Wind turbines are noisy a lot of the time - very noisy. There are two sounds, a motor drone and an intermittent whooshing sound. The noise is constant, loud and penetrating. This noise penetrates my house; especially my bedroom at night, when it is at its loudest because of the cool air at ground level. This noise is with my windows closed. Disturbing your sleep, yes; good for your health, no. Your comment that this is a noise crickets can drown out is wrong. The sound from the turbines drowns out the noise of the crickets. It's obvious you have not experienced turbine noise in your bedroom.

Despite repeated requests, no-one on the "pro" side will tell us how much electricity is generated by these devices when the wind fails to blow; the best answer we get is that they can be sited where the wind never does fail, but even if such an onshore site exists it is not claimed that the wind-force is consistent throughout the day. Secondly, we are told that they emit only 20dB of noise which, assuming it is true, may seem - and indeed is - trivial. But the term "dB" is widely misunderstood ...I would question the figure, as I have stood within earshot of just one of these things and "whisper" it did not; moreover, the sound of a "farmyard" full of the creatures can be readily imagined.

Had the research been peer reviewed, published in a scientific journal of repute and conducted completely independently by Ryerson University, with funding for the project not emanating from any level of government, credence could legitimately be given to its findings. ...The lengths and depths to which governments at all levels will go in order to foist their projects onto an unwilling electorate no longer surprises me, but I am bitterly disappointed. We deserve better.

So the wind power industry and consultants hired by the government tell us Ontario's noise rules for wind farms are 'very good' and 'strike a balance'. ...While the MOE studies the problem, Ontario's lax noise rules allow the government to let contracts worth $15 billion for another 3,000 wind turbines to be squeezed into populated southern Ontario. As the wind farm developers follow the yellow brick road to Oz, families caught up in the developments will be exposed to noise pollution levels two times higher than what the World Health Organization says are safe.

As I am Jane Davis, I hope you will allow me the time honoured right to reply to this gentleman's statements. Noise pollution from the Wind Farm 930 metres from our home has indeed caused us to abandon our home and rent a house 5 miles away. Not an easy decision to make when your home is on your farm. ...The Local Government Ombudsman has only yesterday decided that our situation needs proper investigation, with all facts available to all parties and this is to happen in the near future. She is however concerned that the planning condition for noise "put in place to protect local residents" and based on the industry standard ETSU-R-97, is "Vague, open to interpretation, immeasurable and thus unenforceable".

WHOOSH, whoosh, whoosh. Or should that be whump, whump, whump? I'm trying to imagine what life might be like living next door to a wind farm. A few weeks back I put an offer in on a house with splendid views of the Borders countryside. Then I found out a planning application is under consideration for eight 100ft turbines on a hill just a mile away from the dream cottage. Oh, the irony. Having waxed lyrical about renewable energy, there's no way I can object to turbines being put up. So why can't I get the opening sequence of Apocalypse Now out of my head? The slow, repetitive whoosh of helicopters has been translated from Vietnam to rural Roxburghshire. The main cause of the 'Nam flashbacks are the articles I've read about low-frequency noise.

Our impressive upper-level winds (average year-round 13.8 mph, no less) will make those jumbo-jet-sized turbine blades churn merrily. That's far faster than the 9 mph the super-efficient Siemens generators need to start turning over - and turning us on. I know the estimated 3,600 lucky Hutchinson Island recipients of this windy bounty are besides themselves with excitement over the news. I'm not so sure how the other hundreds of thousands of FPL customers feel about footing most of the $45 million bill.

My home is downwind of the predominant wind direction from the Deeping St Nicholas wind farm. We have had to abandon our home as a place to live in as we were no longer able to sleep at home. The wind farm became operational in June 2006 and we suffered the same effects. It is becoming increasingly clear because of 'wind shear effects' no turbines should be erected on the eastern counties of England (Professor Fritz van den berg in Lyon at the International Wind Turbine Noise Conference2007.

Likewise with these huge turbines we have to take into consideration all the effects they will have on the environment around them. This includes the roads, the foundations of the turbines, the converter station in the Kergord valley, the quarries and the shadows. The flickering shadow from these turbines when the sun is at a low ark of 20 degrees would be in the region of a quarter of a mile long. Up to now the huge destructive visual impact of this oversized proposal has been my main objection, however during the last few weeks my view has changed. ...However what has disturbed me more than anything is the sound of the turbines. This is not so much the actual decibels as the deep vibratory effect of the turning blades that seemed to penetrate my very being. Call me a wimp but I have not been able to spend much longer than an hour up there without feeling distressed, disorientated and nauseous.

"We are living in a situation where the sounds penetrate our house. I'm losing sleep. They frequently let these turbines go at high speeds in the middle of the night. It's not uncommon for me to be woken up at 3 a.m. and not be able to get back to bed. I'm a physician, and I have to be at my best. I'm doing procedures on patients and it is not a fair situation for myself, for my patients, and not fair for the other residents who are affected by this. We're not the only ones affected; we have a petition with 40 names on it. ..."I'm not against putting in green energy. I'm not against wind turbines. What I am against is the irresponsible placement of these turbines in places that are not appropriate.

I have reviewed the environmental impact statements of several local communities that are considering approval of large wind farms in their localities. The only acoustical measurement that I see in their analyses deals with measuring an averaged noise level over the affected area. These draft environmental impact statements do not evaluate the annoying noises that rapidly change in noise level, such as the cyclic whooshing noises produced when the turbine blades pass by the support pedestal or the transient noises produced at turbine cut-in or cut-out or those periodic noises produced by the turbine gearboxes. Nor do they document the presence or absence of significant annoyance potential of low-frequency noises or vibrations which are known to be a very significant problem if the noise levels are high enough.

After seeing the full page ad in your paper on Jan. 29 entitled Wind Opponent Myth No. 4 - "Wind Turbines are Very Noisy," I knew I had to respond. Basically, the Mid-Atlantic Renewable Energy Coalition is saying you do not have to worry about noise from industrial wind turbines if they are coming to a ridge near you. Well, I am not sure how they conduct their decibel studies, but for all practical purposes, they mean absolutely nothing. You see, our home is over a half mile from one of those ridge-top industrial wind plants, and I am here to tell you the noise from those turbines has had a dramatic impact on the sanctity of our country home.

I was APPALLED to recently read in The Hartford Courant an exposé of the wind farms planned for the Berkshires, including one in Savoy. To quote the Green Berkshires Web site: "Wind turbines produce very little energy but a lot of tax breaks, grants, subsidies and price supports for the developers, at tremendous expense to taxpayers and electricity ratepayers." Add to that the destruction of the environment involved (20 acres cleared for each turbine, for starters) and it is clear these projects are ill-advised. ...I will clearly NOT be retiring to Savoy. My property will remain undeveloped and continue to net the town a whopping $112 per year in taxes. And I will find someplace else to spend my generous state of Connecticut pension. I find it unlikely that this will be the only revenue loss the region sustains as a result of these projects.

I would like to draw your attention to an article on P.35 of the "NFU Countryside" magazine (November 2007 issue) that describes the noise from a wind farm near Deeping St Nicholas that is 930 metres from a farm house. It is so bad that the farm tenants (Julian and Jane Davis) have to rent another house in Spalding in which to sleep. The problem is "amplitude modulation" caused by the blades moving in and out of synchronisation and causing noise they describe as "like four helicopters circling above your property or an approaching train". ...I am, in principle, in favour of wind farms but when you visit Holland, Germany and other European countries with a far higher density of wind farms you will very quickly notice that they are sited well away from any habitation.

Each time I've visited the Maple Ridge Wind Farm I've become more depressed about wind energy development. I could never seem to reconcile the professed benefits of these projects with their obvious adverse impacts. But today I learned the most valuable reason to oppose this industry. The Maple Ridge project site is 12 miles long by 3 miles wide. Up and down the roads we went today and I viewed this industrial power facility once again. In viewing the entire expanse of impacted area I couldn't help but notice that there was no sense of a living community - no routine life. No people walking their dogs, no hikers, no bicyclers, no children laughing and playing (school was out), no clothes hanging out to dry, no school buses, no dogs barking, and very few birds, no one on their four wheelers on their own lands enjoying the open air. There were no roadside stands selling pumpkins. The serenity of rural community life that we all know and love here in northern Jefferson County was strangely absent. In its stead, we saw massive machines everywhere we looked, on both sides of the road. This was Bill Moore's world and PPM literally owned it all.

Standing in a home a kilometer away from the nearest wind turbine --one of seventeen at the Pubnico Point Wind Farm in Yarmouth County, Nova Scotia --Tony experiences a sensation that he describes as "similar to being close to a high power car audio sound system playing drums. Both situations cause problems that I would say resemble arrhythmia." ...One potential problem associated with wind power is noise, like that experienced by Tony. In some locations, residents living near wind farms find the sound to be an annoyance. A few, reporting acute and persistent health problems, have abandoned their homes, unable to sell them.

The commercial wind industry must respect the people who reside in targeted development regions, and honor their right to healthy lives and peaceful enjoyment of their homes, by adopting meaningful setbacks -- measured in miles, not in feet. Continued installation of wind turbines throughout our rural and mountainous landscapes without scientific, impartial review of the impacts of this industrialization, will have devastating effects on some of the most precious ecosystems in the world.

The windfarm became operational early last June, and within three days we started having problems with the noise and hum emanating from it. ...As a result of our difficulties we have been forced to find an alternative place to sleep - our sleeping house, five miles away in Spalding itself - so we have effectively abandoned our home. Our house, which would previously have been worth about £180,000 is now likely to have a value of just the land - £35-50,000 and would not be marketable as a home for people to live in any longer.

For very good reason, we feel that we cannot trust Meridian Energy; unfortunately they have not shown themselves to be trustworthy. We are very concerned that Meridian Energy be made to comply with conditions that the Court's decision requires; these conditions are likely to require a considerable number of turbines being de-rated and turned off at times. The Court warned Meridian of this. We question how a wind farm where turbines must be de-rated or turned off to protect residents can be "the best internationally".

Indeed, the final paragraph of the summary of the report says: "The low incidence of AM and the low numbers of people adversely affected make it difficult to justify further research funding in preference to other more widespread noise issues. On the other hand, since AM cannot be fully predicted at present, and its causes are not fully understood, we consider it might be prudent to carry out further research to improve understanding in this area." In normal circumstances, if 20% of a product released in the public domain was found to be faulty it would be withdrawn.