Increasingly, local regulators are settling on a half-mile setback for wind turbines, despite many reports of noise issues beyond that distance.  At the Willow Creek Wind Farm in Morrow County, Oregon, local residents raised concerns in November when the developer’s noise models indicated that the farm would not meet the relatively stringent 36dB noise limit.  The company responded with new noise modeling that indicated they would indeed be quiet enough to meet this standard.  However, once the turbines began turning in December, neighbors found that the typical promise of not being any louder than a refrigerator in the kitchen “was a crock,” and they fired up their own hand-held decibel meters, regularly recording levels of 40-50dB, peaking to 67dB at the worst.   The county is now requiring the company to do real-world sound measurements.  The nearby neighbors insisted they aren’t against wind towers and are all for green energy, just not so close to their homes. “If they had just used a little foresight and moved these back a little farther…,” Michael Eaton said wistfully, “but they didn’t.”

Read more at East Oregonian, 3/7/09 [READ ARTICLE] The Oregonian, 3/25/09 [READ ARTICLE]

The early 2009 issue of Conservation magazine, the popular press publication of the Society for Conservation Biology, has a great overview piece on the effects of noise on animals. It focuses on changes in animal behavior and song that have been observed over the course of the past decade, drawing on studies from several different researchers. Much will be familiar to AEI regulars, but it remains highly recommended for sharing with others and for the concise overview it provides.

See the article at http://www.conservationmagazine.org/articles/v8n2/not-so-silent-spring/

The USS Impeccable, one of two US Navy long-range Low Frequency Active Sonar (LFAS) surveillance ships deployed in the western Pacific, was repeatedly harassed by Chinese Navy and other Chinese ships during March. The Chinese attempted to snag the towed array cables with poles, and to obstruct the ship’s passage by dropping wood in the water and buzzing it with its ships. The incidents took place 75 miles offshore from Hainan Island, site of a key Chinese submarine base; China claims sovereignty of its entire 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone, while the US recognizes only the 12-mile territorial water limit, and insists the Impeccable was therefore operating legally in international waters. While the Impeccable is well-documented as one of the US Navy’s two LFAS ships designed specifically for monitoring quiet submarines, and deployed in areas where they can keep tabs on Chinese and North Korean navies, some press reports seemed to downplay or obfuscate this; for example the BBC report said that the Impeccable’s sonar is used to “map the ocean floor.” Sources: American Chronicle, 3/22/09 [READ ARTICLE] BBC, 3/10/09 [READ ARTICLE] SEE US NAVY VIDEOS OF THE INCIDENTS [YOUTUBE]

 The United States and Pakistan are cooperating in a new initiative to supply the Pakistani Navy with 445 sonobuoys, including mid-frequency active sonar units used to detect quiet submarines. It is not clear what subs would be the target for this program (the “Taliban Navy” and “Taliban Airforce” are often tossed out by bemused observers as the only likely mutual threats), or how carefully they would be deployed in regards to marine mammals. Source: Domain B, 3/9/09 [READ ARTICLE]

The Hawaii Superferry, which began operations last summer under a special state law that allowed it to begin runs while completing its state-regulated Environmental Impact Statement, has been docked after the state supreme court ruled the law unconstitutional. The EIS is underway, amidst vehement complaints that it is a toothless process. The Ferry is under fire on several fronts, including that it uses massive amounts of fossil fuels, and that it travels at such a fast speed that whale strikes are more likely. According to some local activists, the ferry company has resisted requests to do underwater noise studies; some locals claim the ferry will produce Level B Harassment of whales (i.e. cause behavioral changes) at distances up to 1000 yards. Hawaiian waters are also home to many freighters, delivering essential goods; how loud are they? I wouldn’t be surprised if they also trigger behavioral changes out to a half mile to mile. Should the Ferry have to meet a different standard? Or, is it indeed much louder than tankers and freighters? For more on this see the following media reports:
The Nation, 2/25/09: big picture view of local resistance to the Ferry
KHNL, 3/17/09: report on the suspension of service after the court ruling
Honolulu Advertiser, 3/19/09: Hearing on EIS
Honolulu Weekly, 3/18/09: Noise concerns

Thanks to the wonder of Google News customized daily news searches (in this case, “whales noise”), I came across a piece from the UK National Environment Research Council that raises a point I hadn’t considered before: as we develop undersea turbines to generate energy from tidal flows, the noise concern is not just whether it is too loud, but also whether it is loud enough.  An interview with bioacoustician Ben Wilson fleshes out this problem, which is, as root, that “they need to be noisy enough for sea creatures to avoid them but quiet enough to minimise noise pollution.”  The trick, and not a small one, will be that various species of fish, whales, and seals each hear very different frequencies of sound.
Listen to the interview here 

Ken Balcomb, who monitors local populations for NOAA, has spotted two baby orcas off Vancouver Island, a splash of good news for the Puget Sound orca population, which has been falling in recent years. My first reaction, though, was a realization that these young ones will—by virtue of their small bodies and fresh auditory systems—be at especially sensitive to the very factors that are challenging the survival of their population.  Boat and shipping noise is ubiquitous in their habitat, and young whales have more sensitive hearing than older ones….recent news confirmed fears that the orca’s main food source, salmon, are carrying high levels of toxins….and young animals may be more susceptible to stress responses (especially to the degree that communication with adults is hindered on a regular basis by noise)  that could make this combination of noise and toxins especially damaging.  So, swim strong, young ones!  Ken Balcolmb says these two look hale and hearty at a month old, well filled out and energetic; that’s just the sort of gusto that will be required of them, and we wish them many fruitful years in a habitat that regains its health over the course of their long lives.
Photo: Ken Balcomb 

See article on the new ones from the Seattle Times: [READ ARTICLE]

And, see Chris Dunagan’s Kitsap Sun news story and his blog post on an older male in their family, who it appears has recently died.

It appears that concerns about the impact of a major oil development in the midst of one of the western gray whale’s key feeding grounds are coming to fruition: the World Wildlife Fund is reporting that the critically endangered western Gray whales have largely abandoned a formerly crucial feeding ground near the ever-expanding Sakhalin oil and gas development in far eastern Russia. Disruptions from tanker traffic, offshore construction, and seismic surveys is blamed for the whales’ move from offshore Sakhalin (just north of Japan) to an area closer to western Kamchatka (a peninsula across the Bering Sea from Alaska), where plans for a new oil field are brewing. Source: Russian News and Information Agency, 2/19/09 [READ ARTICLE]

This year, the annual Acoustic Ecology Institute Spotlight Report on recent developments in ocean noise is too large for easy viewing on a web page. So, we’ve created a pdf version that you can download (or view in your browser if you’re a glutton for punishment). [AEI: Ocean Noise 2008 (pdf, 4MB)] Here’s what you’ll find there:

During 2008, four key pathways to future engagement with ocean noise issues clarified. Each of these over-arching developments are fleshed out in more detail in the full report.

• Behavioral impacts clearly replaced strandings and deaths as the key issue for marine mammals encountering human noise.  Several studies released during 2008 all suggest that whales of many species may stop or reduce their feeding when moderate to loud human sounds enter their habitat, and this particular impact is likely to become a central focus of future research and regulatory consideration.

• The legal tussles over mid-frequency and low-frequency active sonars continued, and the Supreme Court decision does not put an end to the controversy.  The Navy crossed an important threshold, completing full Environmental Impact Statements for their sonar training procedures for the first time; the lack of sufficient NEPA analysis was the root of most of the legal challenges.  The plans they are putting forward to govern sonar training off most of the US coastline continue to rely on safety measures that Federal Courts have found wanting, though it appears that challenges to their proposals are more likely to focus on avoiding biologically important areas than increasing the safety zones that are designed to avoid injury.  All parties seem to be accepting that gross injury is rare to the point of being difficult to use as a lever to shift the balance of interests with the Navy’s national security imperative, but NGOs, many field researchers, and agency staff are all looking more closely at the behavioral impacts that take place at much longer ranges (up to several or even tens of kilometers).  The next round of Navy sonar conflicts will center on how willing the Navy is to consider these subtler impacts, and whether NMFS or the courts will impose broader territorial restrictions on sonar training to protect areas where whales may be more susceptible to repeated disruption by sonar transmissions.

• Shipping noise is moving very quickly to the forefront of international concerns about rising ocean noise.  This year the US, with strong German support, initiated a two-year process at the International Maritime Organization to come up with ship quieting recommendations. Also, the unusual sensitivity of harbor porpoises to boat noise has become clearer.

• The scientific community appears to be entering a new phase in its engagement with ocean noise, a natural result of the increasing emphasis on these issues over the past five years.  The European Science Foundation, the US Marine Mammal Commission, and a National Marine Fisheries Service-led group have all recently published important reports that attempt to provide frameworks within which future research priorities can be clearly considered.  These frameworks promise to provide much-needed big-picture coherence to what has been largely a scattershot approach to increasing our understanding of ocean noise.  An independent and striking development this year was the emergence of more scientists speaking out forcefully about their concerns about ocean noise; these scientists have, at times, directly critiqued the more modest and diligently objective conclusions of the larger institutional reports just noted, and are representative of a subset of scientists who are more willing to push for extra precaution in our noise-making until we better understand what the effects are. 

Read the rest of this entry »

In the Philippines this week, over 200 melon-headed whales appeared in near-shore waters across a large bay from Manilla, and appeared confused about how to get out.  Initial speculation ran wild, as a Philippine Senator called for an inquiry into whether the US research vessel the R.V. Langseth had created the trouble while doing a seismic survey that has garnered criticism from environmentalists, and was apparently on the Senator’s radar.  The inquiry is likely to be brief, as the Langseth is currently over 4000 miles away, working near Fiji.  (The surveys in question, which are currently awaiting a permit from the US NMFS, will take place later this spring and summer in various areas between China, Japan, and the Philippines.)  While our growing understanding of the impacts of human noise does make it worthwhile to consider whether noise may be implicated in strandings, jumping to ill-considered conclusions serves no one.  In this case, there is also speculation about dynamite fishing in the region; according to Environment Minister Jose “Lito” Atienza, he directly questioned the local Governor, who “confirmed it (was taking place).  He also said he was battling this illegal activity.”  Adding to the mystery is the simultaneous appearance of melon-headed whales in two widely-separated bays (Hawaii and Marianas Islands) in July 2004; these events took place on the same night during a full moon, and there is speculation they were following prey, perhaps squid.  In Hawaii, the next morning US Naval forces used mid-frequency active sonar beyond the mouth of the bay, and the whales appeared agitated, and perhaps were driven into shallower waters, in the Marianas the animals were apparently less disturbed, and “interacting with humans.”  This points to the possibility that noise can become an aggravating or additional factor in some situations, even if not the primary causative factor in bringing the whales into a dangerous situation.  The moon is again bright this week, though certainly the dynamite fishing deserves continued diligent scrutiny.

Press coverage of this incident: Senator blames Langseth, Dynamite fishing considered
US Navy description of earlier full-moon incidents
 

Plans to build a pipeline to move the fruits of Alberta’s oil fields and oil sands to the deepwater port of Kitimat, in order to ship it to Asia, are spurring widespread concerns among residents and researchers in northern British Columbia. In addition to fears of a tanker accident and rural resistence to the pipeline, University of BC biologist Rob Williams stresses the noise impact of increased tanker traffic. “Caamano Sound may be one of the last chances we have on this coastline to protect an acoustically quiet sanctuary for whales,” says Williams. “We don’t exactly know why this area is so rich, but there are some long, narrow channels that serve as bottlenecks for food, making it easier for whales to feed.” The researcher has been using acoustic monitors to gauge the level of underwater shipping noise, known to have an impact on the ability of toothed mammals, such as orcas and dolphins, to use echolocation for finding food. A detailed feature article in the Vancouver weekly The Georgia Strait provides an in-depth look at the plans and at the hurdles that must be crossed to bring it to fruition. Source: Strait.com, 2/5/09 [READ ARTICLE]

In the final days of the Bush administration, the Minerals Management Service completed preliminary planning for offshore oil development on the Outer Continental Shelf along the entire eastern seaboard and the California coast.  For the past couple of years, MMS has been laying the groundwork for new drilling, as it became clear that Presidential and Congressional bans on offshore development first implemented in the early 1980’s and renewed ever since, would expire.  The recent documents outline 21 proposed lease areas, and announce plans to conduct a “programmatic” EIS to analyze environmental impacts of multiple seismic surveys off the coasts, as the areas are inventoried using modern surveying equipment (which makes lots of very widespread noise).  The strangest element in the “notice of intent” to conduct the EIS, which would be required before any exploration could take place, is that MMS notes that it has no money to conduct the study, and it actually solicits financial support from the oil and gas industry to keep the EIS moving, stating that it “welcomes participation from outside sources,” and that without funding, the EIS would likely not be completed in time for the 2010-2015 leasing period.  Below the fold, see the AEI News Digest coverage of this issue, including comments from MMS and incoming Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, and links to the Notice of Intent and Congressional committee set to oversee OCS development.

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NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service has formally given the Navy its seal of approval for the third of the Navy’s “Big 3” sonar training EISs, just in the nick of time as the Navy’s 2-year national security exemption expires.  The Atlantic Fleet Active Sonar Training (AFAST) EIS, along with the recently approved EISs covering Hawaii and Southern California (SOCAL) training ranges, all contain virtually identical analyses of impacts and proposed safety measures, which mirror the “29 Safety Measures” the Navy formally adopted in January 2007 when it received an exemption to the MMPA in order to complete the then-newly-initiated EISs with fewer legal impediments.  The Navy’s sonar nemesis, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) immediately issued a press release that stressed the millions of marine mammals that the EISs predict will hear sonar signals and respond by some behavioral changes (2 million per year, for five years). Read the rest of this entry »

In one of the first tests of wind advocates’ repeated claims that wind farms do not lower property values, a couple on Prince Edward Island asked for a reassessment, and found that their property had lost 10% of its value, solely due to the presence of wind turbines nearby. A spokesperson with the tax department said a handful of other residents living next to wind farms in West Prince also received lower assessments. Although the criteria for assessing property values doesn’t specify turbines, the department felt the properties near windmills should be treated the same as properties near industrial areas. Beverly Howard says there are now five new turbines within sight of their home, the closest about 500 metres away. “If you’re sitting out on your deck, they’re noisy, if you’re out gardening they’re noisy,” she said. “We can’t hear the surf anymore in the summertime; all we hear is windmills.” Source: CBC Canada, 12/23/08 [READ ARTICLE]
[See AEI Special Report: Wind Turbine Noise]

The Navy took another step on its reformed NEPA compliance path this week, as it received a formal Letter of Authorization to proceed with sonar training missions in waters around Hawaii.  The Hawaii training range was the first of 11 Navy ranges to complete its Environmental Impact Statement; the Navy began planning this step of NEPA compliance in 2006 (belatedly, and spurred on by legal challenges), and received a national security exemption to the Marine Mammal Protection Act in early 2007 to protect the training from legal challenges until the EISs could be completed.  Two other ranges have released final EISs (Atlantic coast and Southern California), with five Draft EISs recently released (including the Pacific Northwest and an Undersea Warfare Training Range off the southeast Atlantic coast).  It is unclear how sonar training will proceed in these other ranges once the exemption expires in late January; perhaps a shorter exemption will be issued to allow the EISs to be completed, or an agreement will be reached to eschew legal challenges in the interim.

The NOAA authorizations largely affirm the Navy’s current mitigation measures, including safety zones that have been challenged in the past as too small, and refusing (in the name of operational flexibility) to set any areas off-limits to sonar.  While NOAA expects that the Navy’s safety measures should prevent injury, they acknowledge that in some situations strandings have occurred, and the authorizations allow for up to ten deaths of each of eleven species.  (In Hawaii, sonar training has taken place for decades, and none of the clearly sonar-related stranding events have taken place there.)  See below the fold for the AEI News Digest item on this story, with quotes from NRDC and links to the Letter of Authorization.

Read the rest of this entry »

The US Navy and the NRDC and its co-plaintiffs have settled a long-running lawsuit that challenged the Navy’s overall management of its mid-frequency active sonar program (this suit was separate from more high-profile challenges to specific training missions, one of which recently ended up in the Supreme Court). The resulting agreement formalizes the Navy’s recent commitment to NEPA compliance, which is by all accounts much improved since the suit was filed in 2005, and provides for increased transparency by the Navy about its sonar operations. Both parties trumpeted their glad tidings of prevailing over the stubborn demands of the other (see below), though it is far from clear how the parties will resolve continuing underlying disagreements over what degree of safety measures are necessary.  The most significant new piece of the settlement is a commitment to pursuing three lines of research of interest to both parties, most strikingly studies of stress in marine mammals.

(Details of the settlement, with analysis of the potential benefits, are below the fold)

Read the rest of this entry »

The Bush administration’s 8-years of Yellowstone winter use meddling continues to the bitter end: after immediately overturning the Clinton-era phase-out of snowmobiles in the Park during the winter of 2001, it has, in its final month in office, issued a rule to maintain a 720 snowmobiles/day limit, after a year in which the Park Service proposed a long-term cap of 540, then lowered its proposal to 318 when a DC Federal Court tossed its plan as not protective enough.  I took my eye off this ball for a couple months, and it ricocheted around the country, through two Federal District Courts (just as the initial Bush rule did in the middle of this eight years of chaos) and through the businesses and bar-rooms of West Yellowstone, WY, continuing to boggle the journalistic mind to cull the madness into a readable narrative.  The bottom line for this winter appears to be a “limit” of 720 machines, which, if the past few years are any indication, is more than will want to enter the Park (thanks to rules that require all snowmobiles to be part of guided tours).  Read our best attempt at a summary below the fold, or see AEI’s Special Report: Yellowstone Winter Use for ten years of gorey details. Read the rest of this entry »

The Navy, as planned, has released its final EIS governing mid-frequency active sonar training along the entire eastern seaboard, as well as a similar EIS for southern California sonar use.  While the documents consider formal Alternatives that would limit sonar training to specific areas—either permanently or seasonally, based on marine mammal breeding, feeding, and migration patterns—the Navy concludes that these restrictions would not make a significant difference in how many whales are affected, so they propose to continue training at will within their entire current Operation Areas (OPAREAS). Read the rest of this entry »

What does it mean? How will this ruling affect the ongoing debate as the Navy rolls out its regional EISs to govern sonar training in offshore ranges around the US coastlines and Pacific ocean? It’s interesting to note that the Navy did not appeal two aspects of the lower courts’ safety measures: establishing a 12-mile coastal buffer and avoiding a key biologically rich area in the offshore California range that this case concerned. A key issue in the EIS process is shaping up to be the Navy’s reluctance to set any areas off limits for sonar training; some observers speculate that the Navy’s hard line on this in draft EIS’s is designed to give them room to “give” a bit here in final negotiations with regulators and environmental advocates. It is also worth noting that the Navy did not appeal additional safety measures that were imposed by a Hawaiian court at nearly the same time as this California court made its decision;it appears that the California approach, which imposed shut-downs at larger distances (rather than simply reducing power gradually as whales came closer), and ordered mandatory power-downs in surface duct conditions whether whales were present or not, was too absolute for the Navy to accept, while the Hawaiian approach, which called for gradual shifts of operational procedures only when whales were observed, was deemed less disruptive to Naval training needs. Read the rest of this entry »

 This week, the Supreme Court ruled in the Winter v. NRDC case, finding that that the District Court “failed properly to defer to senior Navy officers’ specific, predictive judgments” about how the Court-imposed additional safety measures would impact the Navy’s ability to effectively train its personnel. The case addressed only two specific additional safety requirements that the Navy had appealed (it chose not to appeal 4 others): a much larger (over a mile) safety zone requiring shut-down of sonar whenever whales were present, and reduced power when surface ducts were present. Three opinions were written, expressing the range of responses among the nine Justices: Read the rest of this entry »

Underlying the spreading controversy about noise and health effects of wind turbines is the “million dollar question” for wind farm developers: how large a buffer must they leave between turbine towers and homes? In the US, pressure is on local and state authorities who are scrambling to write regulations to govern wind farm development, and many areas have taken the industry’s reassurances to heart, allowing towers as close as 300 meters (1000 feet) from homes. By contrast, Shear Wind, a Canadian wind developer, recently agreed to re-design an proposed wind farm to assure no turbines are any closer than 1.4km (1400m) from a residence. Read the rest of this entry »

Responding to a September Federal Court ruling that tossed the 3rd Yellowstone Winter Use Plan on the cusp of a new winter season, Park managers have released a proposed interim plan that will, for the first time since the original Clinton-era plan, reduce the actual numbers of snow machines in the Park on most of the busy winter holidays and weekends. Earlier plans had capped snowmobiles at 720, then more recently, 540 per day; the interim proposal will allow 318 per day. Last winter, an average of 290 snowmobiles entered the park each day, but on many weekends and other peak days, numbers reached 400-500, with the single highest day seeing 557. Read the rest of this entry »

The spread of wind turbines into quiet rural areas is leading to increasing complaints that they make more noise than residents were led to believe. While simple annoyance and sleep disturbance are the most common effects, in some cases, nearby residents are reporting health problems that they associate with the presence of the turbines, leading some to move from their homes. Not long after wind turbines began to spin in March near Gerry Meyer’s home in Wisconsin, his son Robert, 13, and wife, Cheryl, complained of headaches. Cheryl also sometimes feels a fluttering in her chest, while Gerry is sometimes nauseated and hears crackling. The nearest turbine is 1,560 feet from Meyer’s house. His dismay over an energy source he once thought was benign has made the retired mailman, 59, an activist. He travels the state warning communities considering wind farms to be wary. “I don’t think anyone should have to put up with this,” says Meyer, who compares the sound to a helicopter or a jet taking off. Read the rest of this entry »

For two hours on Wednesday, the long-running dispute between the Navy and NRDC over mid-frequency active sonar had its day in the Supreme Court, and while the Justices did broach some questions about the relative likelihood of harm to cetaceans or Navy training, the legal case itself rests on more procedural grounds having to do with the powers of Federal Judges to invoke new environmental standards, and of the Executive Branch to set aside judicial rulings in the name of national security. Court watchers suggested that the Justices seemed to split in a traditional left-right formation, based on comments made during the hearing. A ruling is not expected until spring. Read the rest of this entry »

The BBC has run a three-story series that reflects on the stranding deaths of six beaked whales during NATO sonar training exercises in late September 2002. Coming two years after a similar incident in the Bahamas during a US Navy sonar training exercise, the Canaries stranding cemented a growing concern about the potential for injury in the deep-diving beaked whale family. Studies that took place in nearby Las Palmas revealed the first clear evidence of tissue damage in the injured whales, and while scientists still are not certain of what sort of disruptions in the dive patterns may cause the injuries, this set of tissue lesions has become a “smoking gun” for sonar-induced injury. Read the rest of this entry »