Researchers have determined that Americans between 25 and 64 years old hear better than their grandparents did at the same age.  Comparing research done in 1959-1962 with similar studies in 1999-2004, it appears that upper-frequency hearing is notably better than it used to be; middle-frequency hearing is roughly the same.

Researchers suspect that a combination of better treatment of childhood ear infections, fewer smokers and better health care in general, and a reduction in manufacturing jobs (as well as better hearing protection in today’s workplaces) have led to the improvement.

The reduction in upper-frequency hearing loss is especially important in speech recognition.

Women from three generations converse (NIDCD)

For more, see this NIDCD press release and this post on About.com that includes several related links.

Traffic noise is the second biggest environmental problem affecting our health in Europe, after air pollution, according to a report published in late March by the World Health Organisation (WHO). According to the WHO study, 1.8% of heart attacks in high income European countries are attributed to traffic noise level higher than 60dB.

“This new health evidence highlights the urgent need to reduce transport noise”, says James Grugeon, Chief Executive of Environmental Protection UK. “EPUK are working to reduce noise from road traffic. Our Campaign for Better Tyres, launched this week, encourages transport operators and drivers to choose tyres that are quieter.” The European Commission is expected to release a proposal in June for more stringent vehicle noise standards, and from November 2012 new regulations for stricter tyre noise levels and tyre labeling for noise come into force.

European citizens are well aware of the health impacts of traffic noise. According to a recent Eurobarometer (6), almost half of all Europeans believe that noise affects their health “to a large extent” and another one-third said that it affected their health “to some extent.”

Source: Environmental Protection UK

Download WHO report here

Two years after proposing changes in whale-watching rules  in Puget Sound to protect endangered orca populations, NOAA has finalized its new standards.  Boats will need to stay twice as far from the whales (200 yards), and a half-mile wide “no-go” zone has been established along the entire west coast of San Juan Island, an important feeding zone.

For detailed coverage of the new plans, see these earlier AEInews posts.

UPDATE, 4/15: Canadian regulations lag those on the US side of the border; a recent study found that an average of about 20 boats surround orcas in summer months in one popular whale-watching area.  See this recent article that summarizes a set of proposed regulations developed by the University of Victoria (BC) Environmental Law Clinic, including 500 meter approach limits, 30 minute time limits, and weekly “days of rest” with no whale watching boats in the water.

In what must be one of the slowest EIS processes on record, the National Park Service and the Federal Aviation Administration is moving…methodically…to develop a new air tour management plan (ATMP) for Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.  After being upgraded from an EA to an EIS in 2005, the joint planning process began work on the EIS in 2007.  Four years later, rather than releasing a Draft EIS, the project planners have released a first draft of the proposed alternatives, and are asking for comment on these.  After incorporating comments, the DEIS will follow.  Sometime.

All ribbing aside, the fact is that this is actually one of the faster moving ATMP’s coming out of the seemingly uncomfortable partnership between the FAA and the NPS, which were  jointly charged in 2000 with developing ATMPs for all parks with existing or proposed flight tours.  The Park Service has taken a lead among federal agencies in addressing impacts on natural soundscapes of parks, while the FAA’s focus is more on air safety than resource protection.

“Hawai‘i Volcanoes is known for spectacular volcanic landscapes, significance of Native Hawaiian culture, Hawaiian species found nowhere else in the world, and for vast expanses of designated wilderness that stretch from summit to sea,” stated Cindy Orlando, Park Superintendent. “Whether it’s the crackling of new lava, song of a honeycreeper, or a magical Hawaiian chant floating across Halemaumau Crater or just silence—the soundscapes of Hawaii Volcanoes are unusual and valued as part of the park experience. We also protect some of the quietest places in the park service —secluded locations that are quieter than even humans can hear. Natural quiet is becoming an increasingly important attribute of the national parks.”

You can download a newsletter that shares the draft alternatives, and submit comments, from this page; see the full project planning website here; and check out a short video and news report on the process here.

The National Parks Traveller blog recently ran a great piece titled Give Us A National Park, Please, But Not its Regulations.  Here’s the lead:

We love our national parks. We love the wildlife they hold, the seashores with their sparkling sands, the forests with their wildlife and hiking trails, the soaring red-rock cliffs and plunging canyons.

But please, don’t ask us to abide by their regulations.

Uproars over managing off-road vehicles in both Cape Hatteras National Seashore and Big Cypress National Preserve, the oyster farm at Point Reyes National Seashore, air traffic over Grand Canyon National Park, snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park, and now bike races in Colorado National Monument all seem to drive home that point, no?

The piece goes on with evocative detail and interesting historical perspective on the Parks’ struggles to balance preservation and access.  Very well done.

New wind farm permitting rules adopted in the Australian state of Victoria place permitting authority in the hands of local councils, rather than the state Minister for Planning.  During  the recent campaign, the newly elected state government had called for  2km setbacks from non-consenting landowners, and shared payment plans for all residents within 1km.  While these provisions are not included in the new rules, local authorities are granted authority to assess “high amenity noise impacts,” which could lead to noise limits lower than those currently required by the law (of course, lower noise limits lead to larger setbacks from homes).

In Australia, a fair amount of research has looked at local reactions to wind farm noise, and the concept of “rural amenity” has emerged as a likely  factor in areas where moderate noise triggers more widespread complaints than expected.  The idea is basically that residents in some areas value rural quiet extremely highly, and in these places even distant turbines can trigger complaints; several windfarms have faced widespread reaction from  residents 2km (about 1.25 miles) away.

US News has a good piece today on Bryan Pijanowski’s research team at Purdue, about how the new field of soundscape ecology may help us to understand ecosystem dynamics and changes.

This April, when you step outside and hear the first sounds of spring, you won’t be hearing just songbirds and buzzing insects, but aural evidence of an awakening ecosystem. The emerging science of soundscape ecology is building on the established field of bioacoustics to create a new way of gauging ecosystem health and diversity—by listening.

“Natural sounds can be used like a canary in a coal mine, as a critical first indicator of environmental changes,” said Bryan Pijanowski, an ecologist at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind.

Pijanowski and his colleagues outlined their vision of soundscape ecology in the March issue of BioScience. The new field will take a much broader approach to collecting and evaluating sound than ever before, although the authors caution that no coherent theory yet exists to categorize the ecological significance of all the sounds emanating from a landscape.

Scientists have been using sound as a tool for studying the natural world for some time, mainly through bioacoustics, the study of sounds made by animals. But most of these studies tend to focus on one or two individuals at a time, said Jesse Barber, a sensory ecologist at Boise State University in Idaho, who was not part of Pijanowski’s team.

“Using sound to try to discern something about the ecosystem as a whole is what is novel about soundscape ecology,” Barber said.

Follow the link at the top of this post to read the whole article.

An Ontario Superior Court has dismissed a legal challenge to the province’s wind farm siting standards, which call for 550 meter (1800 foot) setbacks in most cases. The Court ruled that it could only judge whether the process of coming up with the regulations followed proper protocols, including public consultation and the use of science-based evidence in coming to its conclusions. That lifts a cloud of uncertainty from developers of wind farms, says the president of the Canadian Wind Energy Association. “We’re expecting this to be a record year for wind development in Ontario,” Robert Hornung said in an interview. “This decision just helps everybody put their head down and focus on the work.”

“It is not the court’s function to question the wisdom of the minister’s decision, or even whether it was reasonable,” the court ruled Thursday. “If the minister followed the process mandates by the Environmental Bill of Rights, his decision is unassailable on a judicial review application.”

The Court pointed out that the province’s Environmental Review Tribunal (ERT) can consider whether setbacks are reasonable, on a case-by-case basis.  In fact, an ERT review is currently underway, challenging the standard setbacks at a wind farm in Chatham-Kent, the first new wind farm to be permitted under the new law. Read the rest of this entry »

Following up on our previous coverage now-infamous Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s call for larger wind turbine setbacks, the a joint legislative committee that reviews pending new rules voted to abandon the planned implementation of new wind farm siting rules scheduled to go into effect on March 1. (See PSC site detailing the work of the committee that proposed the new rules, and this opinion piece by the committee vice-chair and co-author of a minority report supporting larger setbacks)

Republican legislators, now in the majority, agreed with Governor Walker that the rules as crafted would allow turbines too close to neighboring properties; Walker and his allies frame their objections as a property rights issue. Committee co-chair Rep. Jim Ott, said. “The biggest issue we heard came from testifiers at the hearing that 1,250 ft. is too close and will result in shadow flicker and noise issues.” Some wind farm neighbors also cite health issues resulting from stress and loss of sleep caused by the turbine noise, which also influenced the legislators.

The American Wind Energy Association said the PSC rule was restrictive enough, given that it set specific noise limits and restrictions on shadow flicker in addition to turbine distance setbacks.

“These rules were developed collaboratively by the wind energy industry and all major stakeholders in Wisconsin, based on input from six public hearings and two years of information gathering, to protect the interests of all involved parties,” said Jeff Anthony, director of business development at the American Wind Energy Association and a Wisconsin resident.

“We heard nearly nine hours of testimony during February’s hearing,” Ott said. “Based on the testimony — some pro and a lot of con — we decided to hold a motion to suspend the rule. This is a situation where the legislature is exercising its oversight of a public agency.”  It is expected that the legislature will authorize a new round of rule-making, with one bill calling on the PSC to revisit the issue and submit a new proposal within 7 months.

This story has been floating around for nearly ten years now, but I hadn’t come across it until Treehugger posted on it this week.  Click on over there for their normal rich set of links out to related themes and other sources on this one.

The short version of the story is that there’s a whale, first heard in 1989 and tracked since 1992, that sings at 52Hz, significantly higher than other large baleen whales.  No one else sings at this frequency, and he or she also travels an annual migratory path that misses contact with concentrations of other whales.  Scientists speculate that this animal is either a hybrid of two species, or a remnant of an unknown species.  Either way, it’s a lonely life, calling at a frequency other whales don’t respond to, and may not even hear. The Good website has a link to the sound itself, as well as a podcast that tells more of the story.

An article from Vermont offers an unusually detailed and complete report on a Public Service Board hearing about noise at a proposed wind farm in Lowell.  I highly recommend it.

The article summarizes the testimony of two noise experts, each of whom was proposing what they felt was a proper conservative noise limit; the article presents each approach quite well, and gives a good sense of the judgment calls that regulators are being asked to make about wind farm noise.

Les Blomberg urged a 35dB standard at property lines, which would help keep noise levels low enough for folks to put a chair in the yard and relax.  He used an EPA technique to suggest that turbine noise should be regulated to a lower sound level than other noise sources.

Ken Kalinsky proposed a 45dB standard outside the home, which would protect against sleep disruption, and not limit outdoor conversation, though may interfere with quieter outdoor activities such as listening to songbirds.  He said that 45dB is more conservative a limit than those used in many other places, notably the World Health Organization standard for protecting health.

Now go read the whole article!

Great article in the New York Times on the strides made at Muir Woods, just north of San Francisco, in restoring natural quiet.

At times, deep within this vaulted chamber of redwoods, it is almost quiet enough to hear a banana slug slither by. For the National Park Service, that stillness is as vital a component of the site as the trees’ green needles, or the sudden darting rays of sunlight.

A decade after the agency resolved to restore natural sounds to this park in a metropolitan area of seven million people, managers at Muir Woods, in Marin Country just north of San Francisco, have made big strides in vanquishing intrusive noise. Now the background sounds are dominated by the burbling rush of Redwood Creek, the soft sibilant breeze that stirs the redwood branches, the croak of a crow.

Much more in the full article, including summary of National Park Service research on the effects of moderate noise on animals, and the recent Grand Canyon noise management plan.

Renewable Energy World has just published a commentary I wrote, urging wind industry professionals to reassess their current one-size-fits-all approach to community noise standards.  You can read it in full, with links to sources and comments from others, on their site.  They’ll be seeding it into their email newsletters during the week, likely triggering a few waves of readership and comments.

Here’s a pdf if you want to download it to read it offline. I’m reproducing it here as well:

Looking for Wind Industry Leadership in Reducing Noise Impacts

By Jim Cummings, Acoustic Ecology Institute

The wind industry is at an important fork in the road regarding community noise standards. After years of successfully using relatively small setbacks in farm and ranch country, recent years have seen a surge of noise complaints, troubling annoyance-level surveys, and widespread fear of new wind development.  Though sound levels of 45-50dB have been taken in stride by many, even most, places where early industrial wind development took place, it’s becoming apparent that for some types of communities, sound levels of even 40dB are triggering high levels of community push-back.  The industry’s first responses to this emerging problem have been counterproductive: discounting the prevalence of complaints, vilifying acousticians seeking to understand the shift, and most fundamentally, insisting to county commissions nationwide that “widely accepted” community noise standards that have worked elsewhere are applicable everywhere.  It’s high time that forward-looking industry insiders take the lead in forging a more flexible, collaborative relationship with communities, acknowledging that the noise tolerance we are used to is not universal: some rural regions are far less amenable to moderate, yet easily audible, turbine noise.  Companies that accept this fact — rather than ignoring or fighting it — will build corporate reputations that could make them the go-to developers across much of rural America.

A few tidbits highlight just how counterproductive the current entrenched “everything is fine” stance has become:

Read the rest of this entry »

Unbeknownst to most of us, a long-term National Forest Service approach to managing roads on its millions of acres of non-wilderness lands has been waiting for activation since January 2001, when the Forest Service finalized a plan for the long-term management of their oversized and under-maintained road system. That plan basically directed the agency to identify an ecologically and fiscally sustainable minimum road system that would meet resource management and recreational access needs. The plan projected that the agency might reduce the overall road system by more than 30%, and that as a result “unroaded” acreage might increase by up to 15% nationally.  Wildlands CPR fills us in on the details with this web post and a real nice pdf version of their magazine feature on the story.

A combination of political neglect and other factors has meant that even as the “minimum road system” goal remained on the books, and was part of the Travel Management Plan process that many forests engaged in over the past decade, implementation of the idea has never happened.

Now that has changed, with the release in late 2010 of a directive from the Forest Service Chief. The guidance memo directs all national forests to identify, through a science-based analysis, an ecologically and fiscally sustainable minimum road system by 2015.

In addition to the five years it will take to conduct this analysis nationally, it will likely take decades to actually implement the minimum system on-the-ground. But the plans developed through this process will, over the long-term, create a blueprint for future road maintenance and decommissioning investments, including Legacy Roads and Trails Remediation Initiative funding.

For those interested in large landscape connectivity for wildlife, this initiative presents an opportunity to reduce road densities as well as protect and restore linkages and core habitat. For those interested in clean water and fisheries, it is an opportunity to improve water quality and watershed health. And for those interested in fiscal responsibility, it is an opportunity to identify a road system that the Forest Service can afford to maintain.

Senator John McCain has introduced legislation that would derail the National Park Service’s recently-released compromise plan to reduce noise levels in the Grand Canyon.  McCain’s initiative, apparently included in an amendment to another bill (details are sketchy so far, with nothing on McCain’s website so far), would declare that keeping half of Grand Canyon National Park relatively free of noise from air tours is good enough.  By contrast, the NPS proposal, which increased the total number of tourist flights allowed but concentrated them in smaller flight zones, would keep two-thirds of the canyon free of any aircraft noise (including commercial jets and non-tour private aircraft) for most of the day.

McCain seeks to codify what has been the Park’s modus operandi for the past 17 years, a 50% protection standard that was achievable without making major changes.  That interim approach was adopted while Park staff, environmental groups, and air tour operators attempted to come to a consensus on how to move forward.  While the NPS does not and cannot regulate commercial overflights, the sound from high-flying jets does impact the canyon, and the NPS included these sounds in its planning of air tour routes, so as to keep aircraft noise inaudible for 75% of the day in the “quiet” parts of the park (of course, allowing aircraft noise for 25% of the day hardly creates an experience of solitude…but this is part of the compromise that wilderness advocates are being asked to accept).  By not counting commercial flights in the total noise budget of the Park, McCain is rolling things backward.

The McCain approach would also do away with two of the Park Service’s key innovations: seasonal shifts of air tour routes, so that different parts of the park are quiet at different times of the year, and most importantly, the no-fly period that would keep the canyon truly quiet for an hour after sunrise and an hour before sunset.

Ironically (or perhaps not, for those tracking the Maverick’s devolution over the past few years), McCain was the main proponent of the 1987 bill that set this process in motion, and called for “substantial restoration of the natural quiet and experience of the park.”

This short story from Australia neatly sums up the divide in many communities over wind farm development.

Black Springs resident Kerry Heinrich (above) is happy to have wind turbines in her backyard. At yesterday’s launch of the Waterloo wind farm – 30km from Clare – Ms Heinrich said the 37 wind turbines created only “background noise”.

“I think they are quite stunning,” she said. “They are just part of the landscape now.”

Yet others were far less happy on the first day of operation. Stop Industrial Wind Turbines chairwoman Ally Fricker said the community was “bitterly divided” about the farm.  A small group of protesters concerned about turbine noise and sleep disruption held signs including saying “turbines kill rural communities” and “more research needed.”

It all comes down to how much, if any, background noise someone is ready for, it seems.  Time will tell whether the homes in this particular community are close enough to the turbines to cause ongoing problems, or only occasionally audible noise.

Just came across a fairly detailed article looking at wind energy in Holland, and more generally, in Europe.  The article focuses on local resistance to a large windfarm being planned on the coast of Holland, but it included this section, citing the European Wind Energy Association on the long project timelines and high rate of local resistance and legal challenges:

“In Holland, there’s hardly any project that doesn’t get delayed,” said Michiel Muller, the wind unit manager of Ecofys, a research and consultancy firm on sustainable energy, who is not connected with the Urk project.

Across Europe, each installation faces a slew of hurdles, starting from the required Environmental Impact Assessment to regulatory approvals by often more than a dozen authorities. It takes an average of 55 months to wade through the bureaucratic tangle before work can begin, the European Wind Energy Association said.

Of some 200 wind energy projects studied in 2007-8 in Europe, 40 percent were ensnared in lawsuits, and 30 percent more faced slowdowns because of local resistance or questioning from nonprofit environmental groups, the association said. It had no figures on how many projects were killed before they got started.

Down East magazine, a Maine institution, has published a series of stories on wind power in Maine, with enough detail to be valuable to people in any rural state who are trying to find the proper balance on wind development.  The series includes in-depth articles on the University of Maine’s leadership in developing floating far-offshore wind farms and on controversy surrounding the potential for many ridgetop wind farms in the relatively wild mountains of western Maine, and an editorial noting the quick and fearful reactions of many communities to just the thought of a new wind farm.

In the article detailing facts about Maine’s current wind power sites and proposals (which reads as generally supportive of wind development), the short section on noise impacts, noting both the moderate noise levels and big impact reported by some neighbors, was followed by a surprisingly blunt recommendation about setbacks: “Half a mile, at minimum. But most agree that a mile is more advisable, as virtually no complaints have been lodged by neighbors this far from a wind turbine.”

The wildlands article makes the case for protecting Maine’s highest ridgetops (over 2700 feet) from development, and focusing on smaller-scale, distributed alternative energy generation, including solar as well as wind, built closer to existing power infrastructure.

The article on the future of floating offshore wind is especially inspiring.  The UMaine team plans to test three 1/3-scale turbines in 2012, with comprehensive environmental monitoring, including subsea impacts, and follow that with a full-scale 3-5MW turbine by 2014, the first “stepping stone” multi-turbine 25MW wind farm 20-50 miles offshore by 2016, and expansion to 500MW or more by 2020.   Here’s an excerpt:

“This is a one thousand-megawatt farm covering an eight-square-mile area,” says Habib Dagher, the man who created this vision and is now leading a team of engineers, environmental scientists, government policymakers, and offshore construction and energy industry leaders called the DeepCwind Consortium who hope to make it, the world’s first floating wind farm, a reality. “In the Gulf of Maine, that’s like an outhouse in the corner of a football field.”

Make that three outhouses. DeepCwind’s goal is to have three such wind farms bobbing twenty to fifty miles off the Maine coast and generating enough energy to power three million homes by 2030. It’s a breathtaking idea, and still it doesn’t fill the frame that has been drawn by Habib Dagher. He envisions Mainers converting to electricity to heat their homes and power their cars (the cost makes no sense now, he concedes, but it will in two decades, given the price increases predicted for fossil fuels) and the state becoming the Silicon Valley of offshore energy. Towers, blades, and other components will be manufactured right here, using technologies and materials pioneered by the University of Maine’s AEWC Advanced Structures and Composites Center, which he founded and directs.

For the first time, decades of oil and gas development in the Gulf of Mexico is being challenged in court, on the grounds that the noise of seismic surveys used to pinpoint oil reservoirs has a negative impact on the region’s endangered sperm whales.  A consortium of environmental groups, including the NRDC, CBD, and Sierra Club filed a formal notice of intent to sue, because 10 new oil exploration and development project have been approved in recent months without obtaining permits required by the Marine Mammal Protection Act and Endangered Species Act. “Seismic surveys have a vast environmental footprint, disrupting feeding and breeding of wildlife over great distances,” said Michael Jasny, a senior policy analyst at NRDC. “It is intolerable to think that the same species threatened by the Gulf spill will have to contend with the industry’s constant pounding, without any serious attempt to mitigate the harm.”

This legal challenge is similar to those mounted against Navy mid-frequency active sonar training, in that they are designed to assure that the behavioral impacts of seismic survey noise are considered, and that Incidental Harassment Authorizations are issued, with conditions meant to avoid any injury of animals, and minimize behavioral changes. The MMPA and ESA clearly require careful assessment and permitting of any activity that may negatively affect marine mammals or endangered species.

What is unclear, though, is how (if at all) oil and gas exploration activities might change after going through these proper legal challenges.  The US Navy now prepares full Environmental Impact Statements for all of its active sonar training areas, and receive IHAs from NOAA, but this legal compliance has not reduced their training activities or succeeded in putting any biologically rich areas off limits–in effect, NOAA has issued the permits after long official assessments that the activities have no significant impacts.  LIkewise, the oil and gas industry does have procedures in place to reduce sound output when animals are (very) close, and research into the behavioral effects of noise exposure at greater distances (lower sound levels) is ambiguous, though concerning.  See this earlier post about AEI’s work in this area, assessing research about behavioral impacts of moderate noise, including seismic.

The rhetoric from the litigants is surprisingly personal, implying that Gulf of Mexico exploration activity is being ramped up by this administration.  “Under Salazar’s watch, the Department of the Interior has treated the Gulf of Mexico as a sacrifice zone where laws are disregarded and wildlife protection takes a backseat to oil-company profits,” said Miyoko Sakashita, oceans director at the Center for Biological Diversity.  (See press release) What is unstated, and may in fact be more to the point, is that the Gulf has been a sacrifice zone for decades.  The fact is that these animal populations in this truly industrialized sea have been living with seismic exploration, drilling, and lots of ship traffic for many many years; some populations, including sperm whales, appear stable. While some may suggest this reinforces NOAA’s current stance that the activities do not cause any significant impact on wildlife, and others (including AEI) say it’s clearly long past time to consider the cumulative and long-term impacts of this activity on marine life, the villain is not Ken Salazar.  It’s our continuing addiction to oil, pushing us to search in ever deeper and more hazardous waters to fill our boundless needs.

A group in Maine has petitioned the state Board of Environmental Protection to amend the noise rules in the state Site Location Law to set lower limits for wind farm noise than for other sources of community noise.  The group, the Citizen’s Task Force on Wind Power, is formally asking the state to consider a question that has become central to siting controversies nationwide: is the nature of wind turbine noise different enough from road or factory noise to warrant lower noise limits?  The BEP will hold public hearings to consider the question.

A growing number of acousticians and medical professionals have raised concerns that standard community noise standards are not likely to provide the same level as protection from wind farm noise as they do from other noise sources.  There are several reasons put forward for this, including:

• The prevalence of amplitude modulation.  The pulsing quality to the sound, rising and falling slightly in loudness at about once a second, adds to its noticeability and annoyance (this is often related to the presence of a wind shear, or higher wind speeds at the top of the turbine blade rotation than at the bottom).
• The low-frequency character of turbine noise.  Separate from the controversial question of direct health effects from exposure to moderate levels of infrasound, wind turbine noise is weighted toward lower frequency audible sound as well, which travels farther than higher frequencies, penetrates homes better, and is not fully represented in A-weighted dB measurements.
• The unpredictable 24-hour nature of the sound.  Other common community noise sources quiet down at night, often becoming totally inactive, rather than continuing at the allowed 45dB.
• Large difference of turbine noise and natural ambient at night is disruptive. Night time wind farm noise at current 45dB standard can easily be 15-25dB louder than quiet rural ambient noise level.

Currently, state regulators are relying on the state’s generalized community noise standards in approving wind farms.  According to Cynthia Bertocci, an analyst for the BEP, a public hearing will be held to address the petition to change the regs for wind farms, though a date has not yet been set.  The Citizen’s Task Force proposes nighttime noise limits of 35dB at homes; while turbines would still be audible outside in many cases (night time ambient in rural areas is often 20-25dB, and sometimes even lower), noise inside should be minimal.  This would like require setbacks of close to a mile.

The Wisconsin legislature has moved quickly to enact most of newly elected GOP governor Scott Walker’s job-creation bills during a special session he called after his inauguration, with one glaring exception: Walker’s proposal to increase wind turbine setbacks from 1250 from homes, to 1800 feet from property lines.  As noted in this earlier post, and in a more detailed commentary on the Renewable Energy World website, Walker’s proposal seems to AEI to be a step in the right direction toward forging a new social framework that will actually support the long-term success of the wind industry, by helping avoid long, costly siting debates, lawsuits, and property-value claims. The proposed larger setbacks would come along with provisions allowing closer placement of turbines if the company works out an agreement with nearby neighbors.

According to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, negotiations are underway to perhaps come up with some sort of middle ground between the existing regulations and Walker’s proposal, with leaders of the GOP majority sharing Walker’s concerns that the 1250 standard is insufficient.

UPDATE, 2/11/11: The Wisconsin legislature held a hearing to consider suspending the statewide wind farm regulations adopted by the state PSC last year, scheduled to go into effect shortly.  While the GOP-led legislature did not move forward with Governor Walker’s bill to increase setbacks to 1800 feet from property lines, they are considering revisiting the question.

A “border watch group” in Arizona is proposing the installation of underground sensors that will listen for the footsteps of illegal immigrants crossing from Mexico.  They’ve apparently gotten the ear of an Arizona state legislator, who says he’s earmarking $5 million of existing funds to install a 5-mile prototype of the system.

The system, which has been promoted by the group American Patrol, had received some regional press last summer, but was first featured nationally this week by the new Rupert Murdoch iPad-only publication, The Daily, which reports that the sensors would be buried up to 12 feet underground, and are designed to distinguish a variety of activities, including individual people, groups, vehicles, animals, and “likely tunneling.” An American Patrol posting in late January had announced that “We are testing the system now and expect to make a major announcement in late February.”

Seven years after the Southern resident killer whale population in Puget Sound was declared endangered, US government regulators appear poised to finally enact new regulations to protect orcas from boat noise in key foraging areas. In 2009, NOAA proposed increasing the minimum buffer that boats must give orcas, from 100 yards to 200 yards, and creating a half-mile “no go” zone along the entire west side of San Juan Island, where orcas gather to feed.  After extending the comment period into early 2010, finally – a year later – NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service has formally completed its analysis process; now, the Department of Commerce and Office of Management and Budget must OK the plan before the new rules go into effect, hopefully before this summer’s whalewatching season.

Reducing boat noise is a key piece of the puzzle for orca health.  Several recent research projects have identified impacts of boat noise, including reducing foraging time and interfering with communication.  The primary direct cause of orca decline is malnutrition as salmon runs decline; for this reason, it’s crucial that orcas are not impeded by boat noise as they seek out the fewer salmon that remain.

Seattle’s Q13 Fox News has covered the story well in recent months, including a recent update, along with a three part series that ran in November 2010 (all four stories have video components).

On the Canadian side of the border, things are moving even more slowly.  In December, a Canadian court ruled that the Canadian government’s approach, which uses voluntary guidelines, is not sufficient in dealing with an endangered species.  But Canadian officials have appealed that ruling, and it appears that nothing will change for the foreseeable future.

“It’s another season where we’re allowing more stress to be put on these animals.  You have to start asking how much more they can take?  If you ask anyone, a politician anybody about the Orca they would say they’re wonderful and beautiful and magnificent.  Why is it we can’t turn that into action?” asks Christine Wilhelmson of the Georgia Strait Alliance.

Follow this link for all previous AEI News coverage of orca issues.

Note: See a longer article on I wrote Walker’s move, which was published on the Renewable Energy World website

When Scott Walker was inaugurated as Wisconsin’s new Governor earlier this month, he called a special session of the state legislature, dubbed the “Wisconsin in Open for Business” session.  All bills will be focused on improving the state’s business climate, something that is always a GOP priority, and which in these tough economic times, has widespread support.

But his regulatory reform bill has a wild card tucked inside: a new and stricter setback standard for industrial wind farms.  While the proposal is being attacked as a job-killer, it appears to AEI that the Governor has his pulse on one of the key ways that the wind industry might gain easier acceptance in the years to come.

In response to tough local rules that were seen as anti-wind, the Wisconsin legislature called for statewide standards that localities cannot exceed; after a couple years of meetings, the state’s PRC recently adopted a new statewide standard of 1250 feet from homes.  Governor Walker’s bill would increase setbacks statewide to 1800 feet from property lines.

While this would still not protect neighbors from hearing wind turbines, which are often quite audible at a half mile and can be heard to a mile or more in some situations (many suggest setbacks in these larger ranges), it is a substantial increase.  Wind industry spokesmen immediately slammed the change, claiming that it would basically preclude new wind farms in the state and kill jobs.  These critiques ignore a key provision of the Governor’s proposal: neighbors closer than 1800 feet can agree to let turbines go up, presumably in exchange for some compensation from the wind company.

It appears that Governor Walker understands that what will move the wind industry forward is regulations that may help local communities to feel more comfortable about the likely impacts of new wind farms, rather than standards designed primarily to ease the placement of new wind farms.  The combination of larger setbacks, and provisions for neighbors to sign waivers, is the right direction for growing this industry without sacrificing the quality of life of rural communities.

Here are three articles in the local press on the proposal: Simple announcement of the bill, and statement from Governor A fairly balanced article that includes comments from developers and those supporting the measure Longer, also balanced report, with quotes from AWEA, the Governor, and local supporters of the proposal

A few months back, there was a bit of a news and comment flurry when the Shepherd’s Flat wind farm announced plans to pay neighbors $5000 for noise wavers, in order to build turbines closer to homes than Oregon’s unusually strict 36dB noise limit would allow. While the plan was dissed by many as an attempt to buy off neighbors, it seems to me that agreements like this are a valid way of addressing concerns about noise, especially in that they provide local authorities an avenue that may help them justify larger set-backs (or lower decibel limits) to protect residents who don’t want to hear turbines, while allowing developers to arrange exceptions with people who either don’t care about noise or feel that a payment is fair compensation.

But of course, noise waver or easement provisions don’t guarantee that the developer can build turbines closer to every resident.  Caithness Energy is dealing with this in Oregon now, as this unusually frank article details. The entire article is important reading for nearly anyone working on this issue, but here are a few highlights:

Richard and Joanne Goodhead were clear from the start that they were not willing to live with turbine noise of up to 50dB, as the waiver would allow, and told Caithness, the developer, they wanted to be bought out. “(The Caithness representative) said ‘We’re not in the real estate business,’ Goodhead said. ‘I said, fine — I’m not in the windmill business.’” After a month of negotiations, which included offers of $6000 per year for 20 years, and later, the revenue from one turbine, Caithness relented, and bought the Goodhead’s land and home.

Two other homes near the Shepherd’s Flat wind farm, which is still under construction, have been sold; one was bought by an attorney who works for Caithness, acting on behalf of another local landowner who is part of the wind project.

Invenergy’s Willow Creek wind farm, just south of Shepherd’s Flat, has also been struggling with noise issues, finding it difficult at times to meet the 36dB limit.  According to the Goodheads, the local antelope population has noticeably declined since it began operating.

Read more: http://www.statesmanjournal.com/article/20101227/UPDATE/101227031/Wind-farm-splits-neighbors-who-take-cash-or-leave#ixzz19WgqwrR2