Falmouth Massachusetts Wind Turbines A Disastrously Mishandled Situation Officials Scramble
Massachusetts July 27, 2017
In April of 2010, the Town of Falmouth put into operation its first enormous industrial scale wind turbine larger than a 747 just over 1000 feet from residential homes. The turbine is a foreign made Vestas V-82 type 1.65 megawatt wind turbine.
General Electric a domestic wind turbine company refused to place a smaller turbine in Falmouth due to residential setbacks and ice throw to a nearby highway
Neighbors immediately complained about headaches, shortness of breath, sensitivity to sounds and heart palpitations.
More than 45 Falmouth neighbors of the turbines complained to the town's Board of Selectmen and Board of Health. Besides the noise described as pressure or infrasound the shadow flicker from the sun through the blades turned several homes into what was described as a Disco.
By the end of April 2010, the Town of Falmouth got an EPA federal waiver to buy another foreign made wind turbine under the Buy American requirements of the ARRA act. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 requires buying American products unless there are no domestic products available. The EPA waiver was granted despite General Electric refusing to build one small wind turbine.
In 2013 a town wide election was conducted to take down the turbines. The town voted by a margin of 2 to 1 not to take down the turbines. Later after the election through Freedom of Information Act requests and up to eleven ongoing court cases, it was disclosed the town hid negative safety information that showed how health would be affected by the turbines.
The town had a letter the turbines generate a chest pounding 110 decibels of noise, a map showing over 50 decibels of noise at local homes, emails from Vestas employees about noise, a memo from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center admitting "mistakes" in acoustic noise models prior to construction. On top of all this, the state agency dropped the warnings of two distinct types of noise one measured in decibels called regulatory and the other human annoyance or what is low-frequency infra sound.
The Massachusetts Superior Courts have shut down the turbines
The last chapter after the town hid all the negative noise documentation the town now doesn't know how the turbines were financed!
In 2012 negotiations were held for over a year through the Falmouth Wind Turbine Options Analysis Process (WTOP) to engage in an open, transparent, and collaborative exploration of the range of .options for the noise from the turbines. The cost to state taxpayers was $139,000.00
A participant in the negotiation process asked Julian Suso, Town Manager, about the status of the Wind II ARRA stimulus fund grant at the September 12, 2012, WTOP-CBI meeting.
Julian stated that the Town doesn’t have a clear answer. He explained that there are a series of possibilities, none of which is definitive.
That financial question was posted over four years ago and the town still has no answer?
In June of 2009 prior to the construction of Falmouth Wind II a Special Town Meeting was held in order to obtain American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 stimulus funds to build the second turbine
The Special Town Meeting had three articles in which if you watch the video below it appears to Town Meeting Members through visual aids they may have been getting up to 8 million dollars in grants. At one point they all clapped.
It appears this Special Town Meeting was just another in a string of disastrously mishandled undertakings.
At the end of the video if you look at article three the town borrowed ( 5 ) five million dollars to build Falmouth Wind II
The question today is where is the grant money and why were the Town Meeting Members clapping if they thought they were borrowing 5 million dollars ?
The video :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8LFk6JbxhU
1:03:15Views: 75
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Maine as Third World Country:
CMP Transmission Rate Skyrockets 19.6% Due to Wind Power
Click here to read how the Maine ratepayer has been sold down the river by the Angus King cabal.
Maine Center For Public Interest Reporting – Three Part Series: A CRITICAL LOOK AT MAINE’S WIND ACT
******** IF LINKS BELOW DON'T WORK, GOOGLE THEM*********
(excerpts) From Part 1 – On Maine’s Wind Law “Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine if the law’s goals were met." . – Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, August 2010 https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/From Part 2 – On Wind and Oil Yet using wind energy doesn’t lower dependence on imported foreign oil. That’s because the majority of imported oil in Maine is used for heating and transportation. And switching our dependence from foreign oil to Maine-produced electricity isn’t likely to happen very soon, says Bartlett. “Right now, people can’t switch to electric cars and heating – if they did, we’d be in trouble.” So was one of the fundamental premises of the task force false, or at least misleading?" https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-swept-task-force-set-the-rules/From Part 3 – On Wind-Required New Transmission Lines Finally, the building of enormous, high-voltage transmission lines that the regional electricity system operator says are required to move substantial amounts of wind power to markets south of Maine was never even discussed by the task force – an omission that Mills said will come to haunt the state.“If you try to put 2,500 or 3,000 megawatts in northern or eastern Maine – oh, my god, try to build the transmission!” said Mills. “It’s not just the towers, it’s the lines – that’s when I begin to think that the goal is a little farfetched.” https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/flaws-in-bill-like-skating-with-dull-skates/
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Hannah Pingree on the Maine expedited wind law
Hannah Pingree - Director of Maine's Office of Innovation and the Future
"Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine."
https://pinetreewatch.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/
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