Proposed rules issued Friday by the state Public Service Board signal a significant shift in the state’s regulation of wind turbines.
The board is calling for more restrictive limits on sound emissions, which at least one renewable energy proponent said could effectively ban wind power in Vermont.
Currently, regulators measure sound emissions from inside and outside homes. Emissions outside must not exceed 45 decibels, while emissions inside a home cannot exceed 30 decibels.
The new proposal does away with inside or outside and instead measures emissions during the day and at night within 100 feet of a home. Under such standards, emissions could not exceed 42 decibels during the day and 35 decibels at night.
“That is absurdly low,” Ben Walsh, climate and energy program director at the Vermont Public Interest Research Group, said of the nighttime level in particular. “This is functionally a ban on wind large and small in Vermont … I’m surprised the board went this far.”
The board also called for new limits on the distance between large-scale turbines and homes, requiring that structures be at least 10 times their height from a home. That’s 5,000 feet for a 500-foot turbine.
Those who’ve long argued that Vermont has been too lenient about sound emissions view the new proposal somewhat favorably.
“Someone is listening,” said Annette Smith, executive director of Vermonters for a Clean Environment and a vocal critic of turbines.
Thirty-five decibels at night is the standard used in Germany, Smith noted. But she argued that the standards won’t be sufficient if Vermont doesn’t step up its enforcement of sound violations.
The proposed rules are still subject to change, following public hearings and review by two state panels. Two public hearings will be held in Montpelier on May 4: at 9:30 a.m. at the Public Service Board and at 7 p.m. at the high school.
The changes in sound standards come after some neighbors of wind projects in Vermont — particularly those in Sheffield, Lowell and Georgia — complained that the turbine emissions are deeply disruptive under certain conditions .
Gov. Phil Scott, who took office in January, has also said he will seek to prevent new large-scale ridgeline wind projects from being constructed.
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We talk all this pie in the sky rhetoric of 90% by 2050, but how do you think we’re going to get there? Not rooftop solar, we’d need to build a tens of thousands of new homes for that. Wind is a crucial part of that mix, and utility scale wind offers a HUGE chunk.
I hope all of you who will applaud this are thinking critically about our planet. We’re going to need to build a lot more solar to reach 90% by 2050 and we’re seriously hampering ourselves, as a state, by enacting this de facto ban on wind power.
So, “Gus” – who do you take your paycheck from?
This is really dumb. I grew up a few thousand feet from a highway and dealt with way higher decibels all day and night, punctuated with extremely high decibels from air brakes slowing the fossil fuel belching trucks that rulings like this basically ensure we will continue to suffer the consequences of.
This smacks of arrogance and privilege – while coastal cities and islands disappear far too many Vermonters want to complain about sound when they’re really just concerned about their own aesthetic sensibilities more than the lives of living breathing humans.
“Gus” has been commenting on vtdigger.org and several people have questioned whether it is a real person or a pseudonym. Pseudonyms are okay on this site, but digger requires that people use their real name. Gus appears to work for the industry.
We’re not getting to 90% renewables with wind thanks to the geniuses in the statehouse and former Gov. Shumlin who assured that all the wind energy built in Vermont is NOT counted towards that goal, and no new wind will be either. Instead, the utilities can use “Alternative Compliance Payments” based on the low value of Hydro-Quebec’s “environmental attributes”.
Adam, the Therrien family, who abandoned their home due to serious health impacts from the Sheffield wind turbines, lived closer to I-91 than the wind turbines. They lived next to the Interstate for 17 years and never were bothered by it. A couple years next to the Sheffield wind turbines destroyed their health and lives. Two small children didn’t sleep through the night for three years. A month after leaving the children were both sleeping through the night. If you want to talk about arrogance and privilege, look no further than the wind industry which has denied all impacts and claims everything is wonderful, and just like the fossil fuel industry, is externalizing costs and not taking responsibility for their impacts. The Therrien’s property is for sale, as they were forced by the state to put it on the market. Please exercise your right to purchase property next to wind turbines and learn from experience.
Thank goodness. Finally putting the “public” back in Public Service Board. Now let’s apply the same standards to basing fighter jets and get them out of residential neighborhoods.
A good start. Now let’s hope the proposed regulations stick.
In the meantime, if we’re going to talk about what Vermonters can do, let’s talk about the highest impact area for reducing green house gas emissions – transportation. It dwarfs the emissions from electricity generation, at least in VT. No one is talking about transportation, but rather; let’s destroy the ridge lines first.
At long last! Make those sound regulations stick. Meanwhile, commenters who think the sound issue is silly can get a GREAT DEAL buying the devalued properties affected by the intolerable infra sound produced by nearby industrial scale wind turbines!
Finally! This is the best news I’ve heard in a long time! The PSB has been far too hostile to the public for far too long. Seriously, stop driving a car and go vegan if you want to make a difference to the planet. I did both while I was a teenager — 1992 and 1990, respectively — and have remained firmly committed to both for the last quarter century plus. Both do a lot more for the environment than industrial wind, including carbon impact, if you only care about that, since that seems to be the myopic focus of “green” advocates these days, to the exclusion of all other environmental concerns.
Also, add renewable energy generation to your own property, as distributed generation is much better than industrial scale. Unfortunately, inverters (requried to convert the DC generated into AC–unless you only use appliances & electronics that accept 12V DC) generate powerful EMFs that cause dirty electricity issues and thus health problems for the inhabitants of not only the house where the generation is occurring, but also neighboring houses.
Conservation is key. I have a very well insulated house and keep the heat set in the 30s or 40s during most of the winter, and thus use very little energy for heating, which along with transportation and food (which I mentioned in my prev comment), have the greatest impacts on the environment, especially for VT’ers, not electricity (unless used for heating and/or transportation).
I’m conflicted but perhaps the pendulum had swung too far towards wind farms in the past . I’m glad the wind lobby’s girl Sue Minter lost the election . Otherwise David Blittersdorf might of had an office next to hers .
I think Adam has a valid point. If these new noise limits are proper, I think we should apply them to our highways and down town environments. We must think of our kids and their health as well as ours.
Surely we would not should not only protect a few from with these wind turbine standards, but ignore the much more common and there for widely detrimental noise from our highways and down towns.
Wind: unreliable and inefficient=unacceptable. Period.