Falmouth Wind Turbine Noise - Unrecordable and Unverified

Isn’t it odd that, five years into Falmouth’s wind turbine controversy, nobody has posted a video clip to substantiate the noise problem inside a Falmouth home?

This oddity isn’t new. Four years ago (3/8/11) WGBH published an article stating: “Residents primarily report three different types of turbine noise (all of which we were unable to record on our visits to the turbine). “

It’s hard to understand - or mitigate - a noise problem that can’t be captured by WGBH’s microphones, and apparently can’t be recorded on a smartphone either.

Shadow flicker, a seasonal transient impact, has been documented in Falmouth by videos on social media. But we can’t say the same for noise impacts. So we have to rely on 2012 MA DEP measurements made during four nights at five residential locations. They found a slight noise exceedance at one home, late at night. Turning turbines off at night eliminated that exceedance, at substantial cost to the taxpayers.

Expert review of MA DEP’s published data revealed that background noises with turbines OFF were significantly louder than peak turbine noise.

It’s high time to step back and ask: exactly what problem are we trying to solve with Falmouth’s wind turbines?