This letter was submitted to the Town of New Shoreham on Block Island prior to the Town granting permission for Deepwater Wind to erect a met tower on town land under the Special Temporary Provisions (Section 112) of the Town's zoning. Under Section 112, permits may be granted only for a use or purpose that cannot be accomplished by compliance with provisions of the ordinance. Attorney Hagopian argues that Deepwater's proposal does not meet the "exigent circumstance requirements" including risks to public health and safety or any other emergency or urgent necessity that warrants invoking this provision.

This submission deals only with the potential impact on the natural environment and in particular birds and bats.

"In a number of European nations, offshore wind farms are well established. However, in the United States, the concept is relatively new and an established approval process for offshore wind farm permitting does not yet exist. This document identifies the approval process one would need to take in order to site an offshore wind farm in coastal waters of the U.S., particularly North Carolina."

Editor's Note: The U.S. Minerals Management Service, a branch of the Interior Department, has review responsibility for offshore projects per the 2005 Energy Policy Act passed in May 2005.

This statement appears on the Oklahoma Office of the Secretary of the Environment website.

"Today, the task before the Joint Committee (regarding Bill S40) is to hear from the public on what would appear simple

- the giving and taking of “driveway” easements between the Commonwealth’s Wachusett Reservation (Stagecoach Trail) and the Town of Princeton’s legal “right of way” for its wind power site. As well, the town is offering the to transfer to the Commonwealth, ownership of, five acres of their 16-acre wind site.

I urge the Joint Committee for Bill S40 to carefully consider the following with regard to your recommendations an for easement exchange and accession of land from Princeton:

1. The Wachusett Wind Site is a 16 acre parcel wholly surrounded by the Wachusett Reservation and flanked within few feet, on three sides, by the well traveled Midstate, Harrington and Stagecoach trails. This portion of the state park is accessible and popular.

2. The present eight windmills are 120-feet high and are proposed to be replaced with two windmills as high as a 35- story building and with blades that stretch as wide as a football field - windmills whose elevation will come with 150- feet of the mountain’s elevation.

3. In the wintertime Wachusett experiences unusual ice storms in number and severity

4. In the wintertime, the windmills accumulate ice - then release it when it melts and falls, when it is blown off by wind or is thrown it off by the rotating blades

5. This ice has put holes in the roofs of utilty buildings on the wind farm and scattters itself across the fully accesssible wind site, the state reservation and hiking trails, threatening state park viisitors The risk associated with being struck windmill ice can be quantified and is relative to one’s distance from the windmills and will increase geometrically with the proposed windmills.

6. Windmills and wind data collection towers at Wachusett have structurally failed five times in twenty years on the Town of Princeton (PMLD) site. This also threatens the state park visitors as well with collapsing metal structures and flying blades. Proposed windmills and data towers will not be installed in compliance withthe manufacuturer’s recommendations and safety warnings."......

This incriminating memorandum on wind turbine noise was prepared by the Ontario provincial government and obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. The memo was released by Wind Concerns Ontario's WINDYLEAKS campaign. The document, written in April 2010, shows that the McGuinty Liberals were well aware that noise from industrial wind turbines operating -- even in compliance with Ontario's wind turbine regulations -- were causing adverse effects on communities.

The Melancthon I and Melancthon II wind energy facilities (200 megawatts), known as Melancthon EcoPower Center, began commercial operation in March 2006. Since that time, numerious complaints of turbine noise and other adverse effects were reported; homes were abandoned. The Ontario government took almost 1½ years to respond to a freedom of information act to finally release this document, a draft abatement plan to address the noise. The document was never released to the public and the plan was never implemented. This document exposes that the Ontario Provincial government was well aware of the adverse effects created by the turbines years ago but chose to let people suffer.

This important decision by the Ontario Environmental Review Tribunal examines evidence on whether the Suncor’s Kent Breeze Wind Farm project which was approved according to Ontario’s Ministry of the Environment Noise Guidelines for Wind Farms and Ontario Regulation 359/09 made under the Environmental Protection Act, will seriously harm humans living nearby. The overall conclusion of the Tribunal (provided below) makes clear that wind turbine facilities placed too close to residents can cause harm to human health. The full report can be accessed by clicking on the links at the bottom of this page.

An Open Letter has been sent to the Prime Minister of Canada and the Minister of Health for Canada exposing numerous insufficient procedures and processes utilized in order for Health Canada to develop a national study into the known and acknowledged adverse health effects from industrial wind installations. The Health Canada study design as published on July 10, 2012 is expected to be concluded in 2014. Concerns are that the design is not crafted thoroughly enough and that the participants are not independent experts. This could produce unscientific results which will have global consequences. Carmen Krogh is one of the world's foremost independent researchers on health impacts of wind turbines and author of the attached letter.

This paper provides an assessment of wind power effects on technical and economic performance of today’s electric power systems. While small penetration of wind power is unlikely to cause any qualitative changes, significant percent of wind-generated power will require major rethinking of generation dispatch and automatic generation control, in particular. We summarize technical risks, as well as the economic implications on total cost of providing power to customers. The discussion is presented for both traditional fully regulated utilities and for the portions of the electric power interconnection which are undergoing restructuring. The paper suggests that the ultimate benefit of wind power to the customers will depend to a large extent on how well are today’s operating practices adjusted to make the most out of the available resources, including the intermittent wind power. Moreover, we suggest that an analysis could be done to determine the amount of wind power for a given system beyond which benefits are difficult to capture because of the necessary additional infrastructure cost.