Doctor Robert McCunney, an MIT research scientist, admitted to not having read a key report he based his testimony on. Photo by Carl Etnier.
Parties concerned about noise from wind turbines in the proposed Kingdom Community Wind project scored points Thursday when Green Mountain Power’s noise expert admitted under questioning that he hadn’t read the study on which he based his main conclusion.
Robert McCunney came to the Public Service Board hearings sporting impressive credentials: He is a medical doctor employed as an MIT research scientist, and his publications include co-authoring what he termed “a comprehensive review of the peer-reviewed scientific literature respecting wind turbines and human health.” Yet a Vermont lawyer representing the rural towns of Albany and Craftsbury pressed an admission from him that not only had his testimony cited a paper he hadn’t read, but also that he disagreed with its conclusion when it was rephrased for him.
McCunney’s written testimony concluded that the “risk of any direct adverse health effect at levels below 45dB (A) is virtually non-existent,” citing a Dutch study. Yet when attorney Jared Margolis pointed out that the study doesn’t say “that there’s no health risk or minimal health risk under 45 decibels,” McCunney admitted that he had relied on a World Health Organization paper that cited the Dutch study.
McCunney was called in by GMP to rebut testimony about noise from witnesses for other parties to the hearings on the private power company’s application to build 20 or 21 wind turbines on a ridgeline in Lowell, for a total maximum capacity of 50 to 63 megawatts. The witnesses raised concerns about how loud the wind turbines would be, and also the effects of low frequency sounds and “infrasound,” which is lower in pitch than the normal threshold for human hearing.
Margolis’ cross-examination of MIT’s McCunney was a slow, arduous process. Margolis reserved 90 minutes for the cross-examination, and McCunney seemed to try to run down the clock.”
In previous wind cases, the Public Service Board has restricted the maximum noise at the outside of buildings in the project area to 45 decibels, measured over an hour, or 30 decibels inside. Margolis says his clients in Albany and Craftsbury are concerned that the allowed noise levels are too high, and that averaging measurements over an hour allows noise significantly higher than 45 decibels for shorter periods, which could disturb people’s sleep. He also raises the possibility that once the project is built, even if it’s in compliance with the standard for existing buildings, a property owner could not build a new house closer to the turbines, because the noise would be louder there.
Nancy Warner, president of the Lowell Mountains Group, which opposes the project, goes further. “If we have 100 acres, and we want to sit on a chair on that line that butts up against the Wileman property [on which the projected turbines would be sited], we should have the same standards applied there that we would if we were sitting in our home.” That is, they want the 30 decibel indoor standard to apply outdoors, at the property line.
Margolis’ cross-examination of MIT’s McCunney was a slow, arduous process. Margolis reserved 90 minutes for the cross-examination, and McCunney seemed to try to run down the clock. Margolis asked a simple yes or no question, and McCunney read a sentence or paragraph from a scientific paper. Margolis would ask about one thing, and McCunney would answer on a different topic. McCunney’s main area of expertise is hearing loss, and at one point he responded only about hearing loss when answering multiple questions regarding the public health effects of noise. Margolis, visibly frustrated, pleaded with the witness, “Please stop adding ‘noise-induced hearing loss.’ I would ask you to please keep in mind my question.”
Margolis questioned McCunney’s sweeping conclusion that noise below 45 decibels has a “virtually non-existent” risk of adverse health effects, based on one Dutch study. The study was on transportation noise, which McCunney agreed under questioning has a different character than the “swish swish” of wind turbine blades. McCunney also agreed, when the relevant text was pointed out to him, that the study did not even assess health effects of noise under 45 decibels.
The 45 decibel standard evaluated in the study was averaged over a year. A table in the study explained what that meant in terms of number of times a year a train or truck could rumble by and make a noise above 45 decibels that would average out to 45 decibels a year. A 90 decibel noise, which is louder than a 40 mph diesel truck 50 feet away, could occur as many as 332 times a year and still not exceed the 45 decibel standard. A 75 decibel noise, which is louder than a 50 mph passenger car at 50 feet but not as loud as a garbage disposal at 3 feet, could occur over 10,000 times.
McCunney acknowledged that 90 decibel noises, hundreds of times a year, could cause adverse health effects. He was uncertain about the effect of 10,000 occurrences of 75 decibel noises. Yet puzzlingly, he also remained steadfast in his conviction that there was a “virtually non-existent” risk of adverse health effects for noise averaged out over a year to 45 decibels.
Margolis tried again to lead McCunney through the logic: Hundreds of 90-decibel events can average to 45 decibels over a year; experiencing hundreds of 90-decibel events poses a health risk; therefore a standard of 45 decibels averaged over a year poses a health risk. McCunney would have none of it; he merely reiterated that the authors of a WHO report had read the Dutch study on transportation noise and concluded that the 45 decibel standard protected human health.
Margolis also produced the transcript of a 2010 webinar on wind turbine noise and health that McCunney had participated in. In it, McCunney said that for a wind turbine near his home, he would want to have noise levels “below 35 decibels…maybe 40.” A 45-decibel sound is perceived as twice as loud as 35 decibels.
Health benefits of wind turbines were discussed in one of the exhibits McCunney submitted into evidence. A doctor in Maine, in what is apparently testimony regarding wind turbines and the Maine noise standard, wrote, “There are tremendous potential health benefits to wind turbines, including reductions in deaths, disability, and disease due to asthma, other lung diseases, heart disease, and cancer… Wind turbines mean less dependency on foreign oil and coal that contribute to global warming and pollution (coal produces carbon dioxide, acid rain, smog, particulate pollution, carbon monoxide, and mercury), which in turn contribute to the diseases above.”
Robert Dostis, a GMP vice-president attending the hearing, said that the company has no position on what noise standard the board applies to the Kingdom Community Wind project. However, the company did not rule out appealing the Board’s order on the basis of the noise standard used. Green Mountain Power is owned by Gaz Metro based in Quebec.
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45 db averaged over a year can certainly include instances of significantly more intense noise or a few instances of vastly more intense noise. Does anyone know if that happens in the case of wind turbines? There are hundreds of installations in operation around the world, presumably being monitored rather closely. What’s the real-world range of volume? What’s a reasonable expectation of the sound, in db, dynamic range and speed of change, from the proposed installation?
Presumably turbines only make noise when the wind blows. As a sensible benchmark, something ordinary people can grasp, could a disinterested knowledgeable party (if such exists) compare the predicted sound of wind running through turbine blades on top of Lowell Mountain to, say, wind running through trees on top of Lowell Mountain? It wouldn’t be the same sound, but at a given wind velocity would it be louder? Could someone tell us that?
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I was told by parties at the hearings that the Public Service Board relies on modeled projections of sound from the turbines in permitting wind turbines, so there is work being done on that.
Everyone seems to agree that the swish-swish sound of turbine blades is different than other sorts of sounds.
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Yes, wind turbine noise has a unique profile, amplitude modulation and low frequency infrasound. See page 15 of this presentation: http://windvigilance.com/downloads/symposium2010/swv_symposium_presentation_the_torment_of_sleep_disturbance.pdf
You can read more about wind turbine noise and health issues, here are the proceedings of a conference held last fall on the subject:
http://windvigilance.com/symp_2010_proceedings.aspx
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Make it a rule that wind turbines that are about 300-400 ft tall should not be placed within one mile from people’s houses not only for noise reasons, but also for esthetic reasons.
Vermont’s Public Service Board should bend over backwards to serve the people, instead of multimillionaire vendors, developers and financiers of projects that are not suitable for Vermont.
Here is an example of responsive government.
Dutch Renewables About Face Towards Nuclear, by Willem Post; dated February 13, 2011
http://www.coalitionforenergysolutions.org/
Introduction
The Borssele Nuclear Power Station, Borssele, the Netherlands, capacity 485 MW, output 3,625 MWh/yr, started producing power in 1973. It has a pressurized water reactor, PWR, similar to Vermont Yankee and most other nuclear plants in the US, and the only nuclear power plant in the Netherlands.
Areva, a French company, reprocesses the spent fissionable material in La Hague, Manche, Basse-Normandie, France. Part of the deal is that the radioactive waste, i.e. the products of the reprocessing which are not useful, are taken back by the Netherlands. They are stored at the Central Organization for Radioactive Waste, COVRA, also in Borssele.
COVRA is the national storage facility for all radioactive wastes. It is a surface facility suitable for the next 100 years. Borssele produces around 12 metric tons of high level waste per year.
In 1994, government and parliament decided to close down the Borssele plant as of 2004. However, due to legal action by owners and employees of the plant and changes in government policy in 2002, the decommissioning was delayed until 2013, a 40-year life.
http://www.powergenworldwide.com/index/display/articledisplay.articles.powergenworldwide.nuclear.reactors.2010.09.dutch-provinces_plan.QP129867.dcmp=rss.page=1.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borssele_Nuclear_Power_Station
http://www.ask.com/wiki/Borssele_nuclear_power_plant
Dutch Opposition to Wind Power
The Netherlands annual consumption is about 108,200,000 MWh/yr. Installed capacity of wind turbines has been stagnant for the past 3 years. It was 2225, 2229, and 2237 MW of onshore and offshore wind turbines at the end of 2008, 2009 and 2010, respectively.
Wind power production was 2,237 MW x 8,760 hr/yr x national capacity factor 0.186 = 3,644,878 MWh/yr in 2010, or about 3.37% of total annual power production. For comparison, the national capacity factor of Germany is 0.167
Expanding wind power meant adding at least another thousand 3 MW, 400-ft tall wind turbines to the Dutch landscape. The Dutch people found that to be an unacceptable intrusion into their lives.
Additional offshore wind turbines were considered but rejected, because the capital costs were found to be excessive and the power produced too little. See Base-Loaded website below.
Solar power was considered but rejected, because of the German experience which has a dismal national PV solar capacity factor of 0.095. For comparison, Vermont’s statewide PV solar capacity factor is about 0.12, also dismal.
As a result, nuclear power became less controversial and is again viewed as one of many possibilities to reduce CO2 emissions and increase national energy self-reliance.
The Dutch government decided in 2006 that Borssele would remain operational until 2033, a 60-year life, the same as dozens of similar plants in the US.
http://theenergycollective.com/willem-post/46824/impact-csp-and-pv-solar-feed-tariffs-spain
http://theenergycollective.com/willem-post/46142/impact-pv-solar-feed-tariffs-germany
http://theenergycollective.com/willem-post/47519/base-power-alternatives-replace-base-loaded-coal-plants
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_the_European_Union
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power
http://www.cbs.nl/en-GB/menu/themas/industrie-energie/publicaties/artikelen/archief/2010/2010-3052-wm.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electricity_consumption
Dutch Government Decisions
Recently, the Netherlands
- became the first nation to abandon the EU-wide target of producing 20 per cent of its domestic power from renewables.
- reduced its targets for renewable energy, such as wind and solar power and reduced subsidies from 4 billion euros to 1.5 billion euros.
- approved construction of an up to 2,500 MW nuclear plant which could consist of (2) Westinghouse AP1000 units @ 1,154 MW each.
The Netherlands policy U-turn means that:
- the EU renewable targets aren’t set in stone.
- there are more cost-effective ways of reducing CO2, such as nuclear power and greater energy efficiency.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/02/10/holland_energy_switch/
http://www.nucleartownhall.com/blog/tag/borssele-plant/
http://theenergycollective.com/willem-post/46652/reducing-energy-use-houses
Nuclear and Wind Power Comparison
Power production by the new nuclear plant: 2.308 GW x 8,760 hr/yr x capacity factor 0.90 = 18,196 GWh/yr
Capital cost: 2.308 GW x $7 billion/GW = $16.2 billion
Power production by new onshore wind turbines: 11.168 GW x 8,760 hr/yr x national capacity factor 0.186 = 18,196 GWh/yr
Capital cost: 11.186 GW x $2 billion/GW = 22.34 billion
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They never got to the point–the expert witness is talking about noise exposure and hearing loss, as in occupational exposure, others about whether the sound itself causes some other harm. Occupational safety is concerned with hearing loss, not lost sleep or annoyance.
Averaging sound levels is misleading. Peak levels are also critical. Is there any discussion of this? You could average out gunshots over time to almost nothing, but instantaneous peaks over the damage threshold cause hearing loss.
This is like comparing eggplants to grapenuts, and is really irrelevant, unless windmill noise is ever above 85 dB which seems unlikely.
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I am the nearest neighbor to the Searsburg turbines.
They can wake me up in the middle of the night, *inside* my house.
Yet they meet the developers ‘standards’ for noise.
How being loud enough to wake me up in the middle of the night is not detrimental to my health is a logic stream that I just can’t follow, despite (or maybe rather *because of*) receiving an engineering degree from Mr. McCunney’s prestigious employer.
It is also beyond me that anyone would want these destructive industrial sites on our ridgelines, when they provide *zero* baseline power. They merely provide feelgood PR for the electric companies and line the pockets of the developers.
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Where were these people in the run up to the vote? Why did over 50% of the town’s total registered voters support this (assuming the numbers I’ve read are correct, an even 75% of those who turned out on town meeting day said yes, and there are 580 total registered voters which would mean if you assumed all who did not turn out would have voted no, it still would have passed with 58% of the vote) (numbers from http://www.wcax.com/global/story.asp?s=12067422 and http://energizevermont.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/7628-Lowell-PFT-Richard-Pion.pdf (answer 10)).
I’m assuming some of the people who voted yes are going to be in eyeshot (or assuming what I read above, earshot) of this build and still they voted yes.
This entire thing seems an awful lot like DPS docket 7527. Fairpoint wanted to mount wireless repeaters in areas where there was no broadband. People in the area were complaining about the lack of broadband. A few local people decided they did not want an antenna mounted to a utility pole that might just block the view of about 5 feet of something and the docket dragged on for quite a while.
We all use energy. We all need energy. We need a variety of sources to increase the overall stability of the network. A significant portion of evidently engaged voters turned out and said yes. A not too shabby portion of registered voters also said yes. I have yet to see a proposal from the anti-turbine group of possible ways to alleviate the things they have decided are issues other than “don’t built it.” It doesn’t seem unreasonable to modify a proposal to placate your neighbors, but completely throwing out something that a majority of the town said should be done seems wrong.
Maybe they should be built in Holland, disguised as dutch windmills and used as a tourist draw. Come see the rolling hills of Holland and marvel at the dutch windmills scattered about. Great for leaf peeper season.
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Where were the dissenters? Wait a minute. First of all, it took neighboring towns a bit of time to get status in the process. Then, as always with this issue, Lowell was a little heady over the oodles of money coming its way from developers – enough to turn the head of any cash-poor Vermont town. Lowell voters turned out to vote yes on a project which some say was not presented showing its full impact on sound quality, impact on roads, hilltops, etc. It takes time to speak up and mount a rebuttal.
And yes, we all use energy. That doesn’t mean the solution should bring bigger problems. It means we need to think carefully about whether, in this case, wind is the right solution in this spot, and if the cost-benefit weighs out.
I for one am very disappointed that Gov. Shumlin has come out in favor of the Lowell site. He stood in Craftsbury two feet away from me, as a candidate, and told a group of how he wanted to have a clear-eyed assessment of where wind towers could be put to best effect. Now, while the Lowell site is being debated, he has jumped ahead of his own preferred process. I have to wonder if this is just his way to keep up the pressure on Vermont Yankee or what.
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Vermont’s Public Service Board should bend over backwards to serve the people, instead of multimillionaire vendors, developers and financiers of projects that are not suitable for Vermont.
I couldn’t agree with your statement more Mr. Post. However, if you were to apply this logical thinking consistently, you’d realize that you’re actually making the case against Vermont Yankee. After all VY is a multimillionaire vendor, developer and financier of nuclear power generation that the Vermont Public Service Board should not serve as they did for years with Jim Douglas at the helm.
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It is extremely important to be addressing the real issues, asking the right questions. The issue of decibels of noise affecting health is not the point. The damaging effects are from sub-audible (low-frequency noise and infrasound) frequencies. The commercial wind plants do not replace fuel -burning or nuclear plants (they never have, anywhere in the world); therefore how are they reducing dependence on mined, or foreign, or nuclear energy? Many environmental activists believe in industrial scale wind generation. They should get informed. I am an ardent environmentalist. Industrial scale wind facilities are a scam, and all of us taxpayers are paying for it. None of the existing corporate energy systems are acceptable. They are all really bad. But the wind industry is completely phony, expensive, and destructive all around. Please go to this site: http://www.windturbinesyndrome.com/articles.html
and do your due diligence. I would not ask anyone to believe anything. But I urge everyone to get informed. To gain a comprehensive understanding. Thanks to all.