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October 1, 2008

Couple wants to stop wind farm

First in a series

By Rod Rose/The Lebanon Reporter

Thorntown — A rural Thorntown couple is concerned a wind turbine farm would harm county residents.

Five neighbors who share those concerns have spoken with Rick and Janet Fyffe, Janet Fyffe said.

A monitoring tower has been erected in a field near county roads 850 West and 250 North. The temporary structure is powered by solar panels.

The data collected by EnXco, a California-based renewable energy developer, will determine if Boone County is a feasible site for a wind farm. EnXco was founded in 1987. to develop renewable energy sources. The “En” represents energy, “co” is for company, and the X stands for experimental power opportunity.

Laura Vaughn, a representative of EnXco, said the tower is 60 meters (about 197 feet) high.

“We need the most current wind information we can get,” Vaughn said. Utilities considering buying electricity from a wind farm “want to see how the wind is performing,” she said.

“We’ll usually study the wind for a couple of years,” she said.

In May, the Benton County Wind Farm, about 90 miles northwest of Indianapolis, began producing 130-megawatts of electricity with 87 wind turbine units.

Other “wind farms” are under construction near Fowler; there are several wind towers near Benton Central High School, on U.S. 52 west of Lafayette.

Each of the towers consists of a 265-feet-high pylon, with a trio of 132-feet long blades resembling gigantic propellers. The blades, covering an arc nearly two acres in diameter, move the turbines, which generate the electricity.

Benton County Wind Farm will pay about $750,000 a year to the roughly 50 landowners whose property is the site of a wind tower.

The Fyffes worry about the health and safety consequences for Boone County if EnXco finds wind farming is a viable investment here.

“I would be glad to sponsor a community action group” interested in opposing the development of a commercial wind farm in Boone County, Fyffe said.

Commercial wind farm turbines “are huge, they are very expensive (and) they aren’t as effective as the sales people would like to make you think they are ... for the cost of the tower and what it takes to put them up,” Fyffe said.

She is also concerned about the health impact a commercial wind farm would have on residents.

In researching the downside of commercial wind farms, Fyffe has found some neighbors of the gigantic electrical generators complaining of “vibro-acoustic disease” (VAD) and “wind turbine syndrome.”

Scientists are researching both VAD and WTS. VAD has been cited in more than 37 peer-reviewed articles in science journals. At dispute is not whether wind towers produce low frequency noise (LFN) that affects health — it is the susceptibility of persons living near wind farms, according to articles in science journals.

A company wanting to build a wind farm on the same scale as the Benton County Wind Farm would have to meet different requirements than individuals, said Steve Niblick executive director of the Boone County Area Plan Commission.

Homeowners who want to catch the wind to help power their dwellings need only a height variance, Niblick said.

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