Be Concerned About Health Effects from Wind Turbine Effects 

I live in the Forward wind farm erected by the Invenergy Company of Chicago, IL. I understand you may have wind turbines coming to a farm near you.

I have been a rural mail carrier in this area for 30 years, therefore I know on a personal level most of the residents in this wind farm which is located near Brownsville, Wisconsin.

There are 86 industrial wind turbines here and I delivered mail where 64 of them are located. I, like most members of our community didn’t pay much attention to the news that the turbines were coming in because we trusted our local town government and the state government to site them responsibly and safely. We were very naïve.

The turbines are forty stories tall and the set backs are 1,000 feet from a residence, 440 feet from the property line of a non hosting neighbor and roads with a 50 decibel sound limit. These set backs were pretty much written by the energy company, who led us to believe that these set backs were safe.

We were told the turbines make about as much noise as your refrigerator or sound like the trees blowing in the wind. On March 3rd of this year I walked out of the house and heard a jet flying over. I looked in the sky for that jet. There was no jet flying over. It was the first day of operation of the industrial wind turbine 1560’ behind my home.

That day I decided it would be a good idea to begin keeping a noise diary. You can read it at betterplan.squarespace.com. You can also read there many health concerns and how many Wisconsin towns and counties are now enacting ordinances to protect the health and safety of their residents.

We did not know the loss of sleep, headaches, our son telling us “My head feels like it is spinning 100 miles and hour”, ringing and buzzing in the ears, nausea, stress, tenseness and lack of concentration which have affected us since the turbines went on line were caused by the wind turbines until a friend told us about Nina Pierpont’s study of wind turbine victims at www.windturbinesyndrome.com.

These symptoms are also experienced by people around the world that live near industrial wind turbines. yet the energy company will tell you that they have no complaints of health issues.

At our house we can hear 5 turbines on a regular basis. They range in distance from 1,560′ to 3/4 of a mile. At times we hear all five of them inside our well constructed and insulated home. When we go to our “cabin in the woods” not only is it peaceful there, but some of our symptoms go away or improve depending on how long we are away. We sleep all night there without interruption. The first time we went to our cabin after the turbines were up my wife told me, “Last night was the first night in weeks that I slept all night”.

Our neighbors and friends in the wind farm tell us of similar effects and farmers have told me of their regrets agreeing to host these large wind turbines. Recently an emergency medical helicopter company, The Flight For Life, moved to our area. They wrote a letter saying that they will not land in the wind farm to an accident scene or emergency situation because not all towers are lit at night and the turbulence around the turbines is like that of a Boeing 747.

Do you know that the wind turbines are designed to be from 27-30 efficient? Keep that in mind when you read that these turbines will power × number of homes when they are erected. You could divide that number by 4 to get a more accurate number. In the third quarter of this year the turbines in this wind farm produced electricity at 17.5% of capacity.

I have lots of trees around my property to help suppress the sound and still have loud sounds on a constant basis. I have friends that have very serious issues with shadow flicker that fills their home with flickering shadows or the red blinking lights at night flashing in to their homes. We have a beautiful landscape. Now it is polluted by these large industrial wind turbines.

In summary do not believe what the energy companies tell you until you research it for yourself. Read every word of the lease agreement or do it with and experienced attorney because you are leasing your property to the energy company to do with as they wish.

As a farmer do you want to affect your health as well as the health effects of your neighbors? Get concerned citizens organized immediately to adopt an ordinance that gives you a one mile setback from homes, safe set backs from non-hosting neighbors and a safe sound level. The low frequency sound emitted from an industrial wind turbine is much different than that of living near a road, train tracks or the flight path to an airport. I have written this letter so that hopefully you do not have to go through what we are experiencing in our area. If you do not have safe set backs you will regret it.

If you have questions or concerns you can contact me at nowindforme@fastbytes.com

Gerry Meyer
W6249 County Road Y
Brownsville WI 53006-1103
Cell 920 948 7469

(editorial for Custer County, NE, Chief)