New Regs or Policies? Weigh in on Noise!
Update: The comment period has been extended to May 13, 2016.
As a result of the series of meetings held with the Wind and Noise Turbine Advisory Group (WNTAG), new regulations, guidelines, or policies may be in the cards. And while the deck has been largely stacked against wind neighbors, this is an opportunity to throw down the aces: include infrasound, set L-90 low, use fast meter settings, recognize amplitude modulation. Play the wild card, too: anticipate wind shear.
Public comments are due April 8, 2016. Send them to the MassDEP’s Deputy Regional Director Laurel Carlson (Laurel.Carlson@state.ma.us) and to the Consensus Building Institute’s Senior Mediator Stacie Smith (stacie@cbuilding.org).
This table shows the relevant slides on potential regulation and guidelines. Click on a slide to view it or access the whole draft at Scope of Possible Noise Regulation and Policy.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Wind Wise ~ Massachusetts 
No more late nights. This bill should be declared illegal by twelve minutes. Please notice that the media backstamped their time to July 31 but vote was later. Whether this is a great bill, written or not without mistakes, it would have been at best frantic, frenetic etc – the Senate version came out with HUGE amendments and mostly striking the House bill. Surely it is not the intent of those who wrote the Commonwealth constitution to have legislation that will affect each and every one of us as profoundly as taxes – electricity is a public need, public good and public necessity. That’s why those utilities dominate Monopoly, except for wise real estate owners. Weak jokes aside, this bill has profound implications and the only comments that I saw from the media which were received during VERY SHORT CONSIDERATION were George B for EnviroMA and the alliance of the three offdhore wind leaseholders. I elected neither lobby group, and there was no opportunity of the Commonwealth electorate to know what was about to hit us- a tsunami considering that the powers that are shut down nuclear, coal and oil-fired electricity WITHOUT a dispatchable, reliable source to replace it and are now fairly far along to shutting down natural gas as a “bridge fuel”. Frankly Speaker de Leo, I would rather have a right to what is required to flush my toilet, heat my home and refrigerate my food than to any claimed needs for weapons. fake or not, “sporting” assault weapons or not, to keep Gubbament out of my domicile (or not – what a joke that is), and, yes, somebody else needs that electricity to do pretty much everything including run offshore wind turbines, keep cell coverage on, etc. A necessity, not an option in reaction to rebellion against King George when “well-organized militia” had had broomsticks to practice with.
One might have thought that thr five major bills to come out in 2008 about energy were the end of it and the kick-in-ass of Conservation Law Foundation’s win in Supreme Judicial Court against MassDEP would be more than enough — again, a party that we do not elect that is now controlling our every molecule from nitrogen that we pee to GHG CO2 that is respirated out. I have never opposed regulations by government that protect our environment, but I do oppose how those laws are being twisted to ignore environmental impacts of BIG WIND energy in the name of idea that impacts of global warming will be worse – for protected whales and the food they come to MA coast for, to the birds that I have been told “will drown anyway”.
I am not a person who doubts that humans have muckex up the environment in so many ways. I am a person who doubts the role of electricity generation via climate change for most aggressive, number one Massachusetts. The part left out there is that I don’t know what utilities have done to send their crap down Connecticut River or still do with transformers and such. But I do believe that Massachusetts should have its legislative eye on transport-related combustion of fossil fuels rather than electricity, given that clean air has already cleaned up NOx and SOx and driven GHG so far down that RGGI got a reset of goals. Gotta keep the price of those wRECks upon which wind industry finance depends up in the stratosphere. People don’t understand that wind energy has two very different products: those environmental attributes that rebranded corporate America and Burlington VT buys and MassAudubon and Mass Energy Alliance wants you to buy as “clean” electricity that are merely RECs and not even priced at real cost, and second there is any actual electrons generated. Even if there was no need for reliable, dispatchable electricity to offset the vagaries of wind, here is another huge subsidy legislated in Massachusetts – those electrons get paid for at the much higher retail rate rather than wholesale through the glory of netmetering.
These remarks only address what has been rather than what is coming as Massachusetts now effects policy to send us over the cliff. As a child I knew about lemmings because I was interested in temporal biological rhythms. I guess that I did not worry enough about what bold, aggressivd biology made the first lemming dive over the cliff to create a 7-year cycle. Well, we have had more than 7-year since those energy bills originated in 2008 and we are on a two-year cycle of passing omnibus bills at the 11th plus hour, ever more suicidal, evermore not evaluating what the consequences are already.
Falmouh Massachusetts is ground zero for poorly placed wind turbines in the United States
Our politicians have known this for 6 years and refuse to act. The Wind and Noise Turbine Advisory Group (WNTAG) is just another stall. Time for Windwise to campaign to get the politicians out of office. Make the public aware of the suffering in 21 communities
Falmouth Ma. Wind Turbine Revenue and Expense Report April 4 Town Meeting
http://patch.com/massachusetts/falmouth/falmouth-wind-turbine-revenue-expense-report-april-4-town-meeting-0
Thank you for the info, but is there a more detailed WNTAG final report available… beyond a superficial slide show? It’s difficult to debate without report information worth debating.
Thanks
Regards, Mark
http://mjoecool.wordpress.com/