Action on pro-wind legislation on 3/29/12
The Massachusetts Senate tabled for one week the complex and controversial Bill S.2200 on Thursday March 29.
The bill will give the governor unprecedented control over the electricity market in the state, force more wind turbines and transmission lines into communities, and increase electricity rates for the next 20 to 30 years.
The bill, Bill S.2200 An Act relative to competitively priced electricity in the Commonwealth (with 58 amendments ), is being rushed through the legislature by the Patrick administration and the wind industry, but stakeholder opposition slowed it down.
More information is provided here.
S.2200 is an energy bill that will increase subsidies to the wind industry, raise costs for consumers, strip revenue from towns, and empower the governor to dominate the renewable energy market in Massachusetts and New England.
According to the 2012 strategic plan of the American Wind Energy Association, “The Patrick administration wants to drive regional procurement plus a higher wind target (30%) for the state and the NE region.” (p. 149 of 259)
Please contact your state senator and the senate president now, using information provided here.
- Reject the governor’s power grab
- Conduct an independent study of all the costs
- Don’t put the state in the energy business
- Preserve the full taxing power of towns hosting wind turbines
- Seek other cheaper forms of renewable energy, like existing large-scale hydro
Fairhaven, Nantucket look to contentious votes ahead
Nantucket
Nantucket’s Annual Town Meeting is Saturday March 31 beginning at 8:30 am. Lunch will be provided. It is highly likely that Article 13 will be debated and decided that day. The Finance Committee voted to urge rejection of the Madaket Wind Turbine Warrant Article. Read the Inquirer and Mirror article FinCom recommends against turbine by Jason Graziadei.
The Annual Town Election is held on Tuesday April 10. The hours are 7 am to 8 pm. The High School is the polling place (absentee ballots are now available and in person absentee voting is also available now by visiting the Town Clerk’s office at the Town Hall).
Fairhaven
The town election is Monday, April 2, 2012 with the polls open from 10:00 am to 8:00 pm. Polling places for the following precincts are:
- Town Hall
- High School
- Hastings Middle School
- Hastings Middle School
- Leroy Wood School
- East Fairhaven School
Windwise-Fairhaven is planning a victory party for Monday night.
A hearing before the Planning Board on Tuesday April 3, 2012 will ask the town to consider changes to the by law on height and setbacks for industrial wind turbines. The meeting at town hall begins at 6:30 pm.
Senate to vote on Production Tax Credit measure (S2204)
Senators heard from us again.
Voting Nay: Senator Scott Brown, Washington: (202) 224-4543; Boston: (617) 565-3170; Springfield: (413) 788-2693
Voting Yea: Senator John Kerry, Washington: (202) 224-2742; Boston: (617) 565-8519; Springfield: (413) 785-4610
Sen. Scott Brown co-sponsored S2201, a similar measure that does not have off-setting funds to pay for it. Sen. John Kerry has always voted for the tax credit, believing wind is part of a renewable energy strategy.
Tax credits, grants for development, and other incentives are keeping this dying industry alive as country after country abandons development of onshore wind plants. Subsidies for Big Wind are wasteful spending.
Patrick Cassidy reports in Cape Cod Online that Senator Scott Brown was against it before he was for it. Last week constituent calls seemed to convince Brown to vote against the wind subsidy tacked onto the transportation bill. By the end of the week he was a co-sponsor of a new amendment.
It is easy to see that the wind lobbyists are playing hardball with Congress, hoping to defeat public opposition to this wasteful spending. In spite of industry efforts, the measure has been tried and failed several times since December.
The tax credit — set to expire at the end of the year — provides 2.2 cents credit per kilowatt-hour of energy produced in the first 10 years of a wind-energy facility’s operation.
Tax credits, grants for development, and other incentives are keeping this dying industry alive as country after country abandons development of onshore wind plants.
http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/index.cfm/go/news.display/id/23523
Experts worldwide critique “expert panel” report
Dr. Mariana Alves-Pereira integrates a multidisciplinary research team investigating biological responses to infrasound and low frequency noise (ILFN) exposures, and is currently assistant coordinator of the team. As an international expert in vibroacoustic disease (VAD) and on cellular responses to ILFN exposures, she evaluated the Panel’s work in relation to health effects.
Dr. Alves-Pereira shows that the panel had difficulty understanding the nature of ILFN and vibration as they pertain to human health, saying “After several readings of this Report, it would seem that the Panel has, at times, misunderstood the distinction between noise and vibration where human health is concerned…” She also believes Panel could have looked at other sources of scientific information, including conference proceedings.
“The health impacts on populations living in the vicinity of WT are, simply put, not documented. Health impacts are not scientifically evaluated through questionnaires and surveys. Instead, objective clinical data are required which, in this case, do not exist.”
Most importantly, Dr. Alves-Pereira explains that where human health is concerned, Infrasound and low frequency noise are airborne acoustical phenomena” and are distinct from vibrations which require a physical coupling to the vibrating structure. Furthermore, she says, “Infrasound is internationally classified as non-ionizing radiation.”
Lessons learned with VAD bring the possibility of objective clinical data being gathered among populations residing in the vicinity of WT. Moreover, if the agent of disease responsible for the development of VAD in occupational environments had been more thoroughly explored (and understood) perhaps the “Panel’s efforts (…) to examine the biological plausibility or basis for the health effects of turbines” (p.ES-3) would have been greatly improved.
As many others have commented in public hearings and written submissions, more study–and the right kind of study–is needed. Dr. Alves-Pereira asserts
The authorities who requested this Report (MassDEP and MDPH) will most likely not find it very useful if their priority is the health of populations living near WT. However, if other agendas exist, this Report may become relevant.
Doctors Hanning and Laurie on health impacts and DEP “expert” panel’s professional responsibility
Dr. C. D. Hanning, a U.K. specialist in sleep medicine, joined others submitting comments to the Mass. Department of Environmental Protection regarding the “expert panel” report. In a letter, Dr. Hanning states “The panel has indulged in an entirely paper exercise…” and “I conclude that this can only be regarded as a cursory examination of the subject.”
The duty of the panel, and the medical members in particular, was not to exonerate wind turbines but to protect the public. It is to be regretted that they have not done so. The report should be rejected.
….
The dismissal of the many thousands of anecdotal cases is entirely inappropriate. Such cases are the bedrock of epidemiological investigations and… they provide prima facie evidence of a clear causal link between wind turbine noise and adverse effects. “
Dr. Hanning’s submission addresses the specifics of what literature the panel chose to include or leave out, comments on the significance of “annoyance” and noise pollution, and reiterates the physician’s responsibility from the Hippocratic Oath–“‘I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure.'”
Dr. Sarah Laurie of Australia’s Waubra Foundation echoed Dr. Hanning’s view on the personal responsibility medical doctors and other health personnel bear in considering the siting of industrial wind turbines:
I urge each of the authors of that report to carefully read my report, and then revisit the issue, and consider the implications and their individual personal responsibility in continuing to ignore the plight of residents in Massachusetts, and elsewhere around the world, whose health is being seriously damaged by large industrial wind turbines when they are located too close to residential areas and workplaces.
Windfall to show in Shelburne
THE FRIENDS OF MT. MASSAEMET present Windfall, Laura Israel’s award-winning film documenting the experience of Meredith, NY as its residents debate the impact of industrial wind turbines on their rural community. The screening is Sunday afternoon at 4:00 pm, March 18, 2012.
Industrial wind turbine projects are being proposed for Shelburne, Ashfield, and other towns in West County. How might these projects affect you and your neighbors?
Click here for a video clip of the movie and a review in the Wall Street Journal. Other reviewers have said:
“Beautifully produced, elegantly structured, edited authoritatively…unforgettable characters.” Patricia Aufderheide, Center for Social Media
“Fascinating, insightful, and fair…” Stewart Nusbaumer, Huffington Post
The showing is free and open to the public. Memorial Hall Theater is handicapped accessible.
Fairhaven Blade Signing Protest
Windwise-Fairhaven members came out on Saturday March 10, 2012 to remind people that they are “concerned for the health of my community.”
Watch the video: “Too Close.”
Curt Brown’s coverage of the blade-signing protest in South Coast Today cited Louise Barteau’s call for the developer to post bonds–to guarantee against health costs and make up for loss of property value.
“We want protection against harm and loss,” she said. “We believe this is the responsibility of their company. We hope they will hear us. We are asking very reasonable things.”
Testimony on DEP/DPH report
L-R moderator, Suzanne Condon (DPH), Ken Kimmell (DEP), Alicia McDevitt (DEP) listen as Dawn Devlin from Windwise Fairhaven speaks. The T-shirt's message is "Stop the Fairhaven Turbines."
Dawn Devlin (pictured left) has her hands full in Fairhaven, where citizens meet tonight to consider how to track health effects of the turbines slated for the Little Bay neighborhood. At the Monday, March 5, 2012 meeting, Windwise Fairhaven invites all residents living within 3000 feet of the 2-turbine site to a “Safety Health Meeting” at the Northeast Maritime Institute on Washington St. The program offers a system for residents to keep records of incidents that occur once the turbines commence operations.
Devlin testified at one of three hearings held by the Massachusetts Departments of Environmental Protection and Public Health. the public comment period continues until 5:00 pm on March 19, 2012.
Dozens of people attended the three hearings, refuting claims in the expert panel’s report. Neil Andersen found himself turned into a research subject by proximity to turbines; and John Cowl, MD, likens this scenario to an indicator of a new pandemic. Howard Gostin contradicts the report’s finding on noise emitted from various types of turbines.
Lament for Fairhaven MA and Baotou China
In her poignant oped, “Not sure what I’m against, but I know what I’m for” (South Coast Today March, 3, 2012), Louise Barteau captures the coming loss for Fairhaven when the turbines start to spin.
I am for the children who will live and go to school under the shadow of the turbines. I am for the parents who deserved to be told about the turbines when voting for the new school. I am for the people in Falmouth who have had the courage to stand up and challenge the developers, their town government, the DEP and the DPH, in order to prevent other towns from making the same mistakes that they made.
…
And I most certainly am for the owls, the bats, the terns, the trees, the plants, the frogs, the wetlands, the marsh and the bay. It turns out that whatever isn’t good for them; it most likely isn’t good for us either. No matter how hard we try to forget it, we belong to the animal kingdom, too. If turbines drive away wildlife, there’s a good chance that they will drive us away as well.
Photo by Red Door News
Recent investigative reporting in Baotou China by Simon Parry in China and Ed Douglas in Scotland captures the high cost of the supposedly green energy represented in Fairhaven by the Sinovel turbine. The manufacturing plant in Hami, Xinjiang relies on the rare earth minerals toxically mined in Baotou.
Hidden out of sight behind smoke-shrouded factory complexes in the city of Baotou, and patrolled by platoons of security guards, lies a five-mile wide ‘tailing’ lake. It has killed farmland for miles around, made thousands of people ill and put one of China’s key waterways in jeopardy.
Forbes Magazine writer Gady Epstein told readers that Baotou was among the “Names you need to know in 2011.” But his spin was the unfair advantage of businesses competing with Chinese state-owned companies. He neglected to relate the even higher health costs of unregulated mining and smelting of the Neodymium used in the turbines (and other “green” technologies).
Wind Wise ~ Massachusetts 