Falmouth Wind Turbine Infrasound: an "Acoustic Trespasser"

Wind Turbine Infrasound: an “Acoustic Trespasser”

Credit 2015 by stopthesethings

Wind Turbine Infrasound: an ‘acoustic trespasser’.

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Despite its best efforts to bury the adverse health impacts of incessant turbine generated low-frequency noise and infrasound, as a result of lots of continuous complaints from neighbours, and the dedicated work of a few ethical acousticians out to help them, the wind industry has lately been called to account.

It’s taken time – the wind industry, its pet acoustic consultants and the bent planning authorities and EPAs that run cover for it, have all spent 30 years avoiding the evidence (that they knew about all along); setting up (and vigorously defending) noise ‘standards’ that deliberately exclude all reference to it; and, in the case of South Australia’s EPA making the wildest claim of all – that “modern wind farms” don’t produce infrasound at all:

Three Decades of Wind Industry Deception: A Chronology of a Global Conspiracy of Silence and Subterfuge

But, the trouble for the wind industry is that you can only cover up the facts for so long; pretty soon they leak out like a stinking ooze, surround the surreptitious; and leave them without a strategy to resist the consequences of their malodorous deeds.

In Australia, the lid was lifted by Steven Cooper’s groundbreaking study at Cape Bridgewater in Victoria (see our posts here and here); and work done by Professor Colin Hansen and his team from the Adelaide University at Waterloo in South Australia (see our post here).

In the US, Dr Paul Schomer, George Hessler, Rob Rand and Dr Bruce Walker were on the trail at Shirley, in Wisconsin back in 2012, with another effort to get to the truth out (available here).

In Falmouth, Massachusetts, Michael Bahtiarian and Allan Beaudry have recently pulled a similar feat; putting turbine generated infrasound in the spotlight.

Falmouth is plagued by 3 Vestas V82s, that have been driving neighbours nuts since March 2010. However, back in November 2013, a judge found sufficient evidence of “irreparable harm” to Neil and Betsy Andersen; that the noise generated amounted to “nuisance”; and slapped a preliminary injunction on the turbines’ hours of operation – preventing them from operating between 7pm to 7am, Monday through Saturday, all day on Sunday and certain public holidays (we’ve set out the Orders made below).

The daily turbine shut-downs (in the graphs below the shut-downs are designated as “WT Secured”) provided Michael Bahtiarian and Allan Beaudry with the perfect opportunity to prove that the infrasound surrounding and permeating the Andersen’s home was being generated by turbines (rather than wind in the trees; waves on the beach – or anything else on the wind industry’s bogus list of infrasound ‘scapegoats’). As Michael and Allan put it:

To put the conclusions more commonly, this study finds that the wind turbine(s) produce acoustic emissions which are “acoustically trespassing” into the Andersen home.

Two of Falmouth’s “acoustic trespassers”.

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Here’s their report on how to catch “acoustic trespassers” in the act.

Infrasound Measurements of Falmouth Wind Turbines
Wind #1 and Wind #2
Michael Bahtiarian and Allan Beaudry
27 February 2015
PDF of Full Report (including references and appendix)