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Mount Fyans Wind Energy Facility Planning Panel Report
Planning Panels Victoria
7 April 2024
Australia, Wildlife, Wind power, Wind energy

The Mount Fyans Wind Energy Facility (the Project) involves the construction and operation of a 400-megawatt, 81 turbine wind energy facility with associated infrastructure. The Project extends over 10,686 hectares on land used predominantly for grazing and cropping. The Project is located approximately 5 kilometres north of Mortlake within the Moyne Shire in south- west Victoria. The Applicant for the Project is Mount Fyans Wind Farm Pty Ltd which operates three wind energy facilities in Tasmania.

Planning permit application PA1800406, made under the Moyne Planning Scheme, proposes that each wind turbine would be a maximum of 200 metres above ground level (to blade tip). The Project includes 19 kilometres of overhead electrical transmission line, an on-site substation and grid connection substation connecting the wind energy facility to the National Electricity Market at the Mortlake Terminal Station. Two wind monitoring masts, cabling, road works including access and the associated removal of native vegetation are also proposed.

The Project is located in an area that features a number of other wind energy facilities within 20 kilometres of Mortlake at Mortlake South (35 turbines), Salt Creek (15 turbines) and Dundonnell (80 turbines), with a number of other wind energy facilities approved or proposed.

Under Clause 72.01-1 of the Victoria Planning Provisions, the Minister for Planning is the Responsible Authority for the Project. The Minister called in the application on 2 June 2019. Objections and submissions were referred to the Panel on 9 February 2023.

As a result of public exhibition in early 2023, 91 objections (including a late submission), 13 supporting submissions and 8 submissions from referral authorities or other agencies were received.

The key issues for submissions opposed to the permit application related to:

• landscape and visual impacts
• environmental impacts including on birds and bats, in particular Brolga and the Southern Bent-wing bat (SBWB)
• amenity and health impacts from turbine noise and blade flicker
• bushfire
• impacts on agriculture
• community and social impacts
• cumulative impact
• a range of other issues.

Supporting submissions identified a range of project benefits including:

• supporting sustainable energy production
• employment and economic benefits.

The Panel conducted an in-person hybrid hearing based in Warrnambool over several weeks, which allowed for party participation and observation through videoconferencing. The Panel received extensive submissions from the Applicant, the Moyne Shire Council and community- based submitters and evidence on traffic, bushfire, native vegetation, flora and fauna and noise.

The impact on Brolga and SBWB, landscape impact and noise including their cumulative impacts are the most determinative aspects of the permit application. They were also the issues most focused on through Hearing submissions and cross-examination. The key question for the Panel is whether these impacts, some of which are unavoidable, are acceptable in the context of the Planning and Environment Act 1987 (PE Act), planning policy and other guidance documents. …

Southern Bent-wing Bat

Insufficient application information was supplied concerning potential impacts on the SBWB and mitigation measures to provide the necessary level of confidence that significant impacts will not occur. This includes the cumulative impacts of the Project and other existing wind energy facilities. …

Brolga

The Panel was not persuaded through evidence and submission that the methodology applied in the Brolga Report was sufficiently robust across all three required levels of assessment in the Brolga Guidelines to provide an appropriate level of confidence that:

• all existing and potential flocking and breeding areas have been properly identified and buffered
• breeding buffers substantially less than the default 3.5 kilometre buffers (including disturbance buffer) in the Brolga Guidelines can be supported
• the proposed mitigation measures will be effective in mitigating impacts
• habitat and movement corridors have been adequately considered as required at Clause 52.32-4
• the Project will achieve a net zero impact and avoid cumulative impacts on the Victorian Brolga or that the potential impacts are acceptable.

Other fauna species

Based on the information provided, the Panel does not have sufficient confidence that potential impacts on listed bird and bat species, including habitat and movement corridors, are able to be acceptably managed. …

Landscape impacts

The Project will be a visually dominant element within a generally flat landscape and for some land owners the impacts will be significant. …

Noise

[F]rom a broader amenity perspective the addition of 81 turbines across an expansive site will result in some residents being exposed to noise from multiple wind farms on a more regular basis depending on wind conditions. …

Integrated assessment

[T]he Project has the potential to have material impacts on the environment, particularly on Brolga and Southern Bent-wing Bat. In the Panel’s view there is too much uncertainty about these impacts based on the level of information provided for it to have an appropriate level of confidence that these impacts are acceptable. These issues cannot be satisfactorily mitigated through permit conditions at this stage.

The Panel considers this level of uncertainty outweighs the positive outcomes of the Project, and tips the balance of the Project to one that will not have a net community benefit or achieve a sustainable development outcome.

8 August 2023

Download original document: “Mount Fyans Wind Energy Facility Planning Panel Report”

Threat of mining to African great apes
Arandjelovic, Mimi; Barrie, Abdulai; Campbell, Geneviève; et al.
4 April 2024
Africa, Technology, Wildlife, Wind power, Wind energy

Abstract: The rapid growth of clean energy technologies is driving a rising demand for critical minerals. In 2022 at the 15th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP15), seven major economies formed an alliance to enhance the sustainability of mining these essential decarbonization minerals. However, there is a scarcity of studies assessing the threat of mining to global biodiversity. By integrating a global mining dataset with great ape density distribution, we estimated the number of African great apes that spatially coincided with industrial mining projects. We show that up to one-third of Africa’s great ape population faces mining-related risks. In West Africa in particular, numerous mining areas overlap with fragmented ape habitats, often in high-density ape regions. For 97% of mining areas, no ape survey data are available, underscoring the importance of increased accessibility to environmental data within the mining sector to facilitate research into the complex interactions between mining, climate, biodiversity, and sustainability.

Mimi Arandjelovic, Abdulai Barrie, Geneviève Campbell, Stefanie Heinicke, Tatyana Humle, Célestin Y. Kouakou, Hjalmar S. Kühl, Isabel Ordaz-Németh, Henrique M. Pereira, Helga Rainer, Johannes Refisch, Laura Sonter, Tenekwetche Sop
German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig, Puschstrasse 4, 04103 Leipzig, Germany.
Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Department of Primate Behavior and Evolution, Germany.
Ministry of Environment and Climate Change, Freetown, Sierra Leone.
Re:wild, Austin, Texas, USA.
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Member of the Leibniz Association, Potsdam, Germany.
Durrell of Institute of Conservation and Ecology, School of Anthropology and Conservation, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK.
Université Jean Lorougnon Guédé, Daloa, Côte d’Ivoire.
Centre Suisse de Recherches Scientifiques (CSRS), Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire.
German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany.
Senckenberg Museum for Natural History Görlitz, Görlitz, Germany.
International Institute Zittau, Technische Universität Dresden, Zittau, Germany.
Institute of Biology, Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Halle, Germany.
Centro de Investigação em Biodiversidade e Recursos Genéticos, InBIO Laboratório Associado, Campus de Vairão, Universidade do Porto, Vairão, Portugal.
Independent consultant, Kampala, Uganda.
Great Apes Survival Partnership, United Nations Environment Programme, Nairobi, Kenya.
School of the Environment, Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science, and Sustainable Minerals Institute, University of Queensland, St Lucia, Australia.

Science Advances, 3 Apr 2024, Vol 10, Issue 14. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adl0335

Download original document: “Threat of mining to African great apes”

Impairment of the Endothelium and Disorder of Microcirculation in Humans and Animals Exposed to Infrasound Due to Irregular Mechano-Transduction
Bellut-Staeck, Ursula Maria
3 April 2024
Health, Noise, Wind power, Wind energy

Abstract: The microcirculation of mammals is an autoregulated and complex synchronised system according to the current demand for nutrients and oxygen. The undisturbed course of vital functions such as of growth, blood pressure regulation, inflammatory sequence and embryogenesis is bound to endothelial integrity. The sensible vasomotion is particularly dependent on it. Mechano-transduction signalling networks play a critical role in vital cellular processes and are the decisive physiological mechanism for an adequate nitric oxide release, the main pathway responsible for the autoregulation of vessels. Disturbed endothelial integrity, originating, e.g., from chronic oxidative stress and/or mechanic (oscillatory) stress, leads to disturbance of vasomotion as well as a disequilibrium of redox systems, recognized as the main cause for the development of chronic inflammation diseases such as atherosclerosis and corresponding secondary illnesses, possibly cancer. The endothelial cytoskeleton, which corresponds to a viscoelastic “tensegrity model”, offers the possibility for mechano-transduction via its special construction. The rapidly growing knowledge about mechanical forces in cellular sensing and regulation of the last years (that culminated in the Nobel Prize award for the decoding of pressure/vibration sensing ion channels), led us to the following hypothesis: The external stressor “Noise” produces under certain conditions an oscillatory stress field in the physiologically laminar flow bed of capillaries, which is able to lead to irregular mechano-transductions. Findings provide a strict dependence on frequency in mechano-transduction with determination of thresholds for a 1:1 transmission. The knowledge recently gained on endothelial mechano-transduction sheds a new light on the importance of low frequencies. This could indicate the long-sought pathophysiological way in which infrasound can exert a stressor effect at the cellular level. Noise-exposed citizens, who live near infrastructures such as a biogas installation, heat pumps, block-type thermal power stations and bigger industrial wind turbines, show worldwide mainly a symptomatology associated with microcirculatory disorder. Conceivable are also effects on insects or fishes, since the piezo-channels are recognised as conserved structures of all multicellular organism. An experimental design is proposed to demonstrate the direct pathological influence of infrasound of defined strength, frequency, effect/time profile and duration on the sensitive vasomotion.

Ursula Maria Bellut-Staeck, Berlin, Germany

Journal of Biosciences and Medicines, 11, 30-56 (2023). doi: 10.4236/jbm.2023.116003

Download original document: “Impairment of the Endothelium and Disorder of Microcirculation in Humans and Animals Exposed to Infrasound Due to Irregular Mechano-Transduction”

Pile Driving Noise Survey
Rand, Robert
30 March 2024
Massachusetts, Noise, Regulations, Wildlife, Wind power, Wind energy

Recent whale and dolphin fatalities on the Eastern seaboard, coupled with concerns about the acoustic impact of offshore wind farm construction, prompted an independent investigation to measure and assess underwater noise emissions from pile driving activities. Specifically, this assessment focused on the operations of the pile driving vessel Orion within the Vineyard Wind project area, with recordings taken in the waters southeast of Nantucket Island.

Key Findings:

• Pile driving noise, even with advanced noise-mitigation techniques, rivals the loudness and frequency range of seismic air gun arrays, with impulsive peak noise levels measured up to 180 dB over 1 kilometer away and RMS levels over 160 dB at over 3.3 kilometers.

• The standard 90-percent RMS metric utilized by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) underestimates the sound level experienced by cetaceans by as much as 6 dB, potentially cutting the protective distances in half and reducing marine mammal safeguarding zones by up to 75%.

• The continuous noise generated by vessel propulsion and dynamic positioning (DP) thrusters significantly surpassed the federal threshold for behavioral harassment, with noise levels exceeding 120 dB out to over 6 kilometers. Given federal agencies’ concerns over the compound effects of continuous and impulse noise, this frequently overlooked issue in regulatory assessments constitutes a definitive risk of behavioral harassment to marine mammals, underscoring the need to reevaluate current protective measures.

Conclusion:
This investigation discovered a substantial underestimation of both impulsive and continuous noise levels by current regulatory standards, suggesting that the actual exposure to harmful noise levels from pile driving for marine mammals like the critically endangered North Atlantic Right Whale is substantionally greater than NMFS acknowledges in its existing protective measures. This indicates an urgent need to review and possibly revise NMFS monitoring protocols and mitigation strategies for pile driving to ensure adequate protection for marine mammals against both impulse and continuous underwater noise pollution. The findings detailed in this report underscore the need for immediate action due to the substantial underestimations uncovered by this independent investigation.

Recommendations:

• Immediate reassessment of RMS computation methods to more accurately represent the potential risk of pile driving noise to marine mammal hearing.

• Inclusion of continuous noise assessment from vessel operations in regulatory reviews, with a focus on managing combined noise levels to remain below NMFS thresholds for behavioral harassment during impulsive activities such as pile driving.

• Enhancement of protective radii and mitigation distances to shield marine mammals from the risk of behavioral harassment and auditory injury.

Robert Rand, Rand Acoustics, Brunswick, Maine
September 22, 2023

Download original document: “Pile Driving Noise Survey”

Sonar Vessel Noise Survey
Rand, Robert
30 March 2024
New Jersey, Noise, Regulations, Wildlife, Wind power, Wind energy

Reports of recent whale and dolphin deaths on and near the New York and New Jersey shores, and public concerns of marine noise impacts from offshore wind development activities, prompted an investigation into the sonar noise levels produced by exploratory survey vessels working in ocean areas leased by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM). This technical report presents the methodology, analysis and results of a brief independent investigation of underwater noise levels from a sonar survey vessel, conducted offshore New Jersey on May 8, 2023. Underwater acoustic recordings were acquired between 8:09 and 9:40 am, approximately 43 nautical miles (NM) east of Barnegat Light, Long Beach Island, NJ, near a mobile geophysical survey vessel, the Miss Emma McCall (vessel). A “sparker” sub-bottom profiler (SBP) and several mid-frequency (MF) positioning system sonars (USBL) were measured including two impulsive, intermittent USBLs at 19.5 and 20 KHz, and two FM swept-sine USBLs at 21 to 32 KHz. An SBP listed for the vessel operating above 85 KHz was not measured as it was above instrumentation range. Transmission loss (TL) was larger at higher frequencies generally above 3000 Hz due to excess attenuation which is expected for the distances measured and shallow-water acoustic conditions.

Peak sound levels were controlled by the sparker and measured 151.6 dB,peak re 1uPA at 0.5 NM. The sparker source level (SL) was estimated at 224 dB,peak re 1uPa@1m, consistent with the sparker manufacturer’s published SL of 2 Bars/m (226 dB,peak re 1uPa). Using NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service (NOAA Fisheries or NMFS) 2020 guidelines based on Crocker and Fratantonio (2016), the sparker RMS level is estimated at 219 dB,rms re 1uPA@1m.

Vessel continuous noise included propulsion and dynamic positioning (DP) thruster noise emissions. Vessel noise was tonal, containing multiple cyclical/rotational tonal noise components from 9.5 Hz to several kilohertz, and was highly audible at 0.5, 1 and 2 NM. Vessel tonal noise was audible and measurable at 4 NM. Vessel continuous noise measured 126.5 dB,rms re 1uPA at 0.5 NM. Total vessel continuous noise with sparker was 128.5 dB,rms re 1uPA at 0.5 NM.

The vessel’s Incidental Harassment Application (IHA) was reviewed. The USBLs are impulsive yet were not listed or analyzed in the vessel IHA application. Vessel propulsion and DP thruster noise were also not listed or analyzed in the IHA application. The sparker proxy SL,rms used in the IHA application was cited as 16 dB quieter than expected based on manufacturer published levels harmonized with NMFS guidance for RMS noise levels. The IHA listed a 160 dB,rms Level B Behavioral Harassment threshold of 141 meters for the sparker impulsive noise, whereas the threshold using the NMFS Level B spreadsheet tool for calculating the distance to the Level B threshold with manufacturer data returned a distance of 890 meters.

To meet the NMFS 120 dB,rms behavioral harassment limit for continuous noise, the distance required is approximately 1 nautical mile (1852 meters). However, the vessel was operating with a vessel separation distance of 500 meters for the North American right whale (NARW) and other ESA-listed mammals and 50 or 100 meters for all other marine mammals. The IHA is silent regarding the 120 dB,rms Level B behavioral harassment threshold.

The data acquired during the survey and subsequent review of the IHA application raise concerns of sufficient NOAA review and mitigation distances to protect the critically endangered NARW and other marine species from behavioral harassment and temporary threshold shift (TTS) impacts.

Robert Rand, Rand Acoustics, Brunswick, Maine
September 22, 2023

Download original document: “Sonar Vessel Noise Survey”