October 6, 2011
Massachusetts

Norwell: Officials vote on farm wind tower application

By John Penny, 95.9 WATD-FM, 959watd.com 6 October 2011

The Norwell Zoning Board of Appeals unanimously voted in favor of Bruce Meacham’s application, to build a 200 foot wind tower at 342 Mount Blue Street.

The tower will determine the feasibility of building a wind turbine under agricultural use, to power irrigation on his 5 acre farm.

Although zoning board member David Turner is not a voting member on this application, he did raise some questions regarding issues related to agricultural use and power requirements for the farm.

Turner said, “Here you have 5 acres of pumpkin, squash and corn. You don’t use any power at the present time. You’re original application was to sell electricity commercially. You’re talking about a large tower. No study has been done to show what your proposed use will be in the future, or what the power drain will be. I think until that is nailed down, in a reasonable way that experts can examine and that we can sort out, it’s absolutely foolish for us to even consider the matter, because no one knows what the power requirements are going to be.”

Meacham’s says he will withdraw the court case for his first wind tower application, which was to determine the feasibility of a wind turbine for commercial use.

The wind tower under this new application will gather data for a period of one year.


URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2011/10/06/norwell-officials-vote-on-farm-wind-tower-application/