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Residents still suffering sleepless nights due to wind farm work
Credit: Adrian Imms | The Argus | www.theargus.co.uk ~~
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Translate: FROM English | TO English
Last week’s balmy weather saw a return of a strange thump, thump, thumping in the night.
Residents recorded the mysterious sounds in the early hours of the morning with some even reporting that their walls were vibrating.
But rather than it being anything supernatural, it was in fact the return of night work on the Rampion Offshore Wind Farm.
Despite being more than eight miles away, Peter Wyles, who lives in The Thatchway in Rustington, said his house was shaking because of the work.
The 69-year-old said: “It keeps us up most nights. We have to close the window.
“All my neighbours have been complaining as well. It’s just this constant thump, thump, thump.
“I was standing in the garden and I could actually feel it through my feet.”
The noise comes from 800 tonne monopiles being hammered up to 40 metres into the seabed.
These monpiles form the foundations for each of the 116 wind turbines.
E.ON workers are now nearly halfway through installing the monopiles.
John Bliss, 64, also lives in Rustington and previously told The Argus it kept him and his wife Susan awake. “It was thump, thump, thump, it was continual.”
Angelika Flach-Vandyke of Shoreham wrote to The Argus after our last report in July to say it “has been an issue from the get go” and gave her of months of interrupted sleep.
The drilling to embed foundations work resumed last month after being paused in May to protect the population of black sea bream using the relatively shallow gravelly waters as a breeding ground.
A spokeswoman for E.ON, which is the company behind the project, admitted there had been some complaints.
She said: “We were aware of changes in atmospheric conditions that could cause audible noise and had planned to complete piling before the onset of these weather conditions.
“However, due to unforeseeable circumstances, we encountered a number of delays. For safety reasons it is necessary to complete a pile once it has commenced, which unfortunately meant piling on this occasion continued into the early hours of August 23.
“We continue to review conditions on a daily basis and suspend activities where possible when we anticipate the noise levels will affect residents at night.
“We would like to reassure people that under most circumstances the piling has not been, and is not expected to be, audible from within homes along the coast.
“We continue to do our best to ensure that any impact on the local community is kept to a minimum and apologise for any inconvenience caused.”
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| Tag: Complaints |
