{"id":15925,"date":"2011-07-06T08:41:19","date_gmt":"2011-07-06T14:41:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/?p=15925"},"modified":"2011-10-17T10:14:10","modified_gmt":"2011-10-17T16:14:10","slug":"battle-over-blades-wind-energy-is-noisy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/2011\/battle-over-blades-wind-energy-is-noisy\/","title":{"rendered":"Battle over Blades: Wind Energy is Noisy."},"content":{"rendered":"

A Libertyville resident who goes by the name of “Mom” alerted me to the story of legal wrangling over a wind turbine months ago; today it’s covered in The Chicago Tribune.<\/a> I have no particular dog in this fight, but the story highlights many of the practical difficulties presented to those who might like to use wind power. So, I thought I’d post what little I can glean from various news articles:<\/p>\n

The short version of the story seems to be:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Aldridge Electric wanted to construct a 120ft (140ft?, 150ft?) wind turbine and applied for permission. (I’ve read various heights.)<\/li>\n
  2. Libertyville had some sort of meeting, and may or may not have posted something to inform the public about the application. <\/li>\n
  3. Officials granted the permit. Aldridge installed the turbine issuing a press release<\/a> that included this claim:
    \n

    The EW50 wind turbine is projected to produce 40,000 kWh\/year, sufficient to power four homes a year and to power all 125 computers and 42 printers used by Aldridge Electric at its headquarters a year.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/li>\n

  4. Residents near the turbine find the sound disturbing. At some point, they form Citizens for the Protection of Libertyville.<\/a><\/li>\n
  5. Agitated residents asked the town to ban turbines. A temporary ban on building new turbines was put in place in August 2009. (See google doc<\/a>. The moratorium has been extended at least 4 times<\/a>. This doesn’t affect the existing turbine. The town also now limits the number of hours of operation. <\/li>\n

    <\/p>\n

  6. Someone filed a suit saying the town acted unlawfully in granting the permit; the town has spent $140,000 defending the suit. That law suit is pending. Presumably those interested can hunt down legal papers filed and learn details about steps the town took to inform the public prior to the meeting and vote. <\/li>\n
  7. Meanwhile, the town continues debating future wind turbine ordinances<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Having grown up in Libertyville, I was interested in seeing exactly where the turbine is located. I thought I recognized the house in some of the photos running with the story. Citizen’s for Protecting Libertyville provided a detailed image:
    \n
    \nCitizen’s for the protection of Libertyville say     “Folks, the Libertyville Wind Turbine is setback only 250 feet!”<\/a> and that appears to be a fairly accurate representation of the distance between homes and the turbine.<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a>To let people see how close this is to homes, I fiddled with Google Maps to let you look “up” that Riverside drive and took a screenshot. I think the tidy brick home on the left corresponds to the address of the home pictured in the Tribune. You can see some sort of industrial building near the end of that street. I bet the turbine is somewhere very near that building. A blog post<\/a> reports complaints from people in the 400 and 500 blocks of 7th ave. Those are the blocks immediately north of Rockland Rd. <\/p>\n

    My mother lives within 2 or 3 blocks of the turbine. When she brought up the story, I asked if she<\/I> could hear the turbines; I think she said she can’t. As far as I can tell, her hearing is fine. She happens to side with the home-owners on the noise issue; so admitting to not hearing the noise would be adverse to her position on the political issue. I know I couldn’t hear the turbine when I visit her– but I didn’t check whether it was operating. Based on what little data I’ve collected pertaining to families complaining about noise, and the fact that my Mom can’t hear it, I’d estimate the turbine that provides enough power for approximately 5 homes (if run 24\/7) appears to be making enough noise to disturb one or two-dozen families. <\/p>\n

    As I said: I have no dog in this fight. But disturbing one or two dozen families to generate enough energy for 5 is not a very favorable ratio. I’d bet dollars to donuts that county boards will enact ordinances to increase set-backs and reduce permissible decibel levels for turbines. I can’t begin to guess whether turbine installations in towns will be feasible afterwards. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    A Libertyville resident who goes by the name of “Mom” alerted me to the story of legal wrangling over a wind turbine months ago; today it’s covered in The Chicago Tribune. I have no particular dog in this fight, but the story highlights many of the practical difficulties presented to those who might like to … Continue reading Battle over Blades: Wind Energy is Noisy.<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[134],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15925\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}