The board amended the Mason County Zoning Ordinance at its monthly meeting and eased the regulation on the amount of noise large or industrial wind turbines can produce. The amendment allowed an increase in noise from 45 to 55 decibels - a level still lower than normal conversation, which the county says and several Web sites concur, falls at about 60 to 70 decibels. Although there are currently no large industrial wind turbines in Mason County, the county's Zoning and Building Director Mary Reilly said several companies are looking ...

A noise control consultant and acoustics expert urged planning commissioners here to create their own wind turbine ordinance that's tailored to the local community and more restrictive than the state's guidelines. Roughly 40 area residents, as well as some DTE Energy representatives, turned out for Wednesday's Lake Township Planning Commission meeting featuring a presentation by Richard R. James, owner of the Okemos-based E-Coustic Solutions. ...Township officials asked James to come to a meeting and share some of his expertise because they currently are conducting research for a wind overlay ordinance. Lake Township instituted a one-year moratorium on any wind farm developments during the township board's March meeting, said Lake Township Cleric and Planning Commissioner Valerie McCallum.

Neighbors of a proposed electrical substation are threatening the Elmwood Township trustee who plans to sell 10 acres to Wolverine Power Cooperative adjacent to a large windmill north of M-72. ...In an anonymous letter addressed "Dear Mr. and Mrs. Lautner," the Lautners were told by "concerned neighbors" that "our goal is to hold you personally and financially responsible for our hardship and we will pursue this relentlessly. We will expose this to the media, newspapers, television, etc." A story on the substation appeared in the Wednesday edition of the Traverse City Record-Eagle. The "neighbors" wrote that the substation would lower adjoining property values. "This scar is the legacy Terry and Kathy Lautner will leave their family," it continued. Concerns were also raised during public comment at the monthly meeting.

Huron County planners won't take action on a noise study funded by a group critical of windmills in the Thumb. Residents for Sound Economics and Planning paid $3,000 for an ambient noise study by Richard James of E-Coustic Solutions in Okemos.

Wind proponents and opponents alike packed into Wednesday's Huron County Planning Commission meeting to hear a presentation by a noise control engineer who conducted a study to counter that which originally was submitted to the board by Noble Environmental Power, LLC. "Noble did a study for you back in 2005 in which they went through much of what is normally done for site planning, unfortunately what they did was very biased in their favor," said Richard James. He is an acoustics expert who has more than 35 years of experience in Community Noise and a former member of the American National Standards (ANSI) Noise S12 Working group that oversees ANSI Standards for Community Noise. "I can't say that it was biased intentionally, but the end result of what they did was biased."

The first commercial wind farm planned for Michigan's Thumb will be too loud for a rural area and could result in lawsuits unless zoning rules are changed, an Okemos consultant says. Jeanette Hagen, a manager with Connecticut-based Noble Environmental Power, which plans to begin erecting 41 large windmills in Huron County's Bingham Township around July, says the consultant's study is flawed and won't stop the long-delayed project from progressing. "So many people are wanting to see these up and we're hoping to get these up and help energize the economy in the Thumb," Hagen said. The study, by E-Coustic Solutions of Okemos, cost about $3,000 and was paid for by Residents for Sound Economics and Planning, a group of Thumb residents that has been critical of the windmill project.