I attended the meeting at Farnell Village Hall (Review, April 19) to hear about wind farm applications at Montreathmont and Rossie Moor.
I am dismayed by the experience of Jane Davies who spoke to the meeting of noise being recorded at 66 decibels on occasion outside her back door at her property near a Lincolnshire wind farm.
Some 10 to 15 decibels can be deducted to get the equivalent level inside a building, thus the inside noise level would be 51 – 56 decibels.
New noise regulations mean that if you live in Edinburgh and your neighbour makes more than 37 decibels inside your home between 11pm and 7 am you can call out the noise abatement officers.
Each 10db(A) is a doubling in loudness and is described by a US Government site as that which “would certainly cause an adverse community response”.
Does Jane’s experience tally with the European law which says you have the right to the peaceful enjoyment of your property? Why should the urban population be protected and not the rural?
Jane Davies explained that the industry admits there are noise problems in 5% of wind farms. I do not understand how the developer could guarantee there would be no noise at neighbouring properties at Rossie Moor when the industry admits it cannot predict where the problems will be.
There is a catch 22 situation, since if people complain about wind farm
noise their house might then be unsellable – the real problem figure could be in excess of 5%.
Until the research is done and noise regulations from 1997 ( when the
turbines were much smaller) are amended, there should be a halt to this
destructive dash for wind.
It is driven by greed and a political desire to look green whilst doing the exact reverse: destroying our landscapes, peat bogs, forests and tourist industry for an intermittent source of supply.
Yours etc
Celia Hobbs
Penicuik
Midlothian
25 April 2007
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2007/05/18/turbines-driven-by-greed/