July 6, 2011
England

Wind farm couple ‘drank to cope’

BBC News, www.bbc.co.uk 6 July 2011

A couple resorted to red wine and sleeping tablets to blot out the noise from a nearby wind farm, the High Court has heard.

Jane and Julian Davis later moved out of their Lincolnshire home because of the “pulsing beat” of the turbines.

Mrs Davis is seeking an injunction to halt the alleged nuisance, or up to £2.5m damages, in a landmark case on the law relating to wind farms.

The wind farm’s operators and the landowner deny the noise is invasive.

The couple moved out of their home at Grays Farm, Deeping St Nicholas, in 2007, after trying a variety of methods to stem the noise from the eight turbines, the court was told.

Mrs Davis told her QC Peter Harrison: “I think our first coping mechanism was probably red wine, and putting a fan on to try and blot out the noise and allow us to sleep.”

She added: “We had sleeping tablets but we were very reluctant to take these because they can lead to a long-standing problem. We tried.

“It is my normal practice to sleep with the window open – it doesn’t matter how cold it is.

“So we tried to sleep with the window shut, but that didn’t seem to make any difference. We could still feel and sometimes hear the pulsing beat through the windows.”

‘Unduly sensitive’

She and her husband said they sometimes resorted to friends’ sofas to avoid sleeping with the turbines in the background, but claimed it was an accumulation of sleep deprivation which eventually made them decide to move out of their home.

Mrs Davis, whose husband’s family has cultivated Grays Farm for more than 20 years, is suing local landowners RC Tinsley Ltd and Nicholas Watts – on whose land some of the turbines have been sited – as well as Fenland Windfarms Ltd and Fenland Green Power Cooperative Ltd, which own and operate the turbines.

Her husband is also a claimant in the landmark case.

All the defendants deny the turbines create any noise nuisance, suggesting that the couple have become “unduly sensitive” to the wind farm.

URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2011/07/06/wind-farm-couple-drank-to-cope/