Does Wind Turbine Noise Affect Your Sleep or Health? (with videos)

MARS HILL -- Families who live on a portion of East Ridge Road and Mountain Road on the backside of Mars Hill say, at times over the past two and a half years, they've lived with unbearable noise. They feel their complaints have been ignored.

Watch the two-part newscast:

Part 1 

Part 2 

Wendy Todd returned to Mars Hill in 2005 with her husband and three children. They started to build their dream house on her family land. But that dream house remains unfinished, because the Todds say their dream has become a nightmare.

"After about three or four hours of heavy blade thump your body starts to get uneasy. It's kind of like kids playing rap music, you know you can handle it for a while, but then it starts to wear on your nerves and then if it interferes with your sleep and it goes on for days, it's sort of like a form of torture," Todd said.

Lorraine and Arnold Tardy built their retirement home in Mars Hill. Lorraine Tardy has been on medication for migraines for most of her adult life, but she feels that since the turbines started spinning, the headaches have become worse, and the medication is less effective.

"It's just that if you could go to sleep when you get them and you can't when you hear this thump thump thump and your head is pounding pounding its like they work together."

Bernard Stikney and Diane Glidden also started building their new home before the turbines went online. They have taken videos of the shadow flicker from the blades and have recorded noise levels.

"We don't enjoy our weekends like we used to we used to enjoy having barbeques on our deck or to have friends over and we do what we can to try to get away on the weekends"

Glidden says that since the turbines started up, she has been prescribed medication for sleep disturbance, depression, and headaches.

"I am in fact affected with depression, my doctor says its because of the stress, the lack of sleep, alot of the anger I have inside of me because of the windmills."

Some of the residents of East Ridge Road, and Mountain Road live less than a half mile from the turbines. During our day long visit we couldn't hear much turbine noise outside their homes and none at all inside the homes. Outisde Wendy Todds back door, we could hear the rain more than the turbines. Todd and the other residents told us we were there on a day when the noise was not nearly as bad as it gets.

"We've had times where the dishwashers running, the washer and dryer are running, and the kids are all doing their thing and you can still hear the turbines over all of that. So it's a noise that penetrates and it tends to be repeitive in nature," Todd stated.

All the families insist that the repetitive pulsing of the turbines doesn't compare to any other noise. Which adds to their frustration.

"You'll hear things from people in town like 'Oh you'll get used to it' or 'Oh you should try living next to a railroad or you should try living on Route 1' , and most of us have done that. Most of us have lived in places like that and its not like that this is different," Todd Expained.

Roger shaw is the superintendent of schools for SAD 42. His home and office are both about a mile and a half from the nearest turbine. Shaw doesn't doubt the complaints of people who live closer, but he says he can't hear the turbines from the school district office or his home.

"It has not disrupted my sleep or my families. It has not been an annoyance to me," Shaw said.

But residents who live closer say any doubters should spend a week in their homes.

"People come out here on a good day and they drive by and stop. Well we dont hear nothing you're not here. If you lived out here and you knew what it was before these were up here you'd hear something, because theres always something going on. Before you could hear a pin drop out there," Stickney said.

State health officials say they have no definitive medical evidence that the wind turbines are making residents sick, but a radiologist from Northern Maine Medical Center in Fort Kent believes he has found some alarming evidence in Mars Hill that deserves more attention.

Dr. Michael Nissenbaum decided to research the Mars Hill Project after the a wind developer set its sights on his community. He created a questionaire and interviewed 15 people from 11 families, including the Todds, Tardys, Glidden, and Stikney.

"These people are suffering they are truly suffering. And no one is listening to them and no one really seems to be doing anything about it," Nissenbaum said.

Nissenbaum says 14 of the 15 residents reported difficulty sleeping, and 15 new prescription drugs are being taken by those residents for conditions including migraines, depression, and sleep disturbance.

"The frequencies for some of the disturbances particulary sleep disturbance and headaches is so high to any reasonable physician looking at the data its enough for him to say wait a minute theres something here."

Nissenbaum also believes Maine Department of Environmental Protection noise regulations were not adequate in Mars Hill because the state granted developers a variance to produce sound levels 5 decibels above the 45 decibel nightime limit, which is the maximum sound level that should be recorded at the projects property lines. He also believes the method used to measure sound did not sufficiently factor in the low frequency repetive sound produced by turbines.

"It's like an airplane that never takes off or like a locomotive that never arrives or never leaves."

Nissenbaum admits his survey is preliminary and lacks scientific controls, but he and the medical staff at Northern Maine Medical Center feel there's enough evidence to enact a moratorium on wind projects until a more in depth health study is done.

First Wind, the developer of the Mars Hill Project, does not believe a moratorium is needed. Matt Kearns, First Winds Vice President of Development for the Northeast says the company went through a very thorough permitting process through the Maine Department of Environmental Protection.

"DEP standards are very aggressive. The studies that are done, They are extraordinarily rigorous. We do the studies, they then have a third party review the study results and then DEP decides whether they issue a permit."

Dr Dora Mills, director of the Maine Center for Disease Control also does not believe Maine should put the brakes on wind power.

"I do not believe there is any reason for a moratorium on wind turbines in Maine in fact I think its just the opposite. We need to go full fledged and build more wind turbines because of the fact that they impact our health in a very positive way. They make us less dependent on foreign oil and coal and we know that our high dependency on foreign oil and coal right now leads to people in Maine dying prematurely of asthma and heart disease and other ill affects." Mills said.

While the state has no plans to do an in depth health study in Mars Hill, Mills says she has written a letter of support for a Yale professor seeking a research grant to do such a study. She also says Maine DEP has learned a lot since Mars Hill and has enacted stricter regulations to ensure no residents are adversely affected by any future projects.

Kearns says First Wind will continue to listen to the concerns of Mars Hill residents, and continue to address concerns of residents in other communities where it plans to build.

"I think it's really important that we study these projects very carefully and we do through the rigorous permitting process that the state of Maine has," Kearns said.

But that offers no comfort to the residents of Mars Hill who live closest to the turbines.

"I grew up in a bubble thinking that people are basically good and there are things put in place to protect people that are failsafe and they're just not. They're not," Todd said.

Dr. Nissenbaum presented his survey to the Maine Medical Associations public health committee in late March in hopes that it will endorse his call for a moratrorium.

The Public Health Committee is expected to discuss the survey at its May 20th meeting.

Former Governor Angus King, who is involved with another wind developer told NEWS CENTER that he has no doubt that some people in Mars Hill live too close to the turbines and are bothered by the noise, and stressed that as long as people live an appropriate distance from the turbines, there will be no adverse impacts.