Beware the Green Communities Act
Your editorial commending the Green Communities Act and urging towns to get on board mistakenly assumes that the state siting standard for wind turbines constitutes responsible development. In fact, the state setback and noise standards governing wind turbines are among the least protective in the world, and any Cape community using them as guidance is likely to experience problems with noise and shadow flicker similar to what some residents are now suffering in Newburyport, site of the state’s most recently installed commercial scale turbine.
Act provisions requiring towns to pre-permit projects by agreeing to as-of-right siting would unwisely limit local input into zoning decisions impacting targeted neighborhoods. Rather than labeling informed citizens NIMBY, The Cape Codder should examine the substance of citizens’ concerns. Remember what happened in Eastham. As town officials aggressively promoted a poorly sited four-turbine project, it was left to citizens to correctly predict that a noise study would show the project to be fatally flawed by exceeding state noise standards.
James Liedell (Letters, April 10) should qualify his support for wind turbines as conducive to personal health. A growing body of scientific and medical evidence details the negative health effects afflicting many individuals living near to commercial scale turbines. Maine’s chief medical officer recently observed that “research showed that if you live really close and have high exposure to noise, to either high or low frequency, you will have high annoyance issues and lack of sleeping because of that.” The moral imperative to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy does not justify impairing the health of individuals by siting turbines too close to homes.
Why has the state ignored the scientifically based best practices of other countries with greater experience in wind energy in favor of inadequate standards based on input from unscrupulous wind developers?
Andrew Wells
Eastham
Editor’s note: The county’s plan to regionalize the Green Communities Act would require each participating town to introduce a bylaw for as-of-right siting. Bylaws typically require town meeting approval or regulatory board approval, following a public hearing.
The Cape Codder
17 April 2009
Tags: Wind power, Wind energy
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