The recent controversy to place two massive wind farms right off our coast has raised a host of local rule and environmental questions. One area of concern that has not yet received sufficient attention in the press, both for water and land based wind turbines, relates to issues of health.
Recent evidence exists that subjecting humans to pulsating, low-frequency noise associated with wind turbines creates sleep disturbances leading to depression, chronic stress, migraines, nausea and dizziness, exhaustion and anger, memory loss and cognitive difficulties, cardiac arrhythmia, increased heart rate and blood pressure. For example, an article from 2008 cites "no fewer than 13 studies that show noise from wind turbines at night can disturb residents more than 2 Km away ( "Simple guidelines for siting wind turbines to prevent health risks," George W. Kamperman and Richard R. JamesDearborn, NOISE-CON 2008, Michigan, July 28-31, 2008).
Also, "Those living close to the source of noise can develop what has been termed "Vibroacoustic Disease (VAD). Noise from wind turbines exhibit the characteristics of noise experienced in various occupations (aircrews, aircraft maintenance workers, ship workers and an islander population exposed to environmental infra and low frequency noise) and has been shown to lead to VAD. Complaints from people living near wind turbines are the same as those seizures from persons who have developed VAD." (Vibroacoustic disease: Biological effects of infrasound and low-frequency noise explained by mechanotransduction cellular signaling." Mariana Alves-Pereira and Nuno A.A. Castelo Branco, Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology, (2007) 93: 256-279).
Any state government, town or private citizen that permits or installs a wind turbine(s) really may be causing more harm than good, and, of course, subjecting themselves to potential liabilities down the road, if and, when our populace begins to exhibit medical issues!
Given that the Oceans Plan has not studied in detail any of the impacts on our ecosystems, tourist economy or the culture of the Wampanoag's, we seriously doubt if the our leaders in Boston have ruled out any of the potential health hazards described above. We as concerned citizens really have to ask why? Why the rush to judgment when our vistas, our birds, our fish, our way of life and now, most importantly, our health is at stake?
Monday, November 23, 2009
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Renewable Energy Areas, Including Adjacent Federal Waters
On this map provided by the State, you can see that the entire west and southern shore 3 miles off the coast of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket (grayed area - federal waters) are being considered as potential sites for industrial wind park development. This is happening quickly, and citizens will not have a chance to approve whatever plan the State decides upon. Please get involved and tell your friends to get involved.
http://commpres.env.state.ma.us/mop/draft_plan/v1/figs/full/4-3-full.pdf
Last Day to Have Your Say!
Tomorrow, November 23 @ 5:00 pm, the period for public comments on the Draft Ocean Management Plan. Please let your voice be heard. Don't let the State say nobody cared enough to give their input. CLICK HERE to give your input now.
Friday, November 20, 2009
This is what constructing an off shore wind park looks like
This is a promo video from the construction of the off shore windpark "Princes Amalia" (Q7), off the cost of The Netherlands close to the town of IJmuiden. The one proposed for off of Aquinnah would be more than 2Xs as large.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Ex-partner of Boston wind exec charged
Ex-partner of Boston wind exec charged
Italians nab soccer club president in energy fraud Read the article here.
Italians nab soccer club president in energy fraud Read the article here.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Let Vineyarders Decide needs your help!
Dear Friends & Neighbors,
By now you've most likely heard about the DRAFT Massachusetts Ocean Management Plan which outlines a plan to give the State unprecedented power to manage commercial and industrial development in our State's waters. Only a few months ago, the island community learned that this plan included locating large scale energy development off Aquinnah shores - 166 turbines (visible day and night for 30 miles), 450 feet high (fifty story building) powering 200,000 homes on the mainland (a city just slightly smaller than Boston). This would be the largest off shore wind farm in the country.
Let Vineyarders Decide (LVD) is a grassroots organization of 500+ Vineyarders and growing, formed to assure that the Martha's Vineyard Commission and the island community as a whole continue to be empowered to make final decisions regarding scale, siting, and development of projects that have the potential to greatly impact the Vineyard and all of us who live, work, and visit here.
LVD is a proponent of wind power with a desire to support a State plan promoting it. However, we are galvanized into opposition to the State's Draft Plan because:
The All-island Selectmen have been unanimous in their desire to maintain the Martha's Vineyard Commission as the final reviewer of development affecting the Vineyard and to amend the Draft Oceans Plan. The Selectmen have determined to visit the Governor to make their views known. Until recently the State has been giving the island a cold shoulder on this issue, but because the Vineyard is speaking out, we are starting to be heard.
Time is of the essence!
Unless the State postpones or disregards the deadline, its flawed draft Oceans Plan will become final on December 31, 2009.
To prevent that from happening, and to give islanders more of a voice in this matter, LVD has taken immediate action. LVD is engaging in a major grassroots organizing and outreach effort to raise awareness in a short period of time about this issue and inform citizens of new developments with this plan, and let people know of opportunities to voice their opinions to the state. LVD has also engaged the services of advisers, lobbyists, a publicist and attorneys and has retained a webmaster to maximize the potential of the internet to raise awareness and solicit support for this cause.
LVD needs your financial support now so that the Vineyard may itself determine how to grow and adapt to the future and not have that future determined by a flawed, hastily conceived State plan. Your contributions will allow LVD to continue to be a resource to all on the Vineyard.
So far 12 families have contributed $43,550.
Please send your check made payable to "Let Vineyarders Decide" to Andy Goldman, Director of LVD at PO Box 557, Chilmark, MA 02535.
PLEASE SUPPORT LVD! We need your help!
Please also show your support by signing the petition at http://letvineyardersdecide.org , joining us on facebook, and sending this to your mailing list. There is strength in numbers!
By now you've most likely heard about the DRAFT Massachusetts Ocean Management Plan which outlines a plan to give the State unprecedented power to manage commercial and industrial development in our State's waters. Only a few months ago, the island community learned that this plan included locating large scale energy development off Aquinnah shores - 166 turbines (visible day and night for 30 miles), 450 feet high (fifty story building) powering 200,000 homes on the mainland (a city just slightly smaller than Boston). This would be the largest off shore wind farm in the country.
Let Vineyarders Decide (LVD) is a grassroots organization of 500+ Vineyarders and growing, formed to assure that the Martha's Vineyard Commission and the island community as a whole continue to be empowered to make final decisions regarding scale, siting, and development of projects that have the potential to greatly impact the Vineyard and all of us who live, work, and visit here.
LVD is a proponent of wind power with a desire to support a State plan promoting it. However, we are galvanized into opposition to the State's Draft Plan because:
- The current version of the plan removes authority of the Martha's Vineyard Commission by directing appeals from the Commission to a politically-appointed state siting board rather than to a court. While Secretary Ian Bowles indicated recently in a meeting with Vineyard selectmen that he might bend on this issue, it is up to us to keep the pressure on and hold him to his word. And while the Martha's Vineyard Commission might retain jurisdiction over the development proposed off the shores of Nomans, it does not have the same jurisdiction over the other proposed location off Cuttyhunk, which Bowles has not taken off the table as a site for this development.
- The State has failed to consult with the Wampanoag tribe of Gay Head/Aquinnah, and has failed to adequately reach out to educate, inform, and involve the island's population as a whole in the creation of the current draft of the plan.
- The State has set an unrealistic and unnecessarily rushed timetable for a project of this scope and scale
- The State has failed to consider the impact on nationally recognized vistas and economic loss, failed to collect and evaluate information pertaining to the ecology of the Vineyard and its waters, assess the impact on birds, fish and fisheries, and failed to consider the negative impact on navigation.
- State planners have told us that the long-term future of wind power is further offshore in Federal waters, not in State waters. The commercial wind farm planned for by the Draft State Oceans Plan is a short term expediency in which only the Vineyard loses with no concomitant gain.
The All-island Selectmen have been unanimous in their desire to maintain the Martha's Vineyard Commission as the final reviewer of development affecting the Vineyard and to amend the Draft Oceans Plan. The Selectmen have determined to visit the Governor to make their views known. Until recently the State has been giving the island a cold shoulder on this issue, but because the Vineyard is speaking out, we are starting to be heard.
Time is of the essence!
Unless the State postpones or disregards the deadline, its flawed draft Oceans Plan will become final on December 31, 2009.
To prevent that from happening, and to give islanders more of a voice in this matter, LVD has taken immediate action. LVD is engaging in a major grassroots organizing and outreach effort to raise awareness in a short period of time about this issue and inform citizens of new developments with this plan, and let people know of opportunities to voice their opinions to the state. LVD has also engaged the services of advisers, lobbyists, a publicist and attorneys and has retained a webmaster to maximize the potential of the internet to raise awareness and solicit support for this cause.
LVD needs your financial support now so that the Vineyard may itself determine how to grow and adapt to the future and not have that future determined by a flawed, hastily conceived State plan. Your contributions will allow LVD to continue to be a resource to all on the Vineyard.
So far 12 families have contributed $43,550.
Please send your check made payable to "Let Vineyarders Decide" to Andy Goldman, Director of LVD at PO Box 557, Chilmark, MA 02535.
PLEASE SUPPORT LVD! We need your help!
Please also show your support by signing the petition at http://letvineyardersdecide.org , joining us on facebook, and sending this to your mailing list. There is strength in numbers!
Monday, November 9, 2009
Which Way Will Wind Power Blow? - Letters to the Editor of NY Times, Nov 9, 2009
Which Way Will Wind Power Blow?
Mark Todd
To the Editor:
Re “Cape Wind” (editorial, Nov. 2):
As a lifelong resident of Falmouth on Cape Cod, I fully support the Wampanoag Indians’ effort to block a wind power project and preserve an uncluttered view of the rising sun on Nantucket Sound. They are the people of the rising sun; it is their tribal identity.
Cape Cod is embracing ground-based wind technology wholeheartedly. There are wind turbines going up in Falmouth and elsewhere. Longtime Cape residents remember a large failed wind farm in Nantucket. The answer is always the same: wind turbines are not economically feasible for very long in a marine environment. Ask anyone in the Navy about maintaining equipment on ships.
Our poor Coast Guard men and women will spend the next 100 years putting warning buoys around a failed Cape Wind project if it goes forward, and the Wampanoags and everyone who loves Cape Cod will be confronted with a derelict eyesore.
Kristen HeislerWest Falmouth, Mass., Nov. 3, 2009
•
To the Editor:
Your editorial urges America to “do its part to address climate change,” as if more towers were the only choice. If everyone on the Cape replaced incandescent bulbs with fluorescents and if federal stimulus included solar-energy incentives, there would be no need to devastate a pristine setting with the structural trappings of the planet’s most destructive species.
If you’re going to urge construction in other people’s front yards, you might first consider replacing Lady Liberty’s torch with a turbine.
Mike Garvan Brewster, Mass., Nov. 2, 2009
•
To the Editor:
I disagree with your statement that the Wampanoag tribes’ “claim” about the cultural significance of Nantucket Sound “seems unsupportable.” As a co-author of the federal guidelines about what constitutes a “traditional cultural property” eligible for the National Register of Historic Places, I think the tribes’ argument would be easily supportable. The significance of a traditional cultural property exists in the minds of those who value it.
Besides, recognizing Nantucket Sound as eligible for the national register would not necessarily block Cape Wind. There is nothing in the National Historic Preservation Act that prohibits an agency from deciding that the public interest demands that a historic place, or someone’s view of a historic place, be sacrificed in the public interest.
The tribes probably have a stronger case under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which prohibits federal agencies from substantially burdening a person’s practice of religion unless they find a compelling government interest.
The preservation act’s review process does provide a means of resolving disputes without going to court. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar should use this process creatively to resolve the Cape Wind controversy.
Thomas F. King Silver Spring, Md., Nov. 2, 2009
The writer is a consultant on historic preservation issues.
•
To the Editor:
The only thing that should remain anchored in Nantucket Sound — as in Yellowstone National Park, the Grand Canyon or any other treasured stretch of land or ocean on this planet — is humanity’s precious spirituality, which is among our greatest gifts from the gods.
May we be visionary enough to site our imposing mechanical towers where they would cause far less spiritual demolition.
Tony BalisTisbury, Mass., Nov. 2, 2009
The writer is president of the Humanity Initiative.
•
To the Editor:
You are right. We should greatly increase our use of wind power. But the Cape Wind proposal is the wrong scheme in the wrong place.
Having 130 440-foot-high towers would be grotesquely out of scale for the site. The project would only increase opposition to wind power nationwide.
Instead, let’s build many smaller, more sensitively designed wind projects in less scenic locations.
Mac GordonLakeville, Conn., Nov. 3, 2009
Mark Todd
To the Editor:
Re “Cape Wind” (editorial, Nov. 2):
As a lifelong resident of Falmouth on Cape Cod, I fully support the Wampanoag Indians’ effort to block a wind power project and preserve an uncluttered view of the rising sun on Nantucket Sound. They are the people of the rising sun; it is their tribal identity.
Cape Cod is embracing ground-based wind technology wholeheartedly. There are wind turbines going up in Falmouth and elsewhere. Longtime Cape residents remember a large failed wind farm in Nantucket. The answer is always the same: wind turbines are not economically feasible for very long in a marine environment. Ask anyone in the Navy about maintaining equipment on ships.
Our poor Coast Guard men and women will spend the next 100 years putting warning buoys around a failed Cape Wind project if it goes forward, and the Wampanoags and everyone who loves Cape Cod will be confronted with a derelict eyesore.
Kristen HeislerWest Falmouth, Mass., Nov. 3, 2009
•
To the Editor:
Your editorial urges America to “do its part to address climate change,” as if more towers were the only choice. If everyone on the Cape replaced incandescent bulbs with fluorescents and if federal stimulus included solar-energy incentives, there would be no need to devastate a pristine setting with the structural trappings of the planet’s most destructive species.
If you’re going to urge construction in other people’s front yards, you might first consider replacing Lady Liberty’s torch with a turbine.
Mike Garvan Brewster, Mass., Nov. 2, 2009
•
To the Editor:
I disagree with your statement that the Wampanoag tribes’ “claim” about the cultural significance of Nantucket Sound “seems unsupportable.” As a co-author of the federal guidelines about what constitutes a “traditional cultural property” eligible for the National Register of Historic Places, I think the tribes’ argument would be easily supportable. The significance of a traditional cultural property exists in the minds of those who value it.
Besides, recognizing Nantucket Sound as eligible for the national register would not necessarily block Cape Wind. There is nothing in the National Historic Preservation Act that prohibits an agency from deciding that the public interest demands that a historic place, or someone’s view of a historic place, be sacrificed in the public interest.
The tribes probably have a stronger case under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which prohibits federal agencies from substantially burdening a person’s practice of religion unless they find a compelling government interest.
The preservation act’s review process does provide a means of resolving disputes without going to court. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar should use this process creatively to resolve the Cape Wind controversy.
Thomas F. King Silver Spring, Md., Nov. 2, 2009
The writer is a consultant on historic preservation issues.
•
To the Editor:
The only thing that should remain anchored in Nantucket Sound — as in Yellowstone National Park, the Grand Canyon or any other treasured stretch of land or ocean on this planet — is humanity’s precious spirituality, which is among our greatest gifts from the gods.
May we be visionary enough to site our imposing mechanical towers where they would cause far less spiritual demolition.
Tony BalisTisbury, Mass., Nov. 2, 2009
The writer is president of the Humanity Initiative.
•
To the Editor:
You are right. We should greatly increase our use of wind power. But the Cape Wind proposal is the wrong scheme in the wrong place.
Having 130 440-foot-high towers would be grotesquely out of scale for the site. The project would only increase opposition to wind power nationwide.
Instead, let’s build many smaller, more sensitively designed wind projects in less scenic locations.
Mac GordonLakeville, Conn., Nov. 3, 2009
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