Couple issues wind warning at the mall; Display informs public about family’s experience living next to turbines
A Yarmouth County couple who claim they were driven from their home by one of their neighbours — in this case a giant electricity-generating wind turbine — are now out shopping for support.
Daniel d’Entremont and his wife Carolyn spent about nine hours behind an information table they set up in the Yarmouth Mall one day last week in an effort to publicize their plight.
“I think it was a success,” Mr. d’Entremont said. “I think it opened the eyes of a lot of people.”
The family asserts that health risks have forced them to move from their Lower West Pubnico home, where the closest of 17 wind turbines spins just 350 metres from their back porch.
The family decided to move last year with their six children back to the home of Carolyn’s parents in Abrams River, about 35 kilometres from the wind farm at Pubnico Point that’s oper ated by Atlantic Wind Power Corp. Ltd. The constant swooshing sound from the turbines was making everyone in the home sick, Mr. d’Entremont said.
The couple distributed literature to passing shoppers during their full day and evening in the Yarmouth Mall.
“What really struck me was the amount of people who didn’t realize there was a problem,” he said. “A lot of people just didn’t know.
“We want (more) public awareness of the dangers and we’re hoping the company will step up and correct the prob lem they’ve created here.”
Members of the d’Entremont family have been interviewed by American pediatrician Dr. Nina Pierpont as part of an ongoing research project.
The d’Entremonts handed out copies of some of her study findings to shop pers who wanted to learn more.
Wind turbines produce a thumping, pulsating kind of noise that is more audible at night, Dr. Pierpont said in a study dated March 2, 2006.
“The noise is louder at night because of the contrast between the still, cool air at ground level and the steady stream of wind at the level of the turbine hubs,” she wrote.
Nighttime noise does travel a considerable distance and higher noise levels at night disrupt sleep and result in oth er health problems, she said in her paper.
The d’Entremonts also handed out more than one hundred stickers with warnings about windmills that are erected too close to communities.
Mr. d’Entremont is working on a new website, www.dangerwind.org.It’s not up and running yet but is coming soon, he said. It will include information from around the world on wind turbine placements.
Mr. d’Entremont maintains that the wind farm company should buy their home, which he says is now a white elephant.
“We don’t think anybody is willing to buy the house. We think the wind company has made it impossible for the house to be sold at fair market value.”
The company has refused to talk about the situation publicly. And they won’t discuss the issue with the d’Entremonts, he said.
By Brian Medel
Yarmouth Bureau
12 November 2007
Tags: Wind power, Wind energy
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