Falmouth Wind Turbines Executive Session Litigation Strategy

TOWN OF FALMOUTH BOARD OF SELECTMEN REVISED AGENDA MONDAY, JULY 25, 2016 – 6:00 P.M.

SELECTMEN’S MEETING ROOM

6:00 p.m. EXECUTIVE SESSION
1. M.G.L. c.30A s.21(a)(3) – Discuss litigation strategy for all pending wind turbine cases

Falmouth Select Board members Doug Jones, Susan Moran, Sam Patterson and Megan Braga will meet in executive session to discuss ten or more ongoing wind turbine litigation cases. The meeting will take place on Monday, July 25,2016

The Falmouth Select Board on April 28, 2016 filed a case in Massachusetts Land Court against its own appointed Zoning Board of Appeals. The discovery period closes on October 31, 2016. An attorney for the wind turbine plaintiffs have filed to have both Falmouth Wind 1 and II heard in the land court case.

The land court case will be heard by a single judge appointed by former Governor Deval Patrick. There are no juries in Massachusetts Land Court. Any decision could be appealed to Superior Court for a jury hearing. Everyone in the United States has a right to trial by jury.

The Town of Falmouth is spending up to $300,000.00 in litigation fees every six months for the continued operation of the wind turbines. The town faces years more litigation if not tens of years.

The Town of Falmouth has lost every case in court.

Falmouth Wind I no longer operates and Falmouth Wind II only operates 12 hours a day 6 days of the week only when the wind blows.

The parasitic electric power going into the wind turbines to maintain computers, batteries, air conditioning etc at this point exceeds the electric output of the wind turbine. In other words dirty fossil fuel going into the turbines exceeds green energy from the turbines.

The turbines are deemed a catastrophic health and financial fiasco taking the property rights of up to 200 residential home owners.

The Town of Falmouth is facing major hurdles in any kind of litigation case to operate the wind turbines in the future.

A noise study map from a noise study done by the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative now the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center affecting 99 homes in 2005 shows homes on Black Smith Shop Road with noise decibel readings over 40 decibels.

The noise study map according to verified Vestas emails did not reflect the additional 6 decibels of noise warned about prior to the installations.

The Town of Falmouth hid an August 2010 noise warning letter from the manufacturer, Vestas, that the turbines generate 110 decibels of noise. The letter remained hidden until 5 years later until Freedom of Information Act requests revealed the truth.

General Electric a domestic wind turbine company refused to build a megawatt wind turbine because of ice throw and residential setbacks was never made public to Falmouth voters.
The Town of Falmouth avoided the 240 166 Special Permit process suggested by the Cape Cod Commission Model Bylaws to install commercial wind turbines

The Special Permit process would have required additional abutter notifications and hearings in which case the turbines would never have been built.

The Massachusetts Clean Energy Center the original owners of Falmouth Wind I in 2013 admitted in a staff memo that they made so called acoustic mistakes in the noise tests prior to the installations. The admissions were only made after the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection notified the Town of Falmouth the turbines exceeded state noise regulations

The MassCEC is guilty of dropping noise warnings of two distinct types of noise from the wind turbines found in boiler plate studies prior to the Falmouth installations. The types of noise are "regulatory" measured in decibels and "human annoyance" measured as low frequency or what is called infra sound today.
The MassCEC the original owners of Falmouth Wind I were unable to sell the turbine even at auction because of the noise warnings.

The state agency had been aware of the 1987 Neil Kelly infra sound noise studies in Boone, North Carolina

One month after the MassCEC 2013 memo the state agency changed setbacks to commercial wind turbines to 2000 feet.

Falmouth Select Board members, Town Meeting Members or a judge and jury can only draw on conclusion from all the emails, memos, hidden letters, maps and admissions by state agencies.

Everyone including all the members of the Falmouth Energy Committee were aware of the dangerous noise conditions spelled out in detail about the wind turbines.

Several years ago a Town Meeting Member asked members are you going to spend 12 million dollars to take down the turbines or spend 200 million paying the up to 200 residential home owners victims down the road ?

Nobody likes to say they were conned. People have an abhorrence to show they were fleeced.

There's a sucker born every day and in Falmouth it looks like all the Town Meeting Members

The World Health Organization is reviewing new wind turbine noise regulations