The Na Pua Makani (AES Corporation from Arlington, Virginia) EIS attempts to discount the adverse effects the wind farm would have to noise levels in Kahuku Neighborhoods, schools, and hospital.  The adverse effects would not meet legal public health requirements; adverse effects could be avoided by building the wind farm on land away from communities.  The two existing North Shore wind farms are located 1,200 meters from residents, the proposed AES Corporation wind farm project would be half that distance from Kahuku town. The eight proposed Vestas 3.45 MW turbines would be situated just 0.31 mile (502 meters, 549 yards, 1,648 feet) from the residential subdivision of Kahuku, its elementary school among the closest buildings to the turbines. These very large, loud, close wind turbines would reduce property values in Kahuku by more than $40 Million.  The Na Pua Makani EIS indicates “Adverse effects to property values not anticipated.”  The EIS also asserts there would be “no high or adverse effects to any minority or low income population and, therefore, no environmental justice issues resulting from this Project.”  According to the Census Bureau, Kahuku has a total population of 2,614 people in 622 housing units (53% owner-occupied; 47% renting) that are 8.6% (224) white, 34% (888) Native Hawaiian; 26% (641) Filipino, and 31% (823) two or more races.

Champlin presents their renderings of what the turbines would look like using deceptive panoramic angles.  The view pictures shown in the image at the top of this website were clipped out of the panoramic mock-ups (on page 622 of their SFEIS):

Of the noise aspects of this project the National Wind-Watch.org said
“The closeness of this project to homes and a school should worry officials (or they should be made to worry). They should review the nuisance case of Falmouth Massachusetts, where first, the turbines had to be shut down at night to allow the neighbors to sleep, and finally shut down completely, costing the town many millions.” (Wind Turbine Noise Health Effects).

The EIS summarizes effects to Visual Resources as: “Moderate, long-term adverse impacts due to Project visibility mitigated through design and lighting measures. Project most visible from locations within 1 mile (1.6 kilometers from wind farm site).” (ES-14).  Mitigation would mean not selecting the largest turbines available and placing them right next to a town, it would entail not putting a wind farm adjacent to a community.  Regarding “project most visible from locations within 1 mile” – certainly an understatement.  More EIS quotes:  “Although the larger turbines would create slightly more visual contrast on an individual basis, the degree of increased contrast would not be sufficient to result in a change to the overall visual impact of the wind farm at any site.”  I’m not sure the EPA and DPP (who the wind developer is trying to convince the wind farm meets the preservation of scenery goals of the Koolauloa Sustainable Communities Plan) or the public would be mislead by this statement because I can’t even figure out what it means.

Night-time Nuisance Noise Exceeding Legal Limits:  With apparent disregard for environmental disclosure laws (and for the position they would be putting any Federal or State agency decision based on their EIS, the EIS failed to fully disclose to Federal, State, and County permitting agencies how noisy the wind turbines will be in residential areas.  The existing Kahuku and Kawailoa Wind Farms are both situated more than a kilometer downwind from residences; Kawailoa is more than 1,500 meters (4,921 feet) from the closest residence and the Kahuku Wind Farm is approximately 1,200 meters (3,937 feet) from the closest residence.  Both existing wind farms adversely affect the sleep of residents in the Kahuku and Pupukea residential areas because wind turbines are known to adversely affect human sleep and human health a distance of 2.5 miles because pulsations of infrasound (0-10 Hz) as low as 14 decibels are sensed by the human body.  AES Corporation from Arlington, Virginia, proposes to build turbines that are much bigger and taller than the Kahuku turbines and put them 502 meters, 549 yards, 1,648 feet upwind from residences and the in part of the town that contains two schools and a hospital.

The legal limit for night-time noise is 45 dBA during no more than 10 percent of any 20-minute period.  When the vacation rental down the street parties and wakes us up at night, we use the “Sound Meter” app on our phones and noise, at my lot line, is below 40 dBA and never spikes above 45 dBA.  AES Corporation from Arlington, Virginia’s project EIS indicates the turbine operation AVERAGE (LEQ) noise would be 44 dBA in residential areas.  The law limits noise to 45 decibels 10% of the time during any 20-minute period – if the average is 44, the L10 will be above 45 at your house.  Letter to Health Department and DPP Please install the “Sound Meter” app on your cell phone so you see how sound works – an example noise graph is below:

LEQ is the horizontal line (essentially the average noise energy – in this case, for 10 seconds) and the red line is the noise energy over time – the red line is what you’ll see when you use the “Sound Meter” application.  Image From:  http://www.noisenet.org/Noise_Terms_Leq.htm

You’ve noticed noisy things are louder under certain conditions – like when you’re downwind from the noise and when the ground is wet from rain.  If the LEQ (average over the year) wind farm noise in the Kahuku community would be 44 dBA, it seems impossible for the L10 to not exceed 45 dBA.  Unless the wind farm is going to have spikes of very very loud noise that would pull the average way above the noise caused by normal operation, it seems impossible for the L10 to not exceed the legal limit of 45 dBA.  We can assume when the tradewinds are blowing from the wind farm toward the town or when it’s rained, the average noise energy that night will be louder than 45 dBA.  Current L10 noise levels in Kahuku town at night that I’ve measured are between 20 and 35 dBA.  The applicant has not disclosed the nighttime L10 noise for the project and the EIS’s use of LEQ is misleading and unscrupulous – this developer appears to be attempting to get permits based on incomplete and misleading noise information.

In addition to the illegal nighttime noise , there is the serious problem of low frequency noise.  Kahuku and Pupukea residents experience sleep disturbances from wind turbines located more than 1,200 meters downwind from their homes.

These giant, very close wind turbines would cause severe loss of property value – certainly no less than 10% in Kahuku, and possibly greater than 25% (see Heintzelman and Tuttle 2011 http://iiccusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Values-in-the-Wind.pdf).   For these Kahuku homes with an estimated value of $400,000, this wind farm would result in the loss of $40,000 to $100,000 per family with no just compensation from the developer.  Local property value is primarily in the value of the land so property value effects in Kahuku could exceed those seen on the mainland.  Total loss of property value in Kahuku would be approximately $40 Million if the properties in the upper subdivision lost 25% and the properties makai of Kamehameha Highway only lost 10%.  If the State Health Department decides the noise ordinance should be waived for wind farms rather than require wind farms utilize land away from residences instead, the wind developer should be required to compensate the residents for loss of property value (as is done in Denmark, the World capital of wind farms (though Denmark would never allow a wind farm this close to residents in the first place).

Low-Frequency Noise – Infrasound Health Effects:  Adverse Health Effects of Low-Frequency Sound May Occur more than 4,500 meters (2.8 miles) from Na Pua Makani and very high rates of health effects are expected within 2,000 meters (1.24 miles) (Noise References).  The wind farm would be so close to Kahuku, it would expose the residents, students at the elementary and high school, and hospital occupants to dangerous levels low-frequency noise, which increases with turbine size.  Low-frequency turbine impulse sound in the zero to 10 Hz range is known to adversely affect human health a distance of 2.2 miles (and that is from smaller turbines producing lower levels of noise than the proposed Na Pua Makani turbines. Low frequency impulses in the 0 to 10 Hz range are produced by the turbine blade passing the tower (produced by air molecules slamming into each other – similar to the way thunder is produced).  The number of impulses per second reaching a person near a wind farm increases and decreases with wind speed as the turbine blade speed changes.  Low-frequency sounds attenuate with doubling of distance at much lower rate (less than 3 dB/doubling of distance) than audible sound (which attenuates at 6 to 7.5 dB/doubling of distance).  Wind Turbine low-frequency impulse sound is known to cause sleep disturbance in addition to the following health effects:

high blood pressure (particularly dangerous because when the resident near the wind farm is diagnosed (sometimes using a 24-hour blood pressure monitor) with high blood pressure and takes blood pressure medicine to control the high blood pressure, the person’s blood pressure becomes dangerously low when the wind stops and when they spend part of their day away from the wind turbines);

tachycardia [abnormal heart beat] and heart palpitations (usually at night, appears to begin to occur approximately six months after the wind farm has been operating; resolves when the person is away on a work trip or when they sell their house and move to safety);

headaches (Onset seems to be within about an hour of exposure and resolves about 30 minutes after leaving the wind farm area.  These seem to be classified as migraines, but the reported pain appears to be sharper than a normal migraine – and focused on the entire front of the forehead, rather than starting on one side or the other);

irritability (Children’s irritability is often attributed to their age, until the family moves away from the wind farm and the parents notice the child isn’t irritable);

panic attacks (Seems to be associated with tachycardia and startling awake at night);

tinnitus 

nausea, feeling carsick

visual blurring (This can cause difficulty doing normal daily tasks. This may be caused by the eye itself being caused to resonate at the frequency of the low-frequency sound – interesting note: ghosts may be caused by low-frequency sound resonating the physical eye structures).

Low frequency sounds are sensed by the hairs of the ear and by the body, and unfortunately, the human brain appears to pay close attention to modulating (changing, for instance with wind speed), regular (repeating pulses), impulses at this low frequency because in the natural environment, it is a sign of danger (earthquake, tsunami).  Large fans and turbines of aircraft also produce regular impulses of low-frequency sound and these things have similar health effects as wind turbines.  Crashing surf and white noise also contain low-frequency sound, but because the noise is not pulsating with a beat, surf noise and white noise do not have the adverse affects to human health caused by wind turbines.

Low frequency 16 Hz sound caused by the wind farm would exceed 65 dB at Kahuku’s upper subdivision, the two schools, and the hospital and this adverse effect could be eliminated by moving the wind farm away from the town.  The EIS indicates the 65 dB low frequency noise would be masked by existing noise, even though no such noise currently exists in their residential area noise monitoring data.  Their EIS indicates “2.3.1 15BANSI S12.9 Part 4 The ANSI S12.9 Part 4 (ANSI 2005) provides guidelines for determining annoyance from sound propagating outdoors. Annex D of ANSI S12.9 Part 4 includes methods for assessing environmental sounds with strong low-frequency content. Annoyance is found to be minimal when sound levels in the low frequency midband frequencies of 16 – 63 Hz are less than 65 dB, which corresponds to the threshold for the onset of impacts in these lower frequencies. Part 4 also states that LFN passes through structures with relative ease and is nearly equal to outdoor predicted sound” “Negligible low frequency noise/infrasound impacts.” Page ES-6. Infrasound: “The nearest legal residence is located 814 feet (248 meters) from a proposed turbine. Low frequency noise/Infrasound level is predicted to be 83 dB at 8 Hz and 76 dB at 16 Hz which are both well below the threshold of human hearing and the DEFRA limits but higher than the ANSI S12.9 Part 4 guideline of 65 dB at 16 Hz. With regard to the 65 dB ANSI S12.9 Part 4 guideline, because the baseline sound levels are already above this threshold, the likelihood of complaints is low given that the low frequency noise/infrasound would be at least partially masked by existing low frequency noise / infrasound. Therefore, there is no anticipated low frequency noise / infrasound impact from the Project”.

Low frequency noise from the two existing distant wind farms caused families (including an executive of a well-known company from Downtown Honolulu) to sell their homes to move because their sleep is disrupted and they suffer from other adverse health effects from the wind turbines (more than 1,200 meters from the homes).

Champlin’s 2016 EIS says there would be “no high or adverse effects to any minority or low income population and, therefore, no environmental justice issues resulting from this Project.”  According to the Census Bureau, Kahuku has a total population of 2,614 people in 622 housing units (53% owner-occupied; 47% renting) that are 8.6% (224) white, 34% (888) Native Hawaiian; 26% (641) Filipino, and 31% (823) two or more races, 62% born in Hawai‘i, 23.5% born in foreign country.  Twenty five percent of the of population 25 years and older did not graduate from high school; 53% of Kahuku residents completed no more than 8th grade.

Solar is less costly to ratepayers and less harmful to the environment.  Even burning coal and offsetting the carbon by buying carbon credits with the excess (since this wind farm’s power would be so expensive), would be better for the Earth’s carbon budget than this project:  We love clean energy but the costs of this (what would be illegal) wind farm are too great in light of readily available alternatives (including moving the wind farm away from communities) and using solar with battery storage instead, and burning coal and paying to plant trees (Massive Financial Cost to the Environment) or build solar somewhere less expensive to offset the carbon.

Because solar with battery storage is less costly ($0.139/kwh) (less than 0.10/kwh for solar alone, but it does not meet nighttime energy needs), the wind farm is not in HECO ratepayers’ best interest.  Ratepayers would pay $20 Million more for power from Na Pua Makani than they would if that power came from solar with battery storage.  Solar is compatible with grazing (best to avoid installing solar on arable agricultural land) and it doesn’t kill wildlife.  Champlain Wind Power’s Director, Kevin Smith (http://www.champlinenergy.com/our_team.html) is the CEO of SolarReserve LLC, a company that’s installed solar farms all over the world.  I notice they also install the mirror concentrating solar farms in addition to PV with battery storage, but this company certainly has the ability to be pitching in to actually HELP Hawaii meet clean energy goals by building a solar farm with battery storage instead of trying to get permits with this unlawful wind farm.

Champlin should be required to honestly reflect the realities of the project effects to the Kahuku community in their EIS and the developer should be required to locate their project away from communities to minimize effects of noise to residential areas and schools (not to mention our hospital).  If a developer wants to build a wind farm, they should follow the law rather than attempt to disguise the project’s various failures to meet noise ordinance, community plan, NEPA, and other legal mandates designed to protect the public from just this type of project.