Wind Turbine Noise: How the Environmental Authorities got it Wrong
Résumé
In the analogue days of acoustics (pre-digital and pre-personal computers) acousticians in solving noise problems relied upon correlation of what they heard with their observations of the deflection on a sound level meter, and a considerable degree of thought process. Environmental authorities tend to remain in their ivory towers and have little interface with the end users to which it is purported their policy or guidelines are protecting. With advice from the wind industry, early noise guidelines proposed for wind turbines were based on the dB(A) value and noise targets from non-wind turbine noise sources. Often when working backwards to the original references one find reliance upon sleep disturbance criteria from early WHO publications, where the criteria is related to road traffic noise. Consequently, when new wind turbine facilities come into operation and the community identifies sleep disturbance and noise impacts as result of the wind turbines, the general bureaucratic response is that they satisfy the guidelines and no further consideration is undertaken. Over the last 25 years there has been a proliferation of wind turbines around the world and also a dramatic increase in complaints and issues associated with wind turbines. Acoustic investigations over the last 10 years working from the residents end of the problem has identified a lack of scientific data in the criteria issued by environmental authorities, who as a result of future class actions may be held to account for their failure to provide qualification to their criteria or adopt the precautionary principle.
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