Falmouth Wind Turbine Class Action Litigation -Paris Accord Pull Out

Massachusetts Civil Procedure Rule 23: Class Actions

The Prerequisites to Class Action. One or more members of a class may sue or be sued as representative parties on behalf of all only if the class is so numerous that joinder of all members is impracticable.

The class of people has to be certified by the court with class representatives. Environmental class actions under Massachusetts 21E regulations can pay up to triple damages.

Let's first for example look at these two coal burning cities of Fall River and New Bedford. Both cities have around the same population made up of predominantly a high percentage of citizens of Portuguese decent. Most of the three family homes have fruit trees and vegetable gardens in their back yards and they all breathe the same air .For all intent and purpose the two cities are twins.

Coal plants of older generation also drop toxic particles into the air on vegetable gardens and into fresh water reservoirs there is no way of getting around it. New Bedford and Fall River also have a different source of municipal water.

The rate of Prostrate cancer in Fall River is triple that of New Bedford. Both cities have been powered by coal plants since the early 1900s. The only difference is the Cannon Street power plant in New Bedford shut down in 1992 well over 25 years ago. It appears the Fall River coal plant may have been the culprit as it still was in operation.

You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out the coal plants did not help the health problems in either city. Do these people have a class action litigation case probably not. The coal power plants have been there for more than eighty years in which case the plants came before most of the people were born.

Massachusetts in the early 2000s started the installation of commercial megawatt wind turbines. The wind resources are found in heavily populated areas of Massachusetts.

Over 40 years ago the US Department of Energy and NASA discovered in Boone, North Carolina that a wind turbine was making residents irritable and they had health problems from lack of sleep. Scientist determined low frequency noise or what is called infra sound was the underlying cause.

The Massachusetts Clean Energy Center in 2005 through what was called "Fatal Flaws Analysis for a Wind Turbine" warned residents of two distinct types of noise from wind turbines:regulatory measured in decibels and human annoyance. These warnings were dropped from the Falmouth wind studies. In 2013 the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center admitted in an April 2013 memo it made "mistakes" in preliminary noise predictions of the Falmouth wind turbines.

In 2011 the Chief Executive Officer of Vestas wind company CEO Engel Ditlev wrote a letter to Karen Ellemann about low frequency noise. The CEO responded that Vestas does not have the technology to stop the noise.

The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection found the Falmouth wind turbines are breaking state noise regulations. After the notification by the MassDEP the Town of Falmouth released a written warning letter from 2010 that the Falmouth wind turbines generate 110 decibels of noise.

Falmouth has nine active lawsuits that have not yet been assigned court dates.The turbines began to spin in 2010 with a life span of twenty years. The court cases will probably last the life of the turbines.

The state and local government would probably like to keep the turbines in court to keep all the other turbines in twenty-one other communities operating so they can reach a state renewable energy goal. After all the taxpayers are paying the entire bill.

Worldwide residential home owners complain after the wind turbines are installed they developed headaches, ringing in her ears, insomnia and dizziness. The main complaint is problem sleeping and health problems from lack of sleep.

The problem for the Massachusetts commercial wind turbines is they were installed after people purchased homes in residential zoned locations unlike the New Bedford and Fall River coal plants where the residents came after the coal. Incidentally wind, solar, coal, oil and natural gas are all power plants.

As far as class action litigation Massachusetts citizens in twenty-two or more communities are in a unique situation. In almost every installation of commercial megawatt wind turbines in Massachusetts private citizens have hired attorneys to protect their health and property rights.

These attorneys at a future date could become the class representatives representing all the communities. Each community would become a sub class of the entire class.

The megawatt wind turbines have been spinning since the late 2000s. At some point and time in the near future a survey could be conducted around the wind turbines to review the health of the people living around the wind turbines. In addition a review of how many people unwillingly left and long term loses on property values.

We know the federal government pulled out of the Paris Accord-Treaty and for the foreseeable future is not going to be backing placing wind turbine in residential neighborhoods.

The question today is as the Falmouth lawsuits grind through the court system and more facts come to light how much longer before a young attorney or law firm or for that matter all twenty- two communities file a class action lawsuit over the environmental issues associated with the turbines.

We all own the environment which throws down a challenge to the taxpayers of Massachusetts.

The commercial megawatt wind turbines have taken the health and property rights of thousands of people and taxpayers need to be ready to pay for it.

In 2013 the Town of Falmouth voted not to take down its two town owned turbines. The town then renegotiated its Renewable Energy Contract with the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center for another 1.8 million to help pay litigation costs. Falmouth Town Meeting has been approving up to $300,000.00 every six months to pay wind turbine litigation fees.

The town faces nine more unscheduled law suits and a possibility of class action litigation in the future

The only one with a revenue stream today are powerful Beacon Hill law firms -The same firms that helped install the wind turbines in the first place

How much longer before taxpayers Wake Up ?