LOCATION/TYPE

NEWS HOME


[ exact phrase in "" • results by date ]

[ Google-powered • results by relevance ]

Archive
RSS

Add NWW headlines to your site (click here)

WHAT TO DO
when your community is targeted

Get weekly updates
RSS

RSS feeds and more

Keep Wind Watch online and independent!

Donate via Stripe

Donate via Paypal

Selected Documents

All Documents

Research Links

Alerts

Press Releases

FAQs

Campaign Material

Photos & Graphics

Videos

Allied Groups

Wind Watch is a registered educational charity, founded in 2005.

News Watch Home

Fairhaven Planning Board grapples with turbine setback revisions 

Credit:  By ARIEL WITTENBERG | October 24, 2012 | www.southcoasttoday.com ~~

FAIRHAVEN – Imagining the worst so they can plan what’s best, Planning Board members conjured up a number of doomsday-like scenarios involving wind turbines Tuesday night during a review of the latest turbine bylaw draft.

From turbines collapsing in on themselves, to falling over like a felled tree, to flinging ice, to flinging turbine blades, to exploding, the board discussed it all in an effort to ensure the draft took everything into account in creating new setback and height limits.

“First thing is to decide on a fall zone, which is how much protection you want from a turbine falling over,” said board Chairman Wayne Hayward, who also wrote the draft bylaw. “Second thing is a setback, which protects from things flinging off of it and also sound and flicker concerns.”

Tuesday’s meeting was the first of two “planning groups” on the draft bylaw. It dealt specifically with height and setbacks. The next meeting will cover safety issues such as ice fling, sound and flicker.

Current town bylaws measure turbine height to be from the ground to the middle of the turbine’s nacelle, or hub. The draft bylaw calls for measuring turbines by “maximum tip height,” or the distance from the ground to blade tip when the blade is pointed straight up.

“If a turbine falls down like a tree and you only have a setback of the turbine height but you don’t count the wings in the turbine height, someone or something is going to get hit,” Hayward said, adding that wind turbines are more likely to collapse onto themselves if they malfunction rather than fall over.

Many of the Planning Board members agreed that measuring turbines by maximum tip height made sense because “everyone in town already says they are almost 400-foot tall turbines, which is going by tip height,” Hayward said.

Board members also discussed proposed setbacks for wind turbines, which would be 1.5 times turbine height under the proposed bylaw.

Jeffrey Lucas, who advocated a setback of 1.1 times turbine height, said he thinks 1.5 is excessive. “It seems like a big fall zone to me. If it falls like a tree, it’s not going to hop over anywhere.”

Hayward said he wrote the draft with a 1.5 times height setback to act as a “fudge factor and margin of safety” for the future.

Board member Rene Fleurent said he was concerned that the 1.5 setback would not necessarily “alleviate problems you have from noise, or infrasound, which we’re hearing a lot about.”

Fairhaven Director of Planning and Economic Development William Roth reassured Fleurent, saying that under the draft, potential developers “would have to meet the setback as a minimum, but also prove through sound studies that the setback would be enough.”

“If it wasn’t, they’d have to move it back,” he said.

Source:  By ARIEL WITTENBERG | October 24, 2012 | www.southcoasttoday.com

This article is the work of the source indicated. Any opinions expressed in it are not necessarily those of National Wind Watch.

The copyright of this article resides with the author or publisher indicated. As part of its noncommercial educational effort to present the environmental, social, scientific, and economic issues of large-scale wind power development to a global audience seeking such information, National Wind Watch endeavors to observe “fair use” as provided for in section 107 of U.S. Copyright Law and similar “fair dealing” provisions of the copyright laws of other nations. Send requests to excerpt, general inquiries, and comments via e-mail.

Wind Watch relies entirely
on User Contributions
   Donate via Stripe
(via Stripe)
Donate via Paypal
(via Paypal)

Share:

e-mail X FB LI M TG TS G Share


News Watch Home

Get the Facts
CONTACT DONATE PRIVACY ABOUT SEARCH
© National Wind Watch, Inc.
Use of copyrighted material adheres to Fair Use.
"Wind Watch" is a registered trademark.

 Follow:

Wind Watch on X Wind Watch on Facebook Wind Watch on Linked In

Wind Watch on Mastodon Wind Watch on Truth Social

Wind Watch on Gab Wind Watch on Bluesky