For Those Near, the Miserable Hum of Clean Energy
By TOM ZELLER Jr.
NYT
VINALHAVEN, Me. — Like nearly all of the residents on this island in Penobscot Bay, Art Lindgren and his wife, Cheryl, celebrated the arrival of three giant wind turbines late last year. That was before they were turned on.
“In the first 10 minutes, our jaws dropped to the ground,” Mr. Lindgren said. “Nobody in the area could believe it. They were so loud.”
Now, the Lindgrens, along with a dozen or so neighbors living less than a mile from the $15 million wind facility here, say the industrial whoosh-and-whoop of the 123-foot blades is making life in this otherwise tranquil corner of the island unbearable.
They are among a small but growing number of families and homeowners across the country who say they have learned the hard way that wind power — a clean alternative to electricity from fossil fuels — is not without emissions of its own.
(More here.)
NYT
VINALHAVEN, Me. — Like nearly all of the residents on this island in Penobscot Bay, Art Lindgren and his wife, Cheryl, celebrated the arrival of three giant wind turbines late last year. That was before they were turned on.
“In the first 10 minutes, our jaws dropped to the ground,” Mr. Lindgren said. “Nobody in the area could believe it. They were so loud.”
Now, the Lindgrens, along with a dozen or so neighbors living less than a mile from the $15 million wind facility here, say the industrial whoosh-and-whoop of the 123-foot blades is making life in this otherwise tranquil corner of the island unbearable.
They are among a small but growing number of families and homeowners across the country who say they have learned the hard way that wind power — a clean alternative to electricity from fossil fuels — is not without emissions of its own.
(More here.)
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1 Comments:
Psychology 101 : People respond to change … some negative, some positive.
One of my favorite stories is of a study that was done in manufacturing areas about lighting. The company changed the overhead lights from incandescent to fluorescent. Some employees complained, some like it, but overall productivity bumped up and then stabilized. Years later, the company changed the lights from fluorescent back to incandescent. Once again there were complaints and praise, but the productivity improved. The result of the study was that people respond to change … it does not matter what was changed, they noticed that something changed.
So it is here … now people hear the “whoosh” that they did not hear before … they don’t like the change … but in time it will not be heard.
As a child, my parents’ home was on Lake Erie and you could hear the waves crashing into the breakwall … well, I couldn’t hear them, they became part of the background noise of normal living, but when people would visit, they would always comment on the noise from the waves. Yet, my Dad loved seeing the ships on the Lake, to him the “reward” was worth the noise … so to it with the wind turbines.
I live in a rural setting, yet at night you can hear the DM&E trains and trucks on the highway … its normal … and unless you tune your ear, you probably don’t notice it. Funny thing is that when Highway 169 was being rebuilt and closed for over a year, we never heard a sound at night … then when they reopened the road, boy did those trucks sound loud … it was the change that I heard … today, it’s just background noise.
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