The rhythmic whoosh, whoosh, whoosh of wind turbines echoes through the air. Sleek and white, their long propeller blades rotate in formation, like some otherworldly dance of spindly-armed aliens swaying across the land.
Yancey knows the towers are pumping clean electricity into the grid, knows they have been largely embraced by his community
But Yancey hates them.
He hates the sight and he hates the sound. He can't stand the gigantic flickering shadows the blades cast at certain points in the day.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/wayoflife/08/17/bitter.wind.ap/index.htmlSo CNN dares to report that someone doesn't like the turbines on their land and it's cause they love petrodollars! Geesh. Maybe if some of us had to live under them and listen to them every day 24/7 we'd not be embracing them!
Funny thing is old T. Boone loves them as well - as long as they are not on his land. He won't put them on his own land.
In PA we're having battles over the turbines as well. A lot of residents hate them. They are also proving to be somewhat deadly to raptor birds like eagles and hawks, plus bats.
Personally I want to see wind power explored, but it may be that we have to be careful where we put them.
Here's some more haters: Just across the Eastern Continental Divide in Blair County, Todd and Jill Stull's farm nestles in the Allegheny Mountains.
A tree-lined drive leads to the century-old white farmhouse and red barn the couple spent nearly two decades restoring. They're raising two boys here, and this is where they hoped to retire -- until six wind turbines were erected a few thousand feet from their home. The turbine heads loom over the Blue Knob ridge that serves as a backdrop.
The spinning blades create a deep whooshing sound with a metallic whine. The noise changes intensity with the wind. Todd Stull, a gastrointestinal doctor, said the noise sends him to the coal cellar for a quiet night's sleep.
"If I'm working the next day and it is so loud that I can't sleep, what am I going to do?" said Todd Stull, ducking to avoid a low ceiling as he descended his basement stairs. "This old, unheated coal cellar is the only place where the turbines won't wake me. In the middle of winter it is 55 degrees in here and I sleep on this cot. How pathetic is that?"
A lawsuit the Stulls filed against Gamesa Energy USA and Allegheny Ridge Wind Farm is pending. The Stulls are seeking more than $50,000 in damages, but the ultimate goal is to still the turbines' spinning blades.
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/valleyindependent/teenscene/s_580897.htmlBOARDMAN, ORE. — Sherry Eaton pulled into the driveway of her rural, high-desert home to see one of several giant wind turbines being assembled a half-mile away.
"I started to cry," Eaton, 57, recalled of her first sight of the Willow Creek Wind Project in late July. "They're going to be hanging over the back of our house, and now there's the medical thing."
"The medical thing" is new research suggesting that living close to wind turbines, as Eaton and her 60-year-old husband, Mike, soon will be doing, can cause sleep disorders, difficulty with equilibrium, headaches, childhood "night terrors" and other health problems.
Dozens of wind turbines are taking shape along Oregon 74, a designated Oregon Scenic Byway, near the home the Eatons have shared for 19 years.
Dr. Nina Pierpont of Malone, N.Y., coined the phrase "wind turbine syndrome" for what she says happens to some people living near wind energy farms. She has made the phrase part of the title of a book she's written called Wind Turbine Syndrome: A Report on the Natural Experiment. It is scheduled for publication next month by K-Selected Press of Santa Fe, N.M.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/health/5947095.htmlDo any of you criticizing these people live under a wind turbine or even near one?