For Those Nearby, Miserable Hum Of Clean Energy

For Those Nearby, Miserable Hum Of Clean Energy
VINALHAVEN, Me. — Like nearly all of the residents on this island in Penobscot Bay, Art Lindgren and his wife, Cheryl, cel­ebrated the arrival of three giant wind turbines late last year. That was before they were turned on.
“In the first 10 minutes, our jaws dropped to the ground,” Lindgren said. “Nobody in the area could believe it. They were so loud.”
Now, the Lindgrens, along with a dozen or so neighbors living less than a mile from the $15 million wind facility here, say the indus trial whoosh-and-whoop of the 123-foot blades is making life in this otherwise tranquil corner of the island unbearable.
They are among a small but growing number of families and homeowners across the country who say they have learned the hard way that wind power — a clean alternative to electricity from fossil fuels — is not without emissions of its own.
Lawsuits and complaints about turbine noise, vibrations and subsequent lost property value have cropped up in Illinois, Texas, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Massachusetts, among other states. Like the Lindgrens, many of the people complaining the loudest are reluctant converts to the antiwind movement.
Of the 250 new wind farms that have come online in the United States over the last two years, about a dozen or so have gener ated significant noise complaints, according to Jim Cummings, the founder of the Acoustic Ecology Institute, an online clearinghouse for information on sound-related environmental issues.
In almost all cases, it is not me chanical noise arising from the central gear box or nacelle of a turbine that residents react to, but rather the sound of the blades.
Turbine noise can be controlled by reducing the rotational speed of the blades. But the turbines on Vinalhaven already operate that way after 7 p.m., and George Bak er, the chief executive of Fox Is land Wind — a for-profit arm of the island’s electricity co-operative — said that turning the turbines down came at an economic cost.
“The more we do that, the higher goes the price of electricity on the island,” he said. TOM ZELLER Jr.