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]