Scaled-back wind farm fails to win over critics

“We sincerely appreciate the removal,” said attorney Christopher Senie, who represents 29 residents whose homes are near the proposed turbines. “But the others are still very, very close to people who are sleeping at night.”

Senie and residents Jim Potter and Hendrik Luecke, representing Citizens for Responsible Wind Energy, suggested that the remaining turbines were still worrisome. “They obviously dominate the landscape,” Potter said during a showing of a 3-D simulation he created of the turbines.

Because the Cape Cod Commission’s regulations on shadow flicker, noise and health concerns were created after the New Generation Wind project was proposed, those issues will only be considered in an analysis of benefits versus detriments, not separately, regulatory officer Page Czepiga said.

During Thursday’s meeting, which was ongoing at the Times’ press deadline, residents, their legal representatives and several wind turbine experts discussed those benefits and detriments, agreeing that there was a mix of both but disagreeing at times as to which overshadowed the other.

“Of course they’re angry,” Glen Berkowitz of Boston-based Beaufort Windpower LLC said of Falmouth residents, who have reported ill effects from living near municipal turbines at that town’s wastewater treatment facility. But Berkowitz noted that a turbine in Hull, which is also near homes, has registered barely any complaints.