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DEP meets with Fairhaven officials to discuss testing sites
Credit: By ARIEL WITTENBERG | www.southcoasttoday.com 13 July 2012 ~~
FAIRHAVEN – Town officials met with members of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection and the developer of Fairhaven’s two wind turbines Thursday morning to make a game plan for sound testing the turbines.
Board of Health Chairman Peter DeTerra said those at the meeting, held at the DEP’s Lakeville office, “reviewed a lot of different areas,” including the methodology of the testing.
Also at the meeting were Fairhaven Executive Secretary Jeffrey Osuch, Fairhaven Wind developer Sumul Shah and DEP Regional Manager Laurel Carlson.
In June, the town Board of Health decided to ask DEP to conduct testing on the town’s two wind turbines to determine whether they violated state noise regulation. A turbine is in violation if it is more than 10 decibels louder than an area’s ambient noise.
Shah said a large part of the four-hour-long meeting was dedicated to ensuring that the DEP could easily coordinate the testing with the wind developer.
“As I understand it, when they tested the turbines in Falmouth, they didn’t have much control on when they could turn the turbines on and off to do the testing,” he said. “For testing in Fairhaven, when they want the turbines on, they will be on. When they want them off, they will be off.”
The four officials also discussed some site-specific issues relating to where the testing would be conducted that Shah would not elaborate on.
Thursday’s meeting primarily dealt with the methods involved in taking measurements, and Shah said the officials “did not come to an agreement on how the samples will be analyzed.”
While Thursday’s meeting was closed to the public, DeTerra said DEP will make a public presentation regarding the sound testing at the Board of Health’s July 23 meeting.
After that meeting, Shah estimated the state agency would finalize the sites where they will be testing and start to schedule the test.
“Then it just depends on the weather,” he said.
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