Dr, Kenneth Jaffe's response to the health and safety content of a June 2006 presentation by the NY State Department of State (DOS) in Delware County, NY. The DOS presentation, which included a discussion of the impact of industrial turbine projects on communities and individuals, is intended to guide local officials in the process of writing regulations. Dr. Jaffe's response addresses what he believes are substantive misstatements, mischaracterizations, biased emphasis and faulty data contained in the DOS presentation.

Noise Impact on People Icing Safety New York

But I was sitting at my kitchen table in North Buffalo, far from the wind farms of the Southern Tier, and such distance makes for simple, black-and-white comprehension. There are places in Western New York where wind energy isn’t so clear a choice. Places with names like Perry, Sheldon and Arkwright, rural towns perched atop the high glacial ridges to the east and south of the city, whose landscapes might soon be dominated by hundreds of towering, 400-foot windmills. As wind companies eye their windswept fields and make overtures to local town boards, divisions run deeper and deeper between citizens who disagree on the merits of wind farm development in their backyards. In such locales, the gray areas of wind development come into sharp focus.

Impact on Wildlife Lighting Impact on People Property Values Taxes & Subsidies General Impact on Landscape USA New York

There are issues with noise, vibration and shadow flicker all having detrimental effects on people and animals.

Impact on Wildlife Impact on People New York

While the industry portrays electricity-generating windmills as a benign and natural source of power, community opposition to new windmill farms is cropping up across the country - particularly in Eastern states, where there are more people fleeing urban blight to live in idyllic rural towns.

Noise Impact on People USA New Mexico New York

The idea of windmills brings to mind bucolic Renaissance paintings of Dutch landscapes and tulip beds. But that is hardly the experience of some who have to live next to the 400-foot electricity-generating windmills being built across America's breezy plains.

Noise Lighting Impact on People General New York

This testimony prepared and presented by Dr. Nina Pierpont is one of the first public acknowledgements of Wind Turbine Syndrome. An excerpt of Dr. Pierpont's testimony is shown below. Her full testimony can be accessed by clicking the link on this page.

Impact on People Noise New York

For those who live among the towers, the consequences of the development are palpable. The construction required building new roads and widening existing ones to make room for oversize vehicles. Hundreds of workers moved into town or stayed in trailers on the job site during the summer rush. The rural landscape was transformed into an industrial setting. Where stands of poplars and fields of corn and hay covered the plateau, the smooth lines of the light gray towers and steady rotation of the rotors now define the view. And the noises changed. The unobstructed wind has always been the dominant sound on the plateau. Now, the whoosh of the wind is mixed with the hum of the machines and a mechanical whomp of the blades turning.

Noise Impact on People Impact on Landscape New York

This Final Generic Environmental Impact Statement (FGEIS) has been prepared for the Ecogen, LLC (Ecogen) Prattsburgh/Italy Wind Farm Project (Project) on the behalf of the Lead Agency, the Steuben County Industrial Development Agency (SCIDA). The FGEIS is prepared pursuant to the New York State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQR), Environmental Conservation Law, Article 8, 6NYCRR Part 617, and its implementing regulations.

Impact on Wildlife Impact on People Safety General Impact on Landscape Impact on Economy Zoning/Planning New York

People remember Tug Hill as gorgeous and wild. No more.

Impact on People Impact on Landscape New York

Initially, I was delighted. But then I began listening to the concerns of residents near the proposed site, hikers, skiers, birdwatchers, astronomers who frequent the nearby observatory and even trainee pilots concerned about 400 foot wind turbines cropping up in the flight path to the Ithaca airport. As a result, I am no longer an unabashed supporter of tapping Mount Pleasant.

Impact on People General New York

In these early stages of U.S. wind development, promoters still have it pretty easy. They're our new best friends! But it's likely their popularity will be short-lived, as it won't take long before rural America realizes that their own initial awe and stupor was contrived, allowing the very quality of their lives to be stolen out from under them, and they will also realize, too late, that their loss was in vain.

Impact on People General New York

...I want people to be well aware of the negative side of these giant windmills before allowing them to be built in your neighborhoods.

Noise Lighting Impact on People New York

It was almost 23 years ago when we built the home we hope to retire in. While we were looking for land to build on, we searched high and low for a piece of property we could afford. Our funds were limited and so were the parcels of land in our price range. We looked at the 3-acre parcel that seemed so desolate a number of times. We drove by in the early spring and tried to picture what it would be like atop this barren hillside in the cold, snowy months of a “Fenner winter”. The one thing that we did know was that in the summer months there was a magnificent view to the west and the sunsets were incredible. We wanted the piece and quiet of the country and this seemed like our best bet. ...Well, as I sit in my kitchen and type this on my computer I hear the constant hum of the blades, its early November, a brisk day and of course the windows are closed so that muffles the sound a little. In the summer, with the windows open there is nothing to block out the humming or the grinding sound that the turbine makes when it is being turned.

Impact on People New York

Wind turbines to produce electricity on a large scale – “wind farms” – are currently being proposed for parts of Tug Hill. Large-scale wind farms are a relatively new occurrence in the Northeast, and since they are new there are many questions that do not have clear answers.

Impact on Wildlife Impact on People General Impact on Landscape Zoning/Planning New York

Noise Lighting Impact on People Property Values New York

Impact on People General New York

Calvin Luther Martin, Malone, NY 11/4/05 It’s Friday evening and I just got off the phone with a middle-aged lady who lives on the Tug Hill Plateau near Watertown, New York (USA). What makes this banal fact remarkable is that the woman now finds herself living in a mind-blowing forest of 40-story-high industrial wind turbines. The developers (Is this the right word to use for these people?) have given it the charming name, Maple Ridge Windfarm. Everyone else in Upstate New York knows it as the Tug Hill Plateau: a high tableland famous for its views of the Adirondacks (to the south), Canada (to the north), and L. Ontario (to the west). Also a serious migratory bird flyway. People remember Tug Hill as gorgeous and wild. No more. Sarah (I have changed her name to protect her privacy) was eager to talk. I found her full of homespun wisdom and quick to chuckle, even though she was in obvious pain. This place, which has been home and memories, has become a nightmare. When the turbine salesmen rang her doorbell a year ago to ask what she thought “about renewable energy” (that was their opening line), she soon steered the conversation around to the stupendous view. Look there, she said, pointing to the mountains: this is what I cherish. No more. She is now surrounded by colossal industrial wind turbines. How many? I asked. Fifteen to twenty within a mile radius, she replied. I could hear her despair, her disbelief. The wind companies (Zilkha and PPM) spent the summer feverishly cobbling together their Goliath machines: 187 in this first phase of the project. There are more to come in Phase II. And who knows how many more phases? Besides the dozen plus overshadowing her, there is a power substation mere yards from her backdoor, in a ravine she remembers well as a child. (The ravine was often struck by lightning, she recalled, as she wondered if this was the best spot for a power station. Fond memories often bubbled to the surface as we talked—a surface now rendered incomprehensible.) Sarah took the company-sponsored bus trip to Fenner, NY, to inspect Fenner’s 20 turbines (“Go to Fenner and see for yourself”: they got the same cheery line we get here, in Clinton & Franklin counties). She thought the Fenner turbines huge, but, it turns out, they are not as colossal as what she now has next door. Besides, that was only 20; this is 187. The number boggles her mind. She met a lady in Fenner with a turbine or two on her property. She motioned Sarah aside and whispered not to trust the wind energy company. The woman and her husband are not getting what the company promised, and are suing as a result. The wind salesmen snowed Sarah’s town board. They promised the sun and the moon; the board swooned and said amen. The wind guys managed to talk the town into a PILOT (Payment in Lieu of Taxes) rather than taxation, to Sarah’s disgust. She was clearly dubious the salesmen would deliver what they promised. And when it came to a public hearing, the town board hid the announcement so cunningly that Sarah was totally unaware of it. The construction has shattered her life. Noise. Roads cratered and potholed and rutted. Trees chain-sawed and bulldozed into piles. Giant pits bored into the earth and filled with rebar-reinforced concrete. Finally, the towers and 40-ton propellers and 60-ton nacelles stacked atop all this. Literally, skyscrapers. The turbines are not yet running; they will be in another few months. Sarah dreads that day: the pulsed thump thump thump; the huge shadow from blades sweeping the landscape, everywhere you look (morning & evening). Sarah has sensitive hearing; she’s especially worried about the low frequency thump, night and day, weeks on end. Already she struggles with 187 flashing red lights. And she tries to compose herself over the floodlit power station next door. When she telephoned the project manager to ask why those confounded lights need to be left on all night, he got testy and dismissed her. The floodlights still drill into her windows. Welcome to Maple Ridge Windfarm. A blasted, ruined, industrialized landscape where there was once serenity. And beauty. Sarah wandered down to the old family farm earlier this fall. She stood on the road and gazed upon vandalism. And wept. She’s angry. She feels lied to. She has a neighbor, a young man and his wife and little children, who is also outraged. The man is building a lovely home; he moved here because of the magnificent views, the beauty. Now, this. He worries about his kids’ health once the generators fire up. Sarah feels helpless, and kept saying she thinks she will move. Driven from her home. She worries no one will buy it, or will offer a fraction of its pre-turbine worth. She foresees town revenues plummeting as people refuse to pay the tax on turbine-depreciated property. In the end, she said, she and her neighbors were not organized well enough to stop the wind salesmen. The property owners and town fathers fell in line perfectly, like sheep to be slaughtered. Yet many of them don’t live on their land, or have moved elsewhere, leaving Sarah and her neighbors to deal with this horror. I urged her to start a daily journal of her experiences and the “progress” of the wind power project. I also urged her to take photographs of her landscape and the windmills. And I suggested she get an electrical engineer to check for ambient underground current, so she can sue the wind companies for stray current once the turbines go on line. I suggested, too, that she and her neighbors get a complete physical and neurological exam before the turbines are fired up, again, to establish a medical baseline for future medical problems. I told her, finally, I had seen the amazing photograph of the Tug Hill turbines in the Watertown Daily Times last month. “Yes,” she mused, “that was taken near my home.” Then added, “It’s actually worse than the picture shows.”

Impact on People New York