Compelling Testimony at Pittsfield Mass.DPU Hearing

Reporting for the Berkshire Eagle, Dick Lindsay described the crowd attending the Mass. DPU hearing in Pittsfield on January 27, 2014 (“Berkshire residents air concerns over commercial wind farms“).

Opponents to commercial wind energy facilities during the well over three-hour public hearing cited how the state and wind farm developers have ignored the environmental, economic and health impact of wind turbines. The most compelling testimony came from several people who live near the Hoosac Wind project in the town of Florida. The 19 turbines went on line in December 2012, and a month later town residents Nancy Shea and her husband Tim Danyliw moved out of their home.

Shea says they could no longer handle the noise and ill feeling, living 2,200 feet away from the closest turbine.

“It felt like the room was spinning,” she said. “It sounds like a jet engine over the house that doesn’t go away.”

Another neighbor to Hoosac Wind, Michael Fairneny, also feels the project has robbed his quality of life in the rural community.

“My happiness was taken away from my own home,” he said. “It’s like living next to an airport an [the planes] never land.”

See Larry Lorusso’s testimony at Hoosac Wind Watch.

Nearly 100 people attended and 30 who spoke frankly told the DPU panel that Western Mass. does not want more wind turbines or more state involvement in turbine siting.

Wind power just isn’t worth the hassle, according to Ellen Landauer of nearby Charlemont in Franklin County.

“Decommission all the wind turbines in the state, take them down and ban them forever,” she said.

Eleanor Tillinghast, representing environmental organization Green Berkshires, chastised the Patrick administration for its unrelenting pressure to site wind turbines.

We’re here today because the Department of Public Utilities, at the direction of the Patrick Administration, has opened an investigation into guidance for best practices for siting wind turbines onshore.

Why should the residents of Massachusetts believe the outcome will be either best practices or guidance.

For the past five years, the Patrick Administration has used one tactic after another to push wind turbines into our communities.