The noise level of 30 db is not possible to accurately measure. What is considered Ambient noise (normal noise of a residential neighborhood) is 40 db. An electric toothbrush is 55 db. A normal speaking voice is 50 db. Standard home Air Conditioners are at 75 db. If a neighborhood wants to impose a noise ordinance, it should apply to all devices, not just one..Noise is noise and that requirement for wind turbines is just a disengeniunous policy to hide a bias toward a wind turbine installation. If they community wants to say..."not in our neighborhood" then just say it rather then tell everyone that they support renewable energy. People who propose this type of polices are simply hippocrites.

Wind turbines have two types of noise .One is measured in decibels and is called the regulatory noise from noise meters . This regulatory noise is like a vacuum cleaner noise. .The other is called Human Annoyance or what is called Infrasound. Infrasound is lower in frequency than 20 Hz (Hertz) or cycles per second.

Wind turbine advocates say there is no such thing as infrasound or human annoyance. In the past two years about 50 residents of Falmouth ,Massachusetts have become ill from this type of sound.The sound can be heard inside homes as close as 2000 feet from the wind turbines. Many of the Falmouth residents describe the noise like the back window of a car being open or sneakers in a dryer.

Recently two commercial wind turbines were installed in Fairhaven ,Massachusetts .Hundreds of complaints were filed within weeks of the turbine generation. Noise complaints have also been filed against the Kingston and Scituate ,Massachusetts wind turbines.

Infrasound has become an international argument which the wind industry denies.
URLs of interest :

The Bruce McPherson Infrasound and Low Frequency Noise Study: The "smoking gun" of noise reports
http://randacoustics.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/The-Bruce-McPherson-ILFN-Study.pdf

Trailer for movie Winfall
http://firstrunfeatures.com/trailers_windfall.html

New study on wind turbine noise: Dr. Alec Salt new paper on ILFN:

http://oto2.wustl.edu/cochlea/wind.html

Large wind turbines generate very low frequency sounds and infrasound (below 20 Hz) when the wind driving them is turbulent. The amount of infrasound depends on many factors, including the turbine manufacturer, wind speed, power output, local topography, and the presence of nearby turbines (increasing when the wake from one turbine enters the blades of another). The infrasound cannot be heard and is unrelated to the loudness of the sound that you hear. Infrasound can only be measured with a sound level meter capable of detecting it (and not using the A-weighted scale). Video cameras and other recording devices are not sensitive to infrasound and do not reproduce it.

You cannot hear the infrasound at the levels generated by wind turbines, but your ears are indeed detecting and responding to it. The picture shows the enormous electrical potentials that infrasounds generate in the ear. The potentials (18.7 mV pk/pk amplitude in this case) are about 4 times the amplitude of any sounds that are heard. This shows the low frequency part of the ear is extremely sensitive to infrasound. Infrasound generates larger electrical responses than any other type of sound, including sounds you can hear presented at the loudest levels.

a setback of 3 times the height IS OUTRAGEOUS...for example: a resident of Scituate Ma lives approx 3,100 feet from their turbine and he has heard and "felt" the adverse impacts and/or effects consistently...many nights of sleep disruption...his neighbors have also been impacted, though a few say they are not feeling impacts...there are neighbors with school age children who are impacted...I can not emphasize the importance of a good night's sleep...just consider the residents who are left sleep deprived...school children (cognitive abilities decrease), workers (perhaps a pilot or a surgeon or a bus driver, does sleep deprivation impair their functioning? YOU BET! This story is repeated in every town I am aware of that turbines are sited within ...well surely within 3,100 feet...PLEASE RE-EVALUATE THIS SETBACK OF 3 TIMES THE TURBINE HEIGHT IN ORDER TO PROTECT PUBLIC HEALTH AND SAFETY...file this under live and learn...

We ARE UNABLE TO ATTEND THE HEARING re WTG. We HAVE COMMUNICATED PREVIOUSLY ON THIS TOPIC.. Based ON A Study OF THE TOPIC and EXAMINATION OF THE proposal We SUPPORT THE article 25 for incorporation as PRUDENT and necessary. The structure born and air born noise (as defined and measured per already Engineering conventions, standards, shadow & flicker along with a prudent safety fall zone are self evident. We must be mindful of WTG. Induced environmental hazards associated with bats and birds that we depend on to keep down a dangerous insect population. WTG. Devices installed into our high density zoned neighborhoods would be ill advised and dangerous. The claims of these essentially off grid remote location devices saving money on ones utility bill power is voodoo math. To put it bluntly this is mostly bogus sales speak. In-fact the public utility electrical supply is based on a predictable load profile and can be burdened by these WTG devices with no local storage driving electrical rates even higher.. OBTW propaganda that we are achieving net savings for a particular form of energy and reducing so called global warming (natural climate cycle) is as well a falsehood. The priority is a continued maintenance of regulated public utilities industry and companion local and state zoning and building codes especially for high density zoning consistent with Aquidneck Island and Middletown.

Your article claims the neighbor on Mitchells Lane complained, this is simply not true. That was my house the Council members came to and I told them that I did not have a problem with the two turbines nor have I ever made any complaints about them to my neighbor. In March 2012, I sent a letter to various media outlets clarifying what actually transpired during our informal meeting, read it at this link

http://middletown.patch.com/articles/letter-too-much-weight-given-to-my-wind-turbine-comments

you people on that island of yours are strange noise from a turbine? oh come on now! you just think it will effect the value of your over priced homes bet my last dollar wont see another turbine there ever stay in the dark ages thats where you belong

Wind turbines cause property value loss. Real estate sale data reveals a range of 25% to approximately 40% of value loss. The town should demand a property value guarantee from the corporate wind developer or anyone who installs a commercial wind turbine over 120 feet. They install a wind turbine behind your house ! You'll never sell It ! Ask the people in Falmouth ,Massachusetts

Noise and sleep disturbance issues are affecting people in Massachusetts within one mile of the nearest commercial turbines

In Falmouth ,Massachusetts the wind turbine impact to the “use & enjoyment” of many homes are an ongoing. This town has shut down the turbines from 7 pm at night until 7 am in the morning over noise issues.

Check out this Trailer for movie Windfall .See if it looks like Middletown

http://firstrunfeatures.com/trailers_windfall.html

Wind turbines are industrial machines that don't belong in residential areas. And they serve no purpose other than to siphon subsidy money away from rate payers. They are not green. Several studies have shown that because they disrupt the power grid, they can actually result in more fossil fuel use and carbon emissions. (See ERCOT Bentek IV Study, Irish Government study, Argonne National Lab study.) The only thing green about them is the money.

Frank- check your geography - there was no mention of an island, and the issue is not property values until one's home is acoustically condemned, because rich folks with those expensive homes tend to site them where they will not be affected. But the Middletown case is about a small turbine, which we are increasingly finding can have audible noise impact and flicker, as well as the low frequency noise impact the former resident describes which could be due to amplitude modulation of noise or what Dr. Salt describes - the effect of infrasound via outer hair cells in the cochlea (hearing portion of the ear) on the audibility of low frequencies above 20 Hz. It is not all about IFN, but the fact that low frequencies dominate the spectrum of turbines, travel further and are not blocked easily by structures together with marked INTRINSIC differences in sensitivity to low frequencies is what the dB level comparers need to educate themselves about. 30 dB limit, if accurately predicted by the Swedish or Danish DELTA methods, likely would preclude even the turbine at 3100 ft. Wind proponents really need to do a reality check on what was in Europe & the problems when industrial wind grew exponentially. The woman impacted reports vertigo from flicker; others get dizzy from the motion of the blades, so it is not all vestibular input or all IFN. It needs on-the-ground research