OPINION: Board of Health Hears Turbine Complaints Loud and Clear

After an emotional plea from an unstable neighbor who has resorted to sleeping in her car to escape the turbine noise in her home and a tirade by a former candidate for Falmouth selectman, the Falmouth Board of Health heard clearly and calmly from affected wind turbine neighbors at last night’s meeting. 

Board Chairwoman Gail Harkness, an epidemiologist herself, opened the subject of wind turbine health issues by reading a compiled list of health effects from testimony received at its . In order of most complaints to fewest: loss of sleep to contemplating and attempting suicide.

Harkness told about forty people at the meeting last night that it was compiling the large volume of testimony from its May 24 public hearing. It will be sending that testimony on to the Mass Department of Health, from which it seeks guidance on the health problems around two of the town’s industrial wind turbines and two private machines.

In light of unanswered requests by the Board to the State going back as far as March 2011, wind turbine neighbor Mark Cool wanted to know why the Board would expect an answer to this request. In response, Board member George Heufelder went into lengthy detail about how, as the questions to a bureaucrat become more specific, the likelihood of a response becomes better.  

Neighbors asked the Board whether it believes there is a serious health risk from the turbines. Board members responded by saying they have yet to read all the testimony.

If the Board does agree that there is a serious health risk, neighbors wanted them to know that it has the responsibility to prevent further harm.

Neighbors recognized that the Board of Health has the authority to shut the turbines down while the Department of Public Health’s medical authorities review the situation and provide the required guidance.

With the turbines off, affected neighbors told the Board that they will join the consensus building panel Falmouth selectmen have put together. Town Meeting voted in April both to turn the turbines off and carry on with that consensus process.

The Board heard numerous calls for turning off the turbines. Chairwoman Harkness told the disappointed crowd that the next step would be for the Board to meet and compile the testimony, hopefully within a week’s time. Another neighbor, Annie Cool, asked how long she would have to endure the health effects from the turbines before the State would make a determination.

"Is it weeks, months or years before we are to get relief? You [the Board members] can go home to a quiet house, we cannot."