December 1, 2011
Letters, Massachusetts

Health of new Wood elementary school students will be affected by wind turbines

The Advocate, www.southcoasttoday.com 1 December 2011

On Nov. 2, voters said yes to funding a bigger and more modern Wood Elementary School at 60 Sconticut Neck Road. We are talking about a new consolidated school that will have close to 500 students.

We need to ask if Fairhaven voters who approved the plan to close Rogers School understood the construction issues of two 400 foot commercial wind turbines that will shadow the bigger and more modern Wood Elementary School. What effect does the strobe/shadow flicker have on special needs students?

We are not talking about 20 or 30 houses or 50 residents living in a cellar because of wind turbine noise and shadow flicker as in Falmouth; we are talking about a new consolidated school that will have close to 500 students.

On Veterans Day, we saw the construction begin of two commercial wind turbines at the nearby Fairhaven Waste Water Treatment Plant.

The wind industry is marked by both a reluctance to admit to accidents and a tendency to cover up the failings of the technology.

What happens to 500 students watching the strobe effect of two giant wind turbines flickering in the windows of the school and the harmonic sounds from those turbines?

The two proposed projects appear to be on a collision course.

The country has evidently arrived at a point in its legal culture where no negative consequences seem to exist for making wind turbine contractors rich and false or misleading claims to sell wind energy the stuff dreams are made of. But industrial wind is a bunco scheme of enormous consequence. And people who value intellectual honesty should not quietly be fleeced by such mendacity, even from their government officials.

The placement of wind turbines near homes and schools in Fairhaven is also an international problem that can in no way be likened to living near a train or an airport. It is not just what you hear but what you don’t hear (low frequency vibration) that causes well-documented health problems along with shadow flicker.

The public is being duped into envisioning fairy tale wind turbine financial gains while our city and town officials value the wind companies more than the people who elect them.

Frank Haggerty

Mattapoisett


URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2011/12/01/health-of-new-wood-elementary-school-students-will-be-affected-by-wind-turbines/