exceeds the sound of Woods Hole
Road about 200 feet to the eastward or the wind in the trees. People
often gather for lunch on the porch of the main building, substantially under
the blades of the turbine, and have no trouble with normal conversation. No one
has reported to me any sub-sonic or otherwise subtle effects on health or
disposition over the many months of operation, although I know that some far
more distant neighbors object, quite possibly to its presence as opposed to its
operation. And to be sure, our well insulated institutional buildings exclude
substantially all outside sounds, the noise of heavy trucks and the howling
winds of storms. Houses, too, can exclude sounds.
Looking up at the turning blades as
the sun settles into the horizon shows them gleaming as the rest of the
landscape shrinks into darkness. All
enjoy those moments and most find the
turbine an object of beauty and welcome it into the neighborhood as clear
evidence that we are headed into a renewable world that is cleaner and much healthier and agree
that the turbines are objects of beauty,
to be admired and celebrated, not scorned.
G.M.Woodwell
November 15, 2011
November 15, 2011
Woods Hole, Massachusetts
