wind turbine noise

OCOTILLO RESIDENTS SAY WIND TURBINE NOISE CREATES “LIVING HELL”

 

“It's a horror beyond words; something you have to live to understand. Something must be done to stop the noise.” – Ocotillo resident Parke Ewing

November 14, 2014 (Ocotillo) – Residents in Ocotillo say that during windy conditions in early November, noise from wind turbines is making their lives unbearable.   

Jim Pelley captured the loud noise on videotape, juxtaposed with footage of Pattern Energy’s Glenn Hodges selling the project to supervisors in Imperial Valley by claiming that noise would not be an issue due to setbacks.  “The project was sold on the understanding to be five miles from the community of Ocotillo,” Pelley wrote on a Youtube post. “We have turbines as close as 1/2 mile, we are now forced to live with the horrible noise of 112 turbines when the wind blows.”

His neighbor, Parke Ewing, says his complaints to Imperial County and Bureau of Land Management officials, as well as Pattern Energy, have fallen on deaf ears, with no meaningful responses.


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OCOTILLO RESIDENTS COMPLAIN OF TURBINE NOISE SIMILAR TO “JET ENGINES”

By Miriam Raftery

August 12, 2013 (Ocotillo) – When Pattern Energy presented its proposed Ocotillo Express Wind Facility project to Imperial County Supervisors, the company promised that massive industrial wind turbines would be no louder than a refrigerator or a library.   But now residents are complaining that noise levels are far louder—and they’ve provided a video to bolster their claim.

The problems foreshadow issues that East County residents could soon face when similar gargantuan wind turbines slated to be built in East County are completed -- turbines 500 feet tall with blade spans the size of football fields--far larger than any located in our region thus far.

On August 7, with many turbines still off-line due to safety issues after a blade fell off,  ECM photojournalist and Ocotillo resident Jim Pelley took the following video to show the high noise levels to which area residents were being subjected:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VF8eMvb4570&feature=youtu.be  Since then, the problem had gotten even worse, residents say, with more turbines now back online.


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SERIES ON WIND TURBINE NOISE AND INFRASOUND ISSUES PUBLISHED BY INTERNATIONAL GROUP SHOW PROBLEMS 25 MILES FROM WINDFARMS

By Miriam Raftery

November 22, 2012 (San Diego’s East County) – European Platform Against Windfarms (EPAW) has published the first two in a three-part series on infrasound and low frequency noise problems reportedly caused by windfarms.


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IBERDROLA’S ANSWER TO WIND TURBINE NOISE? GIVE RESIDENTS NOISE GENERATING MACHINES

By Miriam Raftery

July 20, 2012 (San Diego’s East County) – Iberdrola Renewables wants to build an industrial wind turbine facility on 15,000 acres in East County’s McCain Valley. 

What happens if neighbors complain of noise?

In Fairfield, New York, weary residents asked town officials to measure noise levels at Iberdrola’s Hardscrabble wind facility. The results found levels above the legal limit of 50 decibels. But instead of reducing the noise, Iberdrola gave noise generating machines to residents in hopes of drowning out the whooshing and whirling turbine sounds. Note: The machine is set at the lowest setting in this audio link.


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SURVEY FINDS HIGH RATE OF WIND TURBINE SYNDROME FROM NEWER TURBINE MODELS

 By Miriam Raftery

March 10, 2012 (San Diego’s East County) – With two new wind farms proposed for our region and another already in operation, evaluating potential health impacts is important. 
 
A survey was conducted on wind farm noise as part of a Master’s dissertation by Zhenhua Wang, a graduate student in Geography, Environment and Population at the University of Adelaide, Australia. The results show that 70% of respondents living up to 5 kilometers away report being negatively affected by wind turbine noise, with more than 50% of them "very or moderately negatively affected". This is considerably higher than what was found in previous studies conducted in Europe. 

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