Guidelines for potential Clinton and DeKalb County wind turbine hosting landowners
The Leader | September 10, 2015 | www.clintoncountyleader.com
The Leader | September 10, 2015 | www.clintoncountyleader.com
My husband and I are retired Wisconsin public school educators. We and many of our neighbors learned overnight that four southern Brown County communities were targeted in 2009 by Invenergy of Chicago to build a hundred 400-foot wind turbine project on the cuesta of the Niagara Escarpment where we live. We got on the internet to do our homework. Wind-watch.org is an important 24/7 website to get quickly educated. Our Brown County social nonprofit (BCCRWE.com) formed and held public events with guest speakers, electricians, engineers, etc. who spoke about stray voltage, electromagnetic fields, shadow flicker and inaudible Low Frequency Noise and adverse health symptoms people, pets and livestock would experience. Carl and I showed the award-winning documentary Windfall by Laura Israel in the Capitol in Madison. Invenergy ultimately cancelled the contracts and left town. However, another wind developer, Bill Rakocy of Emerging Energies, LLC, built Shirley Wind and sited eight 500-foot industrial wind turbines (IWTs) in the Town of Glenmore just southeast of Green Bay. Within about a year, Rakocy flipped the wind project and left town. His company pocketed $13,000,000 and created one permanent job. Duke Energy is the 3rd owner within the five years Shirley Wind has operated. To date, 80+ Glenmore residents have sent notarized affidavits to our Brown County Board of Health with serious health complaints: headaches, ear pain, ear pressure, nausea, tinnitus, lethargy, sleep deprivation to name a few. We’ve met these people. We have visited some of the affected Shirley Wind project homes. Our social nonprofit’s YouTube video, “The Unvarnished Truth” contains several of these residents telling how their lives have changed since the giant wind turbine blades started turning. They talk about the audible and inaudible Infrasound and Low Frequency Noise that goes through windows and concrete walls and reverberates off the walls inside their homes. The vibration. The shadow flicker. The high levels of stray voltage tested for and measured at their kitchen sinks. Three Glenmore families vacated their homes due to illness and sleep deprivation; one of them, Sarah Cappelle, said last week they turned their Victorian farm over to the bank recently. They could no longer afford two mortgages.
Here are guidelines for possible Missouri hosting landowners to read before signing NextEra’s Energy Resources contracts to permit IWTs to be built on their land:
1) Have every member of your household get a complete physical with lab workup to set a baseline of what your health is like before any industrial wind turbine project starts up.
2) Check with the bank that holds the mortgage for your rural home or farm; your property may no longer be worth what it was if you sign a 50-year lease agreement with NextEra Energy Resources. Your ability to get a loan at the bank may change.
3) Have a backup plan as to where your children will sleep if they get awakened several times a night and don’t understand why. It may be the inaudible Infrasound and Low Frequency Noise (ILFN) that the giant turning blades produce as “pressure pulsations”. ILFN can damage the inner ear, thus explaining the reported symptoms. (Dr. Paul Schomer, Aug. 28, 2013 International Conference on “Wind Turbine Noise”, Denver, Colo.)
4) Reconsider keeping livestock on your land if you are close (less than 5 miles) from any of the proposed IWTs in the 200 Megawatt wind project. Monitor stray voltage.
5) Be flexible and willing to move. Understand that this proposed Missouri wind project may no longer be owned and operated by NextEra’s company after the first year of its construction. It may be sold to another wind energy company or utility and NextEra reps. may not be available to answer your questions and concerns.
And, remember, it’s just business.
Sandy Johnson,
Public Awareness Committee, BCCRWE.com
Greenleaf, WI
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2015/09/11/guidelines-for-potential-clinton-and-dekalb-county-wind-turbine-hosting-landowners/