Over the last decade, the wind industry has ridden roughshod over the rights of law-abiding citizens to live peacefully in their very own homes. The battle that’s followed proves that the value of any right is determined by the beneficiaries’ determination to fight for it.
Giant industrial wind turbines deliver a cacophony of pulsing, practically incessant, low-frequency noise and infrasound. The effects of which have been held by an Australian Court to be a pathway to disease: Australian Court Finds Wind Turbine Noise Exposure a ‘Pathway to Disease’: Waubra Foundation Vindicated
While the results for people set upon by subsidy-soaked wind power outfits are a tragedy, the real tragedy is that those who are paid handsomely to protect them, not only ignore their plight, but side with the wind industry, protecting it from any attempt by their victims to regulate or control noise emissions from wind turbines.
In our timeline post – Three Decades of Wind Industry Deception: A Chronology of a Global Conspiracy of Silence and Subterfuge – we covered the fact that – from 1995 – the wind industry drew together a hand-picked team with a mission to write noise rules with absolutely no relevance to wind turbine noise; and, therefore, of no benefit to wind farm neighbours (with predictable and soul-destroying results).
In the war against the greatest economic and environmental fraud of all time, few individuals come close to South Australia’s Mary Morris.
Mary’s knowledge of acoustics and understanding of how the wind industry rigged the so-called noise ‘guidelines’ in its favour with the aid of its pet acoustic consultants, is second to none. Here’s Mary being interviewed on ABC radio (bear in mind that Australia’s public broadcaster is wind cult central and its members would rather wash their mouths out with soap, than ever utter a harsh word about their beloveds). The podcast appears below with transcript following.
Time to Update Wind Farm Noise Guidelines
ABC 639 North and West
Emma Pedler and Marry Morris
18 June 2018
Transcript
Emma Pedler: Well, there’s new wind turbine projects underway around South Australia and residents living near the proposed sites at Crystal Brook, Twin Creek and Keyneton are (I don’t think I’ve said that right, sorry) are wanting more information about the environmental and health impacts of the turbines. New South Wales and Queensland have recently updated their guidelines and now have stricter limits for the siting of wind turbines than South Australia does. Mary Morris, who lives near the proposed Twin Creek Wind Farm is calling for better guidelines around siting and noise governance of wind farms, and she joins me on the line this morning. Good morning.
Mary Morris: Good morning Emma, and it’s Keyneton, that’s how you pronounce it.
Emma Pedler: Keyneton. I apologise for that. As soon as it came out I knew it was wrong, so thank you for the correction. What are your greatest concerns about the wind turbines in their locations?
Mary Morris: Basically, it’s the noise guidelines we have in South Australia aren’t protecting people’s sleep and amenity. They’re supposed to be reviewed on a five year cycle. The last time they were reviewed was 2009, and there’s been quite a lot of international and local research done on our wind turbine noise since then and the guidelines are long overdue for renewal. I don’t think we’ve got different science in South Australia compared to New South Wales, and Queensland, and the UK, and there’s no justification for sticking with outdated guidelines. I’m really concerned that the government keeps going on and approving wind farms when there’s evidence that the guidelines aren’t good enough, and we need to stop approving wind farms until we’ve sorted out the guidelines. That’s our main concern.
Emma Pedler: How close are these turbines going to be to your place?
Mary Morris: My place, only 10K, but because we know a lot of the people at the Waterloo Wind Farm and know a lot of people where the Twin Creek one will be, so basically those people are going to get really hammered by the noise, and there’ll be nothing they can do to stop it if it’s approved under the current guidelines. We need to-
Emma Pedler: What-
Mary Morris: Yeah, sorry. Go on.
Emma Pedler: Sorry. I was just going to ask what do wind turbines sound like?
Mary Morris: There’s this really annoying aspect of the noise is called amplitude modulation, and it’s where it’s some sort of thumping noise. It goes loud, soft, loud, soft, loud, soft all the time. On average that level is just right – it’s like baby bear’s porridge – sometimes it’s too noisy, sometimes it’s too quiet, but on average which is how the EPA measure it, there’s the level of sound, that’s loud, soft, loud, soft, loud, soft that is really annoying and disturbing for people. It’s usually worse at night time, so people get woken up all the time in the night by this amplitude modulation quality.
Now, the South Australian guidelines don’t have any way of assessing that, but they don’t have a limit for that either, whereas in the UK they do, so we need to get up to speed and stop approving wind farms under guidelines that don’t work.
Emma Pedler: It’s going to be interesting to see what happens. Good luck with everything Mary.
Mary Morris: Thank you Emma.
Emma Pedler: Thank you so much for joining us this morning. Mary Morris, she’s a concerned resident, a farmer, and former agricultural science teacher from Hampden.
ABC Radio
The wind industry threw a mountain of cash at their tame acoustic consultants to have them write the ludicrously lax noise “standards” that are meant to be “applied” to wind farms (see our post here).
These are the “standards” that are used by corrupt State governments (and their rotten little EPAs and Planning Departments) to claim (among other things) that wind turbine noise is like listening to a fridge 500m away (see our post here).
These same “standards” – like the South Australia’s EPA’s wind farm noise guidelines (written by wind industry pets, Sonus) – claim that “modern” wind turbines do not generate infra-sound, at all (see our post here).
After years of complaints from long-suffering Waterloo locals, SA’s EPA finally did some testing and, low and behold, found Energy Australia’s 37 3MW Vestas V90s were generating infra-sound. Well, bugger me! Isn’t it just amazing what you’ll find when you bother to look? Even then, the EPA’s “study” was slammed by highly respected acoustics and vibration expert, Professor Colin Hansen as the work of bumbling incompetents (see our post here).
Not only did the wind industry throw buckets of cash at acoustic consultants to set up noise standards you can drive a bus through, it also had them act as spin doctors – running the “fridge at 500m” furphy; producing completely bogus wind turbine noise “studies” (see our post here); and running pitches that listening to wind turbine noise is just like listening to waves lapping on a moonlit beach.
STT, however, begs to differ.
We think the incessant, low-rumbling of the gearbox and generator – combined with the roaring, thumping, air-tearing-blade noise is a Psychopath’s Symphony – that only the mentally unhinged could ever profess to enjoy – or compare to a stroll on the beach.
Emma Pedler (snuggled up in her fact-proof bunker at wind-cult central) had to ask what wind turbines sound like? No surprises, there!
Well, Emma here’s a few from STT’s ‘Best of Archive’ for your listening pleasure:
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STOP THESE THINGS 
” It’s always about the almighty Dollar $$$$$$$$$$$$..The fact is ! There is no safe distance for wind Turbines, NOT GREEN, NOT CHEAP, NOT RELIABLE, and come with a very BAD side EFFECT on people and the ENVIRONMENT. there is Nothing GREEN about WIND TURBINES . SAY NO TO WIND TURBINES.
Its time all of this information and more was put squarely to the public of Australia – not in tiny tit bits but in a huge TV exposé. Yes it would need one of the Stations and top notch independent reporter and editors to come to the for and work with people across the spectrum of problems – not edited to a microscopic degree and ending with a trite comment by some industry hack – but an honest expose explaining the full impact of these things on lives, livelihoods AND the environment/eco-systems they invade. It needs a competent research media expert to get out of the comfort zone of a telephone line and meet and speak with those suffering, those watching their life’s work disintegrate before their eyes.
It needs the reporter to speak with the experts who have been involved in trying to expose the plight of humans, flora and fauna exposed to the degradation these things have brought on this wonderful country.
It also needs them to explain in clear language the financial cost and uselessness of these things to meet our energy needs today and in the future – IF THERE IS A FUTURE – if they’re aloud to continue to spread across our fertile lands.
Come on those honest researchers in the media we know you read this site so get out there and do this nation proud by exposing the disgraceful attitude of ideologically challenged powerful people, many of whom have an interest in this industries continued success – even if it is now just an interest they find difficult to extract themselves from.
Those that at the face of the onslaught and those who have been working hard to help them need you to come forward and do we know you can do best.
A week of hour long exposé programs should be enough to get your teeth into to get the message out there to those sitting in their warm cosy city homes oblivious and disinterested in what is happening out there in the ‘wilds’ of rural Australia – that is just as long as their TV’s and computer’s keeps working, the lights stay on and their energy bills stop rising.
Low Frequency Noise coming from anything is not ok. We all have the right to live in our home in peace.
Maitland in NSW is riddled with ILFN no one cares.
No One
Why is there no mention of Doctor Mariana Alves -Pereira’s most recent presentation to professionals in Slovenia on the harm from low frequency noise and infrasound? Aren’t people aware of this frightening information?
http://en.friends-against-wind.org/health/infrasound-and-lfn
Jackie, thank you for articulating about what’s needed. The more people understand wind turbines cause harm to persons including children and environments and the loss of security of home, subverting civil institutions like human rights protections, and violating basic elements of contract, the sooner this tyranny will be brought under control.
Reblogged this on Science is distorted by progressive philosophy.
Question.
Why are these so called Acoustic technicians that are cooking the figures, not out of business.
They have been rakeing in money under false pretenses to please the Money Moguels and the Wind
Whoppers get away with Whoppers in regards to the actual truth to suit them to bully people with lies.
Well done Mary. Many rural Australians certainly appreciate the amazing work you have carried out for many years now, on behalf of so many families whose property rights have been trespassed by the acoustic emissions of industrial wind turbines.
The Victorian guidelines also do not adequately protect people’s health, and no government authority has ever carried out any testing for infrasound/low frequency noise, despite hundreds of complaints regarding such, around the Macarthur wind farm. This wind farm also has Vestas turbines, but V 112’s, of three megawatts – bigger than Waterloo, and 140 of the monsters.
The example of noise, above, from a turbine at Macarthur, is just the same as the noise emitted by the turbines near our property adjoining Macarthur wind farm, which we are forced to put up with when we work in our bottom paddock, where the closest 145 metre high turbine is less than 90 metres from our boundary fence… and there are 7 turbines in an arc, all emitting different noises, due to fluctuating air pressure and varying wind conditions. This is the same paddock where we only achieved 8% lambing percentage in the first year of operation….. wonder why !!!! Our normal lambing percentage is more than 80%….
Today on the ABC Victorian Country Hour program we heard of research carried out by Brandon Barton, Assistant Biological Scientist at University of Mississippi whereby aphids, predators of lady bugs, were exposed to ACDC music, whilst a similar control group of aphids amongst lady bugs, remained in a silent environment. After 16 minutes it was discovered that in the test where the group was exposed to the ACDC music, a greater amount of lady bugs remained as the music had reduced the appetite of the aphids, that is the predation rates of the aphids had been reduced and the aphids were eating fewer lady bugs. It was concluded that the appetite of the aphids had been severely disrupted by the sound pollution.
So what is sound pollution doing to our sheep and cattle grazing in paddocks so close to 140 wind turbines, their appetite and their production and reproduction capacity ?
We as the property owners and operators are having our health detrimentally impacted both during the day and night, so surely our animals are experiencing similar problems.
No government authority has carried out any testing on the impact of infrasound/low frequency noise and background noise on humans, let alone animals. It’s time multi-discipline research was carried out in the field, to determine the impact on hundreds, soon to be thousands, of rural Australians. After all, it was determined in the recent AAT case, that turbine noise “can be a plausible pathway to disease”.
It’s also time studies were carried out to discover the severe impact on our farm animals caused by wind turbines. Nobody can afford to sustain lambing losses such as we, and another neighbour incurred in the first year of turbine operation at Macarthur, and nor should we !!!!!
Unfortunately our farm animals cannot talk, and we are unable to quantify the loss of production, whether it be reduced wool clips, or weight loss in our fat lambs or cattle. Individual farmers cannot afford to run experiments with control groups, such as University of Mississippi, but we certainly know something is happening out there…. our working dogs tell us daily with erratic behaviour and periodic spooking.
Sorry to hear about its impact on you and your animals. That is a huge fall in birthing rates! Did you mean to write the lady bugs ate fewer aphids?…. I have always understood it was lady bugs ate aphids, not vice versa?
I don’t have Turbines but have been watching and reading STT with great interest.
I very sadly suffer the same problem caused by Industry, Coal mines etc.
Doctors ignore my request for help. At the beginning of my symptoms and effects I saw every possible Doctor, had every blood test, MRI and on it went to the end, showing nothing.
The sound of that last wind turbine is the same sound I heard at the Bocco Rock wind farm in NSW 2 years ago. It was a very windy day, but it reminded me of being on an airport runway. (I was standing under the turbine but the noise horrified me!)