aeinews.org

Vermont wind farm challenged in court for intruding on nearby wilderness

Vermonters for a Clean Environment have filed a complaint in US District Court challenging the Forest Service's planned permit for 15 new wind turbines in the Green Mountain National Forest. The challenge includes several issues, but centers on the visual and sound impact of the new turbines on the nearby ...

Maine wind farm reimburses everyone in town for their electric bill costs

The Record Hill Wind Farm has made the first of planned ongoing quarterly payments to all year-round and seasonal property owners in Roxbury, Maine. The checks, for $111.57, reflect the average cost of the power used by residents in town over the course of three months. While wind farms cannot ...

Falmouth selectmen, town meeting continue to tangle over wind turbines

Two town meeting votes, along with a short-lived wind turbine plan adopted by the local board of selectmen, kept things blustery in meeting rooms as well as in the springtime air of Falmouth this month. A large number of people living within a half mile to mile of the two ...

WV wind farm: 55dB limit is being met in long-term average levels, while peaks continue to trouble neighbors

Two recent articles have shed interesting light on the ongoing controversy in Keyser, WV, home of the Pinnacle Wind Farm, where many neighbors have been complaining about noise since the turbines began operating late last year. The first clarifies that most or all nearby residents signed agreements with the wind ...

Bernie Krause’s Great Animal Orchestra

Bernie Krause's new book, The Great Animal Orchestra, is a worthy culmination to his inquisitive career. After working out a few writerly wrinkles on a couple of earlier books that touched on aspects of his fascination with the world of natural sound, this one offers up a wide-ranging tour of ...

Health effects of wind farms: summary of recent research

Here we go again! As in AEI's similarly long recap of 2011 research on low frequency noise and infrasound published in December, I've tackled a similar task with close to a dozen papers published in 2011 on health effects of living near wind farms. Rather than publish the entire thing ...

Tubular wind turbine foundation much quieter to install offshore

As countries around the world gear up to expand offshore wind development, one of the major concerns of ocean biologists is the exceedingly loud noise of pile driving during construction. Studies suggest that some ocean species move at least 20km from turbine construction areas, and in areas with lots of planned ...

Japan commits to floating offshore wind

In order to compensate for the abandonment of many nuclear plants, the Japanese government has set its sights on the abundant wind resources off its coast. A 15MW pilot floating wind turbine project is under construction not far from Fukushima; if all goes well, the project could expand to as ...

US east coast seismic survey EIS draft released

The US Bureau of Ocean Energy and Management (BOEM) has released the Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement that is the first step toward oil and gas development off the east coast. The PEIS assesses the impacts of geological and geophysical (G&G) activities, primarily seismic surveys and test wells. I've yet to ...

AEI invited to shape renewables conference agenda, NOAA ocean noise mapping effort

My dance card is filling up for the spring! AEI's years of working hard to play a constructive role in public and professional dialogue about policy responses to noise-related environmental issues has been rewarded with two invitations that I'm very excited about. The first was an invite to server on the ...