November 13, 2012
Vermont

Lowell Mountain wind turbines generating noise complaints

By Nick Natario | www.fox44abc22yourvoice.com Nov 12, 2012

LOWELL, Vt. – On a breezy, Monday afternoon, the loudest thing you could hear was the grass blowing in the wind at the base of Lowell Mountain.

Some of the 21-turbines sitting atop it were spinning and you could hear a faint sound, but nothing Don Nelson says like the noise they were making more than a week ago.

“The noise was about like a 747 coming into land with the wings flapping,” said Nelson.

All weekend Nelson says the blades were disrupting the area.

He put up a piece of paper in the center of Albany, Vermont and asked others to sign it, if they also heard the loud noises.

33 people did.

“The furthest we heard it, that of anybody that heard it was 6.5 miles,” said Nelson.

We have to mention Nelson has been against the project from the beginning and are currently in the middle of a lawsuit against Green Mountain Power.

Instead of contacting GMP, he sent a letter to the Vermont board that approved the project.

But GMP says he should’ve called them.

“We were not contacted until Monday after it had happened,” said GMP Spokesperson Dotty Schnure.

Turns out there were a problem.

GMP says the turbines aren’t supposed to be louder than the sounds in a library.

“We’ve done some investigating and narrowed down what we believed caused that sound,” said Schnure.

While they’re confident they’ve fixed the problem, Nelson says he’s not sold these machines won’t disrupt him again.

“I expect it will happen again,” said Nelson.

While the turbines are all up, they’re not collecting energy.

GMP is running tests and expects them to be operational within the next few weeks.

URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2012/11/13/lowell-mountain-wind-turbines-generating-noise-complaints/