Incomprehension, anger and above all a lot of frustration tonight during the second presentation for local residents of a noise study about wind farm De Drentse Monden and Oostermoer.
The researchers gave a text and explanation about the report in the village hall of Gasselternijveenschemond and received a cartload of emotions and a barrage of questions in return.
Commissioned by the municipalities of Aa en Hunze and Borger-Odoorn, the researchers hung noise measurement boxes at nine homes in the windmill area for two years. The researchers used this to measure the amount of low-frequency noise in the area before and after the construction of the wind farm. Their conclusion: the amount of low-frequency noise has increased, although the wind farm probably meets the legal noise standards.
But, some of the local residents wonder, have measurements been taken in the right places? As far as they were concerned, the measuring points were too far along the edges of the wind farm area. Some of the people living near the turbines say they are very inconvenienced by the wind turbines, both from the whirring of the rotor blades and from the hum.
“We have complained several times about noise nuisance in the middle of our village,” says a resident of Gasselternijveenschemond. “But why wasn’t there a measuring point here?” The researchers’ argument that there is as little background noise as possible at the chosen points is difficult to accept among the critical local residents.
One of the residents wants to know why measurements have not already been taken near the wind turbines to see whether they exceed the noise standards and produce humming sounds. But that was not the assignment, the researchers say. An ‘acoustic photo’ had to be made of the noise in the area before and after the construction of the wind farm. That happened.
The municipality of Aa en Hunze is also not spared by the local residents. Especially when Platform Storm board member Cor van Dijk from Gasselternijveenschemond interrupts the meeting and strides to the front of the room.
“Why does the municipality not enforce, as determined by the court? Why is nothing done with the complaints? How is it possible that hardly anyone knows about this meeting”, he sums up faster than the alderman Kiena ten Brink (PvdA) who was present can comment.
She says, after Van Dijk has sat down again under a small applause, she does not know why the complaints are not being taken up. The announcement of the information meeting was published in weekly magazine De Schakel and on the municipality’s website, says Ten Brink. But she would like to take the signal that this method of publicizing is insufficient.
According to the alderman, there has been discussion between the government and the municipality about enforcing the noise standards, but it has now become clear to the municipality that it must do so. When a municipal official says that the data on the basis of which enforcement must be provided by the wind farm, loud laughter is heard.
But there is also another way: sound research at the windmill itself, instead of at homes. That will certainly come, says alderman Ten Brink. Although as far as the local residents are concerned, this could and should have been done a lot earlier. “Whether I still hope that something favorable will come of it?”, one of them responds. “I no longer had that hope.”