Victims say clean energy is making life "unbearable" and destroying their property values

Art Lindgren and his wife, Cheryl, had enjoyed living on an island in Penobscot Bay. Then, when the clean energy facility was finished, the wind turbines started running. Today's New York Times reports:

“In the first 10 minutes, our jaws dropped to the ground,” Mr. Lindgren said. “Nobody in the area could believe it. They were so loud.”

Now, the Lindgrens, along with a dozen or so neighbors living less than a mile from the $15 million wind facility here, say the industrial whoosh-and-whoop of the 123-foot blades is making life in this otherwise tranquil corner of the island unbearable.

Homeowners around the US are taking legal action:

Lawsuits and complaints about turbine noise, vibrations and subsequent lost property value have cropped up in Illinois, Texas, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Massachusetts, among other states. . . .

In France, homeowners have had some success:

Similar conflicts are arising in Canada, Britain and other countries. An appeals court in Rennes, France, recently ordered an eight-turbine wind farm to shut down between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. so residents could get some sleep.

In a controversial study, the Department of Energy says that any connection between turbine noise and lost property value is "inconclusive [PDF]." I suspect that the DoE researchers who wrote that study do not happen to live near a wind turbine.

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