March 28, 2013
Massachusetts

Here’s ya bleepin’ flicka study!

By Bradford Randall | March 28, 2013 | kingstonjournal.com

Earlier this week, Joe Casna dropped a bomb on Dan Sapir and the Board of Health.

“CEC made a commitment…to provide all the resources and fund a flicker study,” Casna told Sapir as he described a meeting last Friday with State Representative Tom Calter.

It was last month when KingstonJournal.com first reported that no flicker study had been conducted for the Kingston Wind Independence (KWI) Turbine prior to the site approval by the Planning Board.

Now, over a year after the KWI Turbine was erected, state agencies are intervening with offers to conduct a flicker study.

Some Kingston residents, like Dan Alves on Leland Road, are claiming their residences are exposed to nearly 70 minutes of shadow flicker from the KWI Turbine during affected times of the year. If true, families in Kingston would be experiencing nearly double the amount of flicker allowed from turbines in countries like Germany, Egypt and Japan.

Sapir, however, was more interested in the context of Casna’s meeting with Calter, representatives from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (CEC) and a single complaining resident.

“Was there somebody taking minutes at this meeting,” Sapir asked Casna.

Growing increasingly belligerent, Casna attempted to ward off Sapir’s inquisitive questions. “We asked that at the end [of Friday’s meeting],” Casna answered. “I think there were some notes taken.”

Casna was unable to definitively answer who had recorded notes at last Friday’s meeting with Calter.

Sapir also asked if town residents who live near the KWI Turbine were invited to the State House sit down. “I don’t know that but for some reason I think so,” Casna said.

Sapir said that neither he, nor any of the residents that he had contacted, had been invited to the meeting with Calter and Casna.

Sapir pressed Casna further, asking him whether he was attending the meeting as a selectman or a BOH-member.

Casna said he “had no idea” whether or not he attended the meeting as a private citizen.

Sapir kept asking questions. “What do you mean you don’t have any idea? Were you there as a selectman?”

“I don’t think if I was just Harry Jones living on Winter Street that I would have been invited,” Casna said. “I kind of think I was invited because of the positions I have.”

Casna is both the Chairman of the BOH and the Board of Selectmen (BOS).

After throwing his pen on the table in frustration, other member of the BOH chimed in on the discussion about Friday’s State House shindig. BOH-member Bill Kavol said, “I think if there’s any other major problem here, call Mr. Calter.”

Kavol then said he considered Sapir’s treatment of Casna as “harassment.”

Sapir said he” could not put any stock” in Casna’s statements about the Friday afternoon meeting because it was “total hearsay” and there was “no record [Casna] could produce.”

Casna turned to Sapir, who was sitting next to him at Monday night’s meeting. “I’ve told you what was said. I’ve told you the commitment that was made by CEC,” Casna said. “You don’t believe me…guess what, I don’t care whether you believe me or not.”

The BOH voted 4-1 in favor of asking Mass CEC to conduct a flicker study. Sapir was the one vote against.

URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2013/03/28/heres-ya-bleepin-flicka-study/