WIND SITING GUIDELINES MASSACHUSETTS

  NEW SITING GUIDELINES FOR WIND TURBINES MASSACHUSETTS  

The Massachusetts Clean Energy Center prior to 2013 sited (placed) commercial wind turbines Ad Hoc.The Mass CEC since June of 2013 now looks at 2000 feet as a distance to consider from commercial wind turbines.  

The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection is finding commercial wind turbine above 1.5 megawatts near residential homes out of the state noise guidelines.  

Noise is a public health concern that falls within the scope of Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection Air Pollution Control Regulations, 310 CMR 7.00). The turbines exceed state regulatory noise levels.  

Since 2010 the communities of Falmouth, Fairhaven, Kingston, Scituate and eighteen other communities have filed oral and written complaints over noise and shadow flicker.  

In 2005 the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative now the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center produced a fatal flaw study for wind turbines in Mattapoisett. The study made reference to two distinct types of sound. The first being the state regulatory noise levels and the second was human annoyance. The reference was dropped in all future wind studies after the failure to site wind turbines in Mattapoisett.  

In  October of 1987 at the  Windpower ’87 Conference & Exposition in San Francisco.  A paper was read by a physicist named N.D. Kelley from the Solar Energy Research Institute in Golden, Colorado.  A research project funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Contract No. DE-AC02-83CH10093. The research was done on human annoyance by wind turbines. The annoyance today is being called infra-sound.  

Both state and federal government officials have been aware of the two distinct types of noise since 1987.  

Massachusetts officials continue to ignore the issue of human annoyance in order to reach a renewable energy goal of 2000 megawatts of renewable energy by the year 2020. Aka Obfuscation.  

Massachusetts has created a second class group of citizen being made sick by the turbines and having their residential property rights taken with NO compensation.  

There has to be a proposal to site commercial wind turbines responsibly.

Massachusetts needs to step up to the plate and set new standards as wind turbines are getting larger and larger.  

Here is a proposal :   For each one half megawatt of wind turbine power there sound be 1000 feet of setback from a residential home.  

The measurement would be from the end of the wind turbine blade tip at its closest position to the closest residential home.  

A 1.5 megawatt wind turbine would have a setback of 3000 feet from a residential home.

A 2.0 megawatt wind turbine would have a setback of 4000 feet from a residential home.  

There are currently plans to install 2.0 megawatt turbines on the South Shore.

The wind industry has a history of bigger is better.

It's time to take the residential home owners into consideration.