As AEI has tracked noise complaints around wind farms on land, which seem fairly common between a half mile and mile (and in some cases up to a mile and half or so), I’ve held on to the idea that offshore will be the better way to go.  Offshore wind developers have been mostly aiming for siting turbines far enough offshore to minimize visual impacts (2 or more miles), which I had assumed would also make them inaudible from shore.  But recent reports are throwing some doubts on that hopeful thought.  We need to hear more from other locations, but a wind farm that began operating on Wolfe Island, Ontario, this summer has surprised local observers with its long-range sound transmission.

Wolfe Island Wind Farm

Wolfe Island is at the eastern end of Lake Ontario, at the mouth of the St. Lawrence Seaway.  Even ship operators have noticed turbine noise at 2-3 miles distant (and ships are not exactly a quiet place to listen from), and locals across the channel in Cape Vincent, NY have also been hearing the wind farm readily at 2-3 miles, and, in some atmospheric conditions, as far away as 7 miles!  Yikes….   The reasons for the easy long-range sound transmission are not yet known, though sound does travel well across water, so that may be a key feature.  If so, it ups the ante on offshore wind farms, at least when prevailing winds are toward shore.  (Though we must note that this is not along the coast, but rather at the end of a huge lake which fosters strong prevailing winds.) This one is not yet a clear red flag, but it bears watching….

And, on a brighter note, the health of Wolfe Island residents is being charted by Queen’s University researchers, in the first research study to assess health before and after wind farm operations begin in a community.  This is an important next step in clarifying whether the health effects that have previously been reported are widespread, or rare.

An AEI book review of The Place Where You Go to Listen: In Search of an Ecology of Music
by John Luther Adams

Fairbanks-based John Luther Adams is likely the most place-based composer of his generation.  His music for orchestra, small ensembles, percussion, and electronics is music of the wild north, not merely from Alaska but seemingly drawn forth from the land, people, animals, and sky.  From explicit works like Earth and the Great Weather, with its incantations of native place and animal names, to subtler pieces such as In the White Silence, Adams has created a musical vernacular that is all his own, in service of knowing and expressing the land that seems to absorb him into its own deep rhythms.  The New Yorker carried a wonderful extended profile of him last year, and now Wesleyan University Press has released his second book, which invites us into his creative process during the design of a permanent installation at the Museum of the North.  In a long, slightly curved room, Adams and his collaborators created a space in which the earth and sky outside “compose” an eternal musical reverie.  Drawing on his decades of cultivating a musical voice that utilizes long, slow changes, carefully considered intervals, and percussion, Adams programmed electronics that transform various aspects of the surrounding environment into musical gestures, which together sing a song of this place.  In short, widely ranging diary entries, The Place Where You Go to Listen invites us into the two-year process of pondering, and then realizing, this grand expression of his compositional vision.

Click on Cover to view book on Amazon

The installation takes its name from a poem Adams wrote years ago (and which was a core inspiration in my own ode to soundscape art, The Dreams of Gaia).  The poem shares the tale of a woman who hears the world in the direct, complete ways that have become distant for too many of us.  The composition-cum-programming that fills this space at the Museum of the North with sound and light contains sonic representations of the core expressions of the region’s land- and sky-scape, including:

• The Choirs of Day and Night: Pitch and amplitude of parts of the music respond to the presence and height in the sky of the sun, including deep tones when it is below the horizon.  Meanwhile, the moon triggers its own choral textures; of course, at times they share the sky, and the room, and at times they are absent, while the extent of cloud cover also colors these tones.
• Aurora Bells: Magnetometers in five locations across Alaska measure geomagnetic activity; when the magnetic field of the region is active, the listener hears shimmering veils of sound floating across the ceiling.  These sounds occur whether or not the aurora are obscured by clouds; as Adams notes, “The Place doesn’t illustrate the visible.  It doesn’t amplify the audible.  It resonates with the inaudible and invisible.”
• Earth Drums: Seismic data from five other places in Alaska trigger virtual drums in The Place: “During moderate to large earthquakes, low-frequency sounds rumble and boom through the space as different stations receive the seismic vibrations at different times and intensities.”  Smaller seismic events, imperceptible to humans, also trigger the Earth Drums in a more transient, localized way; the distance to the mini-quakes, as well as the three-dimensional movement of seismic waves, alter specific aspects of the sounds.

The book draws us into Adam’s world with frank discussions of the challenges inherent in “tuning” scientific data into music, as well as the nuts and bolts of designing and building The Place itself, alongside generous (but never indulgent or rambling) glimpses into his family life, reflections on the political and environmental tenor of our times, and his all-important times in the wild.  Taken together, these varied musings add up to a rare and valuable opportunity to enter the mind and heart of an artist as he grapples with both the mundane and the profound.  I took my time working through this two-year journey alongside John Luther Adams, and by the end I was surely itching to spend a day (or a season!) listening to The Place.  In his Afterward, I enjoyed sharing his delight that visitors “often hear things I haven’t heard before, and they understand The Place in ways I hadn’t understood it myself.”  And, even more wonderful,  “by now, there are a number of people who have spent more time inside The Place than I have…..Some who work at the museum visit The Place almost every day.  Others who work nearby visit once or twice a week.  Some people meditate, others write or sketch, or just listen.”

Most importantly, though, his words—and his compositions—do far more than invite us into his world. They also point toward ways that we each might experience more fully the places  where we go to listen.  And for this we can thank him for his generosity in sharing his own difficult yet rewarding exploration into his work, and our world.

UPDATE (8/27): A Canadian court has declined to issue a stay to prevent the vents survey from continuing.  The ship is en route to the area, and will continue with the planned research project; the first step will be laying bottom-mounted receivers, before commencing ten days of seismic airgun operations during September.  In the course of the short legal brouhaha, it came out that the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs had essentially lost Columbia University’s application for Foreign Ship clearance from February until mid-July, thus contributing to the lack of time for all concerned parties to respond to the plans prior to these hectic pre-cruise days.  An amended permit application from Columbia, submitted the day after the initial lawsuit was filed, was accepted by the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans; it aims to avoid exposing any whales to more than 160dB of sound, which creates an effective “exclusion zone” of nearly 7km.  This seems quite surprising, as only last May I participated in a DFO seismic mitigation expert committee meeting at which the oil and gas industry and agency staff seemed fully content with 500m exclusion zones, except in especially rich and sensitive whale habitat, where the most extensive exclusion zones were, as I recall, 2.5km.  What sorts of magical powers will be employed Marine Mammal Observers aboard the Langseth to effectively observe at this super-human distance, was not detailed by the DFO.  In any case, the relative lack of whales in this region this time of year should assure that few if any whales are close enough to be harmed, though some may well hear and avoid it; various species seem to avoid seismic sounds at different distances, from a km or so for some species to 30km for belugas and bowhead whales (neither of which occur in this region).  Recent news reports can be read here and here.

A month-long seismic survey long scheduled to begin this week has been temporarily sidelined by a Canadian court challenge mounted by BC-based EcoJustice. While the Acoustic Ecology Institute has been closely monitoring the effects of seismic surveys for several years, and I do indeed have concerns about the degree to which airgun noise may disrupt foraging in some cetaceans, this particular lawsuit appears to me to be a dramatic over-reaction to what is planned. Throwing up legal roadblocks to a carefully designed, ten-day academic study is a very extreme reaction, and should be reserved for times and places where there is real danger of harm.  But for this survey, the risks are truly negligible—and this is spoken by someone who resents the free use of “negligible impact” in EAs that minimize the effects of chronic behavioral disruption of cetaceans by noise.

The survey, to be run by Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and researchers from the University of Oregon, aims to study the geology underlying a deep benthic vent community 250 km offshore from Vancouver Island, as well as the larger tectonic plate structure in this earthquake-prone region.  The lawsuit seeks a restraining order, contending that Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs cannot grant clearance to a foreign vessel that is expected to harass marine mammals in violation of Canadian law. “To ensure compliance with environmental laws, Canada should deny clearance to this vessel and refuse to sanction the harassment of endangered whales” say Lara Tessaro, Ecojustice lawyer.  (I can’t speak to EcoJustice’s point re: Canadian regulatory process, but the whale threat is being wildly overblown; see below) The R.V. Langseth would be outfitted with 36 airguns, which fire together to create a loud impulse sound, with its echoes from deep beneath the seafloor to be recorded by bottom-mounted receivers deployed from  4-10km apart.  The researchers completed an Environmental Assessment and received permits from NMFS, in accordance with US law governing research funded by the US National Science Foundation (see EA with project summary and projected whale encounters).

The EA projects that the survey could encounter a few whales in the area, which was designated as an MPA in order to protect the still little-studied communities of invertebrates around the hot vents.  Up to 9 minke whales, 12 fin whales, 26 sperm whales, and 3 blue whales, along with several hundred of the regions many thousands of dolphins are expected to hear sounds of 160dB or more, enough to likely make them move away; these exposures will occur at ranges of 4-8km.  No injuries are expected, as both visual and passive acoustic monitoring will aim to power down the airguns if any animals approach the safety zone of 700-1200m.  Read the rest of this entry »

With one of the nation’s “poster child” noisy wind farms in Mars Hill and a popular former governor advocating (and financing) more use of wind power, the State of Maine continues to be at the forefront of the debate over how much credence to give to neighbors’ reports and concerns about wind turbines close to their homes.  Seventeen neighbors of the Mars Hill wind farm, who live from under 2000 feet out to 3600 feet from active turbines, have filed suit against the wind farm developer, asking for compensation for loss of property values, nuisance and emotional distress, and upgrades to the turbines to make them quieter (download the full complaint).

The Todd Residence in Mars Hill. Photo by Anne Ravana.

The state gave the Mars Hill farm a variance to the state noise ordinance, allowing it to be 5dB louder than normally permitted; recordings made by a state-funded acoustics firm indicated that not all locations were fully in compliance, yet the state signed off on the results as being good enough.  The state also hired an acoustics consultant to peer-review the monitoring study, and in his report, this consultant expressed several concerns with the results, saying that “wind turbine noise needs more investigation!” Read the rest of this entry »

A detailed article-cum-press release from Navy News provides the most information currently available on three studies that will be central to addressing ongoing questions about the Navy’s assessment of the behavioral responses of whales and dolphins to Navy mid-frequency active sonar. Two of the studies took place on US Navy instrumented ranges during normal Naval sonar training exercises, and the third is a Controlled Exposure Experiment taking place this summer in the Mediterranean.  Both the Navy and outside observers (including AEI) will be looking closely at the results of these studies, since the most contentious aspect of current Navy sonar planning involves identifying the sound levels at which behavioral responses (such as fleeing or suspending foraging) become widespread enough to warrant protective measures.  Current safety guidelines only kick in when whales are within 3000 feet, far less than the range at which behavioral responses occur.  Critiques of current Navy EISs focus on the large numbers of animals predicted to change their behavior, and on a “risk function” developed by NMFS that assumes very few whales are affected at sound levels below 145dB. Read the rest of this entry »

The North Dakota Public Service Commission declined to intervene in a last-minute request from a Luverne couple who wanted a neighboring wind farm moved from near their property line.  The Jim and Mary Anne Miller build dog sleds and keep 21 huskies for testing them, and were concerned that the 80 turbines planned in an area extending out to a half mile from their home would be disruptive to both the dogs and them. “I think it’s ridiculous that they would force this noise onto us, and we’re supposed to be happy about it,” Mary Ann Miller said in an AP story. The quiet of the rural area “is one of the big assets that we have here,” she said. “We don’t live next to Kmart or Wal-Mart.”  The PSC agreed only to ask the wind farm developer, NextEra Energy Corporation, if it would be practical to move the project to a half to three-quarters of a mile from the Millers, as they had hoped, a move of roughly a quarter mile.  However, construction of four of the turbine foundations has already begun, a NextEra spokesman said determining the placements was a “highly technical exercise” that could not easily be changed. “We think that the array that we’ve laid out is very sound for a number of reasons,” Stengel said. “Once we do that, we don’t think there is any need to move those turbines.”  The project was approved in June. UPDATE: This news report from the week before the hearing says that only the 4 turbines under construction (the closest of which was 1400 feet from a home) were under dispute and being asked to be moved, and that the company apparently began construction with those very four.  “I’m just incredibly frustrated,” said Merrie Helm, one of the neighbors asking for the turbines to be moved to a half mile from homes. “It’s like the small person in North Dakota just doesn’t matter. That’s how it feels.”

This case is one of the first that has revolved around what appears to be a common threshold for noise issues with wind farms, the half mile to mile range.  Though setbacks of a mile or more may still be warranted if the goal is to avoid noise problems altogether, very few serious noise complaints have arisen from wind farms that are three-quarters of a mile or more from homes.  Thus the Millers request, while coming too late for serious consideration, was very reasonable.  A recent report from the UK highlights another perspective on this half-mile issue: the Westmills Wind Farm consists of four turbines, all within a half mile of the village of Watchfield.  However, the project brought 2400 locals into a cooperative which owns 100% of the farm.  This is an example of a growing trend in the UK, by which communities buy into wind farm projects.  In these cases, it may well be that occasional noise issues are more easily accepted, in contrast to projects in which the noise is foisted upon unwilling neighbors.  An important note is that (as usual), news reports on both of these cases neglected to clarify whether the homes a half mile away were upwind or downwind of the wind farm sites, which can make a huge difference as to whether noise issues are likely to crop up.

It’s deja vu all over again over again over again, as Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar stepped up as the third Administration to attempt the now seemingly absurd task of setting permanent rules governing the use of snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park. Both the Clinton and Bush plans ended up with dueling Federal District Court rulings in Wyoming (where relatively snowmobile-friendly decisions tend to result), and DC (where results tend to hew more toward the analysis done by the Park Service, recommending limits).  This time, it took only one day for the State of Wyoming to dash into Judge Clarence Brimmer’s District Court and urge the new plan to be set aside.

The Obama administration has proposed a temporary rule for snowmobile management over the coming two winters, while yet another Environmental Impact Statement is developed.  Their proposal matches the recommendation made in the Park Service’s last EIS, to allow 318 snowmobiles a day into the Park.  The Bush administration had ignored this recommendation, and in November 2008 instead proposed a rule allowing 540 per day; the DC court said that the choice was not sufficiently backed up by the EIS, and ordered the Park to come up with a new plan.  When the Park proposed the 318 number for last winter, the Wyoming court issued a ruling that spurred differing interpretations; the Park Service (likely sensing the likelihood of a judicial logjam blocking the entire snowmobile season), decided that the Wyoming ruling mandated them to revert to an expired 2004 Final Rule that allowed 720 machines, though environmental organizations held that the Judge had made no such firm requirement.  In any case, Wyoming is now aiming to clarify that ruling, by asking Judge Brimmer to affirm their interpretation that his 2008 ruling requires the Park Service to revert to the 2004 rule until a new EIS is completed. As usual, local news outlets like the Jackson Hole Daily have some of the most thorough coverage.

A reality check: last year, the average number of snowmobiles entering Yellowstone was only 205, while in the previous winter the average was 295.  Only a few peak days would trigger the new limit; last year’s top usage day was December 29, when 426 machines entered the Park.  Ever since the establishment of the “guided-tour-only” requirement (a part of the first Bush proposal, meant to overturn the Clinton-era phase-out of snowmobiles), total snowmobile use in Yellowstone has declined dramatically, from a previous average of 840 machines per day during the Clinton years, with peak weekend totals of 1600-2000. Meanwhile, snowcoach ridership has nearly doubled. Still, sound monitoring has found that vehicles were audible over half the day in many popular areas, including at Old Faithful 68% of the time, and 59% of the time at Madison Junction.  It’s not clear yet whether the Obama team will attempt a brand-new EIS, as the Bush team did, or opt for a somewhat faster Revised EIS process; it is unlikely that much new information will be available, beyond  annual noise monitoring data. Tim Stevens, Northern Rockies regional director for the National Parks Conservation Association, said that two years is too long for the interim plan. “The Park Service has been working on this for over 10 years,” he said. “They’ve got all the information that they need … to complete this in one year.”

A recent article in the UK newspaper The Independent has triggered an avalanche of commentary in the press and blogosphere about the possible health effects of living near wind farms; more is sure to come when Nina Pierpont’s Wind Turbine Syndrome book is finally published this fall. In the book, Pierpont posits a set of symptoms that can crop up in people exposed to wind turbine noise; she suspects that low frequency noise is the key factor, and that people with vestibular system imbalances may be especially prone to problems. UPDATE: The wind industry in the UK responded vehemently to the article, which was reprinted in several cities.

At its root, most of the hubbub centers around whether Dr. Pierpont’s research qualifies as science.  The fact that she’s publishing a book instead of journal articles is the first complaint, and relatively easy to understand from a scientific perspective.  But less valid are critiques that claim she used too small a number of people, or did not use “controls”; these complaints are based on a misunderstanding (or conscious misrepresentation) of her work. Much of the criticism is spurred by the perception that she is claiming that the health effects she cites are common, or are likely to occur near any and all wind farms.  As widely noted, wind farms are up and running around the world with little evidence of dire health effects.  However, just as anti-wind activists are clearly putting too much weight on her very preliminary research, so too are wind advocates being too quick to discount Pierpont’s study as hogwash.  More broadly, there is a risk that doubts about the validity of  a formal new “Wind Turbine Syndrome” or other low-frequency effects will distract both the public and policy-makers from the more concrete question of whether current wind farm setbacks adequately protect neighbors from sleeplessness, stress, and simpler, well-known effects of disturbances caused by audible noise.  I’ve been bouncing around the web in recent days, adding what I hope are thoughtful comments to newspaper and blog stories on the issue, and wanted to share some of my commentary here with you all as well: Read the rest of this entry »

The World Wildlife Fund is working to build public pressure to force Exxon-Mobil to suspend development activities near the critically important summer feeding grounds of the dwindling Western gray whale near the Sakhalin oil and gas fields on Russia’s north Pacific coast.  This spring, other energy companies took to heart the advice of a special science advisory panel to suspend seismic surveys during this year’s grey whale season (July-October), but Exxon continues its activities, which apparently are centered on construction more than exploration at this point.  According to the Sakhalin consortium, noise monitoring takes place via buoys along the edge of the feeding grounds, and activities are suspended when whales are too close. However, the continued decline of this distinct population (now down to 130, with just 25 breeding females), along with apparent avoidance of the area in past years as noted by the science committee, has spurred calls for extreme caution about any noise-making during the feeding season.

Death Valley has become the sixth National Park to initiate a formal Air Tour Management Plan process since the 2000 passage of legislation mandating such plans in National Parks with commercial helicopter or plane overflights.  It’s the first new plan to begin since 2004, when similar planning began at Lake Mead, Mt. Rushmore, and Badlands National Park, and two Hawaii national parks.  The process, under the auspices of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)  has been shockingly slow; initial scoping (information gathering) for Environmental Assessments or EISs took place in 2004 and 2006 in these parks, but there have yet to be any draft EISs released.  Air tour management began at the Grand Canyon well before the 2000 legislation, and continues to move slowly toward final resolution.

At Death Valley, existing helicopter tours operators are hoping that the new process will not limit their activities, which have so far seemed to not cause significant visitor conflicts.  Death Valley also is home to a small airport at which up to 30 private planes land each day, mostly day trippers from Las Vegas or southern California.  The decision to proceed with an ATMP was made at a late June meeting of the National Parks Overflight Advisory Group (NPOAG) Aviation Rulemaking Committee (ARC). The ARC is hoping to expedite the process at Death Valley by having all stakeholders more directly involved from the beginning, in hopes of demonstrating a process that can complete ATMPs in a more timely fashion at other parks in the future.  Full minutes of that meeting are available here.

See FAA ATMP website

UPDATE 3/25/10: The Senate has passed legislation allowing the NPS to ban helicopter tours at Crater Lake without going through a lengthy inter-agency process with the FAA.  The measure still needs to be approved by a House-Senate conference committee.

A request from an air tour operator to begin helicopter flights in Crater Lake National Park has stirred considerable local opposition.  The Oregonian editorialized against the proposal, saying that the rim road already provides suitable access to those who can’t hike far.  The same rim road is used by Leading Edge Aviation in its pitch to allow the flights, as they claim that their ‘copters will not cause any more noise impact than RVs in the summer or snowmobiles in the winter cruising the rim.  Others are skeptical that the choppers are really that quiet. Erik Fernandez, wilderness coordinator for Oregon Wild, says, “It’s embarrassing enough that we have only one national park and so little protected wilderness in Oregon. Desecrating the experience at Crater Lake with helicopters buzzing around would be tragic.” Planned air tours range include a half-hour flight that just passes by the north rim and two longer options that skirt other Park landmarks, including Grouse Hill and The Pinnacles. See local press coverage here, and Leading Edge’s tour proposal here.

The Navy is facing some push-back from the states of Georgia and Florida in the initial stages of gaining the necessary approvals for proceeding with their plans for a 500 square mile training range offshore from Jacksonville.  The Navy had hoped to have the states’ comments in hand by this week, but Florida expects to take several more weeks to assess the Navy’s plan, and the head of Georgia’s Coastal Resources Division submitted comments with fairly strongly worded notes of skepticism regarding the Navy’s just-released Final Environmental Impact Statement:  the letter says that the Navy’s forecasts “require considerable speculation and are insufficient to assess the anticipated impacts.”  Sonar travels differently depending on water conditions, and the Navy hasn’t done real-world measurements off Jacksonville to see whether its models of what will happen are right, said Clay George, a Natural Resources biologist. George also noted that while the designated critical habitat for wintering right whales extends to just 20 miles offshore, biologists have not done much surveying further offshore, and so the whales may well inhabit waters closer to the range.  Because of such shortcomings in the Navy’s analysis,  Georgia’s Department of Natural Resources wants long-term monitoring of how the range affects endangered right whales that raise their calves offshore from the two states each winter.  If the whales were harmed by sonar that would be used in submarine exercises, training at the range should change, the state told Navy officials in a letter last week. (Ed note: the Navy’s analysis does take account of uncertainty about the area inhabited by grey whales in winter by assuming that some will occur even within the training range; however, they also assume that virtually no whales will be affected by sounds traveling into the critical habitat, and they explicitly reject the option of doing less training in winter months when the whales are present. For more on the key question of distant effects of sonar sounds, scroll down to the July 24 post below, or click here to read the earlier post.)

In related news, the Florida Times-Union also reported that the Navy will separate its permit applications for construction and operation of the range.  The Navy expects NOAA approval for construction this week, but does not plan to apply for permits to operate the range until 2012 or 2013.  Likewise, the State of Florida this week announced that it will follow the Navy’s suggestion to similarly  follow a “phased” approach to issuing the necessary permits. In addition to sonar issues, Florida officials agreed to put off final judgments about how fast ships should travel in the training range, whether low-flying helicopters using the range will disturb right whales and how much debris from the training exercises will affect coral and other protected species on the ocean floor.  This may trigger legal challenges, though, as Catherine Wannamaker, an attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center responded to the news by saying that the phased approach “artificially separates the impacts to endangered species … that will result from both construction and operations.” According to Wannamaker, the Endangered Species Act doesn’t let the Navy spend money on the range without the National Marine Fisheries Service agreeing the project won’t jeopardize endangered species. (Ed. note: It appears from AEI’s admittedly naive legal perspective that the question of exactly what operational and mitigation measures are appropriate for the site can best be addressed at the time of the later permitting.  At this stage, there is little doubt that the Navy’s need for a littoral instrumented range is real and that the USWTR will proceed; the questions will include how much limitation on sonar activities should be imposed on the range while right whales are nearby.  There is no reason this cannot be addressed later, and indeed, there is likely to be better information at that time, including a revised Risk Assessment curve, which could well lead to more caution being imposed.)

In a startling and far-reaching decision, the Wisconsin Supreme Court has ruled that counties cannot issue “blanket” standards for wind farm development, but must assess each project on a case-by-case basis.  The ruling invalidated one of the nation’s most precautionary local ordinances, passed in 2008 by Calumet County, but also undermines the logic behind any uniform standard for wind farm regulation.  The Calumet County ordinance adopted an “audible sound” standard as well as an 1800-foot setback (though the Supreme Court ruling would apparently not allow either approach).  The audible noise standard would, in most cases, have been the more stringent limit, as it allowed only a maximum of 5dB above the background ambient sound level at the quietest time of day or night; it is likely that night-time ambient noise is in the range of 25-35dB.  This sort of standard is designed to assure that the wind farms do not appreciably change the character of the local soundscape, and will not become the loudest sound at any neighboring houses. In practice, the audible noise standard used would likely create difficulties in siting turbines closer than about a mile from most homes.  By contrast, industry proponents generally favor a 1000 or 1500-foot setback, or a noise limit of 45-55dB. (Note: half-mile setbacks are becoming more common, and recently an Australian shire joined other localities around the world in adopting a 2km setback, which equates to just over a mile.) At the time the ordinance was issued, industry spokesman responded that it would trigger the “war to end all wars” over wind development regulations; the recent ruling comes as the Wisconsin state legislature is working to adopt state-wide standards for wind development.  For more info, you can read several articles covering the recent ruling, this article covering the adoption of the ordinance, or see the ordinance itself.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service has drawn a clear line in Wyoming, stating that designated Core Habitat for the Sage Grouse must remain free of wind turbines.  Even turbines built in order to conduct further research on effects on sage grouse would “negate the usefulness of the core area concept,” according to a response from the FWS to inquiries from the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.  In addition, mitigation aimed at minimizing the impacts of wind farms is considered inappropriate in these core habitat areas.  The implication is that any research efforts should take place in less critical habitat.  Aaron Clark, an adviser on energy infrastructure to Wyoming Governor Dave Freudenthal, said the governor’s office supports the Fish and Wildlife Service’s hard line on wind farms in core areas. “We don’t want to close the door on everything for ever,” Clark said. “If somebody can bring in some really good science that shows that wind turbines don’t have an adverse effect on sage grouse, obviously then our position needs to change. But everything we’ve seen so far is pointing the exact opposite way.” For more info, see this AP story, read a Press Release from the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, or read the letter from the FWS to the State GFD.

UPDATE 8/13/09: Horizon Wind has indefinitely suspended its planning for one of the two wind farms planned for the sage grouse core habitat, though a spokesman affirms that “the project is not dead.”  This New York Times article provides a clear recap of Wyoming’s initial plan to allow two wind farms in the core habitat, in order to study their impacts as several other wind farms await approval. The state, which is working hard to avoid having the FWS list the grouse as endangered, had requested guidance on their plan, and received a rebuke from FWS.

For the first time, researchers have designed and initiated a broad-scale study that will provide enough data to begin to answer one of the key questions looming over wind energy development: do turbines close to residences create negative health effects?  The researchers sent health surveys to 1000 residents near a proposed wind farm; between 150 and 200 returned the survey, and received follow-up questionnaires as the wind farm completed construction.  Later rounds of study will seek to discover whether any reported changes in health are related to distance from the wind turbines, as well as correlating reported problems to individuals’ initial feelings about the new wind farm.   Read the rest of this entry »

On June 1, Thomas Berry died peacefully at his home in the Wellspring Community in Greensboro, NC.  While this may have no direct bearing on the issues covered by AEI, his writings and his inspiration have been central to my ever-developing sense of self and purpose on this planet in our time; this morning as I take in the news of his passing, I am both saddened to feel this earth without his presence, and immensely grateful for the huge generosity of spirit he shared, and which continues to live, grow, and find further articulation in so many environmental activists and thinkers.  I am heartened to hear that he completed two more books, both of which will be published on August: The Sacred Universe and The Christian Future and the Fate of Earth.

Thomas Berry inspired in me a dedication to infusing my (and our culture’s) emerging scientific understanding of life and the cosmos with the sense of primal wonder that has always been central to our human experience as part of the natural world.  The part of me that seeks transcendence and unity need not be at odds with my 21st-century scientific curiosity; indeed, they fuel each other at the deepest levels.  I was first dazzled by his writings with cosmologist Brian Swimme (The Universe is a Green Dragon and Universe Story), in which the grandness of our emerging understanding of cosmology, with wondrous visual expression by Hubble and other deep-space imagery, is given intimate evocations within the timeless tradition of creation stories.  His encouragement to take part in a modern recasting of our culture’s creation story inspired much of my early adulthood; EarthEar was a chance to let the creatures of the earth tell their own story, “the eternal story, in its original language.” In the past couple of decades, he’s written and spoken passionately about the need to put the earth’s needs at the center of human decision-making, and has inspired other eco-theologians and eco-ministries that are bringing the natural world back into the center of Christian practice.

At the end of this post, I’ll link to a few of the obituaries that are beginning to emerge.  Before that, I’ll share some of his reflections that appear in them: Read the rest of this entry »

Throughout the spring, China has been actively complaining about the presence of the USNS Impeccable off its coast (see earlier AEInews coverage).  This week, the “Bejing Review,” an English-language weekly, ran a story on the controversy, playing the environmental card in its efforts to reach in international audience, though some of its examples confused mid-frequency sonar-related strandings with the LFAS system, which has not been associated with any known strandings (though monitoring is nearly impossible, given its very long range), and falsely claims that sonar training was banned off the California Coast and that the Navy discontinued sonar training off Hawaii.  The story reports that a humpback whale was found stranded near Hong Kong “not long after”  the Impeccable had been driven away, though no details are included about any investigation into the causes of the stranding.

The Impeccable is one of the US’s two ships equipped with Low Frequency Active Sonar (LFAS), both of which are deployed in the western Pacific to monitor 
Chinese and North Korean submarines.  In addition to harassing the Impeccable (which both emits LFAS signals and receives echoes on its SURTASS towed array of hydrophones), Chinese Navy and fishermen have dogged  the USNS Victorious, one of several other US ships that can receive LFAS echoes on their own SURTASS arrays.

USNS Impeccable

China maintains that US warships must receive permission to travel in China’s Exclusive Read the rest of this entry »

Two UK environmental and research organizations that were monitoring whale activity during a recent NATO naval exercise report that minke whales were seen fleeing along the surface while their hydrophones were picking up loud mid-frequency active sonar signals.  Observers from the Hebrides Whale and Dolphin Trust saw “two minke whales within an hour displaying unusual and worrying behaviour. At the same time they heard military sonar on the hydrophone – sometimes so loud that they could not keep the headphones on. The whales were both moving in the same direction at high speed, regularly leaping clear of the water. This behaviour, known as ‘porpoising’, is more typical of dolphins and rarely seen in undisturbed whales.”

Porpoising minke whale. Credit: HWDT

Nienke van Geel, HWDT’s Biodiversity Officer said “Seeing minke whales porpoising many times successively is very unusual. Both whales moved very fast, too fast for us to keep up with them to try to take identification pictures. We estimated they were traveling at least at 15 knots. Our research has already shown a decline in minke whale sightings in the last few years, so we’re worried about anything that might adversely affect the population.” The incident is reported on in three posts from the HWDT’s colleagues, the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS).  The first includes the initial report of the incident, the second details the situation more fully and stresses the need for the UK Navy to conduct fully environmental assessments as the US Navy has begun to do at home, and the third clarifies that the US Navy should be, according the the US Marine Mammal Protection Act, applying for permits for sonar activities in UK waters, though it currently only does so for training in US waters.

The Minerals Management Service suffered a major defeat this week, as a Federal Appeals Court ruled that its current five-year leasing program plans for Alaskan waters be vacated and remanded to the Department of Interior for more substantial environmental analysis.  The program includes oil and gas leasing from 2007-2012 on the Outer Continental Shelf; only one lease has been offered in Alaskan waters, though more are in the planning stages.  MMS did produce a 1600 page environmental assessment, but the court found it lacking. Among the primary considerations cited by the court was inadequate analysis of the effects of exploration and drilling noise on migrating Bowhead whales, and similarly inadequate assessment of effects on fish. Kim Elton, director of Alaska Affairs for the Department of the Interior, said his office is still studying the ruling. Though industry officials and some Republicans in the US Congress have called for a quick approval of further offshore development, Elton said the latest ruling should convince people that rushing to formulate land-use policies leave them open to challenge in court and not make hurried assumptions based on the work of the previous administration. “We too often end up doing things in a rushed way without recognising the fact that the paradigm is likely to be challenged,” he said. “And if we don’t do our upfront work we allow a group of people wearing black robes or a person wearing a black robe to set policy.”

More on this:
http://www.upstreamonline.com/live/article176453.ece
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-alaska-drilling18-2009apr18,0,1920171.story
http://www.koaa.com/aaaaaa_down_to_earth/x586944506/Court-blocks-Alaska-offshore-drilling

A new report issued in the wake of an active sonar mitigation workshop held by the European Cetacean Society calls unequivocally for sonar training to be limited to relatively small dedicated areas.  By contrast, the US Navy continues to insist that it needs access to nearly the entire eastern seaboard and most of the west coast as well, in order to have enough flexibility to train “realisically.”  The ECS working group report, by an impressively diverse set of researchers ranging from NRDC’s Michael Jasny to Woods Hole scientist Peter Tyack, calls on the world’s navies to “commit without delay” to “minimum procedures” including: Read the rest of this entry »

Representative Neil Abercrombie (D-HI) marked Earth Day by announcing the introduction of a bill that would provide $25 million per year to the Marine Mammal Commission to fund new research into the effects of human activities on whales and dolphins, with a particular focus on the effects of active sonar. “We need to end the fighting and resolve these issues, but we can’t really do that until we’re sure we all know what we’re talking about,” Abercrombie said in a statement. “We have to fully understand the effects of human activities, including underwater sound, on marine mammals and determine how to mitigate any harmful impact. That requires expanded and focused research.”  By comparison, the Navy, currently the largest source of research funding, spends $26 million per year on its marine mammal research programs, which include studies of the effects of sound as well as many other topics, including a wide range of population studies, and a recent agreement between the Navy and NRDC will devote $5 million per year to several topic of mutual interest. For several years, the MMC has recommended that an independent research initiative such as the one proposed by Abercrombie be established; many environmental advocates have also long called for research funding to be more independent of the Navy and the perceived constraints that its priorities impose on research topics.  Abercrombie is serving what is likely to be his last of ten terms as an Hawaiian congressman; he has announced plans to run for Governor in 2010.

An earlier version of the bill, HR 5106, was introduced in January 2008; it appears likely that the new bill is substantially similar.  Read the old bill here.

This is kinda cool, though apparently will not be fleshed out as fully as it may deserve:  Bruce Heald, a sound designer/composer created a soundtrack for an ad using orchestral instrumentalists to mimic the various sounds found in humpback whale songs.  The ad (for a cell phone company) creates the impression that an orchestra actually went out to play for and with the whales; while compelling, this was purely staged (near a dock, no less).  An email exchange with the composer confirms that there are at present no plans to create a full-blown version of the work (the 90-second commercial contains what is for now the complete composition), though he’d love to find funding for that.  But the website the company created includes a nifty Flash interface in which we can trigger the individual sounds ourselves, creating a whalesong composition in real time, as well as some short films with whale researchers and the musicians.  Check out Heald’s sound design site here and play with whale sounds by clicking on “Inspiration” at: http://www.optuswhalesong.com.au/

Earlier this month, the US Navy spent a night testing sonar and communications systems on the USS San Francisco, a submarine that had recently completed major repairs to its sonar dome after crashing into a seamount in 2006.  

A recent photo of the U.S. Navy submarine, the U.S.S. San Francisco (Photo: RLW)

The sub was doing “required training dives” in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, between Vancouver Island and the Olympic Peninsula, with an escort ship also present; the Navy ships did not enter Haro Strait, a more constrained channel where sonar training stirred up considerable controversy in 2003.  Orca researchers throughout the region picked up unusual sounds (sonar pings and human voices) from 7pm to 3am on the night of April 6-7; the sounds were audible from San Juan Island to Whidbey Island and Port Washington and Port Townsend.  

Read the rest of this entry »

Public hearings on the US Navy’s Northwest Training Range Complex have turned, predictably enough, into a circus of public outrage and Navy insistence that no big changes are planned.  While it’s true that the training being proposed is little different than that which has been ongoing for many years (decades) off the Pacific Northwest coast, with little indication of major impacts on wildlife or fisheries, the public is making the most of the first opportunity for public comment, now that the Navy is finally conducting full Environmental Impact Statements to assess their offshore training activities. Read the rest of this entry »

The University of Utah’s free digital archive of recordings from wild habitats in the American West has grown to over a thousand items. “Our premise is that the sounds of the west are unique and that they deserve a closer listen,” says research librarian Jeff Rice. “As our lives become more urbanized, we are losing our connection to the natural world and its rich sounds. There are whole generations of kids growing up that have never heard coyotes, or even frogs, in the wild. This is our heritage and we want to help restore some of that connection.” By focusing on the sounds of the western U.S., the archive emphasizes the connection between sound and place—something that is not only culturally valuable, but also biologically crucial, say scientists. Scientists recognize that even the same species of animals can sound different based on their geography. Birds, especially, can sing in dialects unique to their areas“Frequent recordings in many areas help create a database that will give insight into how the ‘singing culture’ of birds changes over time and space,” says Dr. Franz Goller, a biologist at the University of Utah. “Efforts like the Western Soundscape Archive are therefore very important in documenting acoustic behavior.” Source: Innovations Report, 3/18/09 [READ ARTICLE]
Western Soundscape Project Website: [MAIN SITE] [VIDEO INTRODUCTION]