Final Kingston Independence wind turbine report is released 

KINGSTON – The final report on the acoustical monitoring study of the Independence wind turbine has been released to the public after review by the state Department of Environmental Protection.

According to DEP Assistant Commissioner Douglas E. Fine in a letter Thursday (Sept. 10) to Board of Health Chairman Bill Watson, focusing on data and analysis related to state noise regulations and policy, the findings in the final technical report are unchanged from the findings in the public comment draft released in April.

Changes to a draft report released in June are listed in a document attached to the final report. One example is a new paragraph describing prevailing wind speeds and directions during monitoring.

In a letter to the Board of Health Thursday, Nils Bolgen, program director with the the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, said that while a public comment process did not lead to changes in the draft report’s findings, “the process did identify a number of areas where the study methodology could be presented more clearly.”

The Board of Health has been waiting for the release of the final report and review by town counsel to schedule a public hearing to discuss further mitigation measures based on the final report.

Among the stakeholders outside of Kingston expected to attend that hearing include the consultant that conducted the study, Harris, Miller, Miller Hanson, the turbine’s owner, Kingston Wind Independence, DEP and MassCEC.

It’s not immediately known when this meeting will happen, but the Board of Health is scheduled to meet Monday, Sept. 21, on its regular meeting date the third Monday of the month.

Leland Road residents Sean and Doreen Reilly most recently filed an official noise complaint with the Board of Health Tuesday (Sept. 8) about excessive and invasive turbine noise during the day Sept. 7.

In the Sept. 8 complaint emailed to members of the Board of Health, Health Agent Henny Walters, Town Administrator Robert Fennessy and Selectmen Chairman Elaine Fiore, the Reillys wrote that the noise it produced left their family unable to sleep and “upset by the continued refusal to come to our aid and stop what has been determined as a noise source which violates existing laws and regulations that were intended to protect public health.

“We are again, as we have been on so many days over the last three years, exhausted and upset that the Independence operators refuse to abide by the Order of Enforcement (as we have informed you previously there have been several occasions when the turbine operates in spite of the Order of Enforcement agreed to in August of 2014),” they continued.

They also complain about how long it has taken for the final report to be released because they feel that a draft report presented at a Board of Health meeting in June (if not data collected in December 2013) was sufficient notice of non-compliance for the board to implement new mitigation measures.