As Douglas County commissioners will soon consider approving draft wind energy regulations, the local health department’s research shows the only “definite” public health impact of wind farms is annoyance.
A research team with Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health determined that the likelihood of negative public health impacts from industrial scale wind and solar energy development “seems limited.”
Alternative energy has drawn a great deal of public interest, particularly from rural residents who would be more directly impacted by large wind farms and solar farms — such as the one for which commissioners recently approved a permit.
After marathon meetings in October and January, the Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Commission voted 6-3 to advance draft wind energy regulations with one key modification: increasing required setbacks from property lines to 2,500 feet from 1,500. The three commissioners who voted against the regulations wanted to require smaller setbacks that would have allowed more flexibility for future wind developments.
Douglas County commissioners are expected to take the final vote on the draft regulations on Wednesday.
Public health impacts
The Douglas County administrator’s office in November asked the health department to examine potential implications of future regulations on the use of industrial scale wind and solar energy (ISW and SE).
The research team’s goals were to determine what available peer-reviewed literature suggests about potential adverse public health issues resulting from the use of ISW and SE; what evidence exists to support public health concerns constituents have raised; and what information exists about the potential public health impacts of climate change.
LDCPH staff members partnered with the University of Kansas Medical Center – Department of Population Health and conducted a search of peer-reviewed literature through the National Institutes of Health National Library of Medicine, aka PubMed. They searched for studies using keywords such as “wind energy,” “solar energy” and “health impacts.”
Staff created tables with ratings to define parameters such as the scale of impact — individual, public, inconclusive or not applicable — and categorize the probability of impact: definite, probable, speculative or no evidence.
The report identified seven potential health impacts: annoyance, infrasound, sleep, disturbance, shadow flicker, quality of life, air pollution and wind turbine syndrome.
Annoyance was the only “definite” impact expected from alternative energy development, according to the report. Staff found that preconceived ideas or views toward wind and solar energy — especially the construction aspect — likely have an impact on the public in general. They suggest that means to mitigate this impact could be found in public outreach and ongoing discussions on locations for these types of projects.
Another impact identified by the study as “probable” was sound — specifically infrasound, or sound below the lower limits of human hearing. The report stated that proper distance from residences and compliance with industry standards would likely mitigate any impact infrasound would create.
Sleep disturbances, shadow flicker — picture sunlight shining through the box fan in your living room — and quality of life were all listed as “speculative” based on staff’s research.
The draft regulations limit shadow flicker to any nonparticipating occupied structure to 15 minutes per day. Shadow flicker could be mitigated through use of modeling to influence siting, according to the report, and “Shadow flicker speeds are lower than the known threshold for triggering epileptic seizures.”
There was no evidence to support “wind turbine syndrome,” according to the report, and peer-reviewed literature suggests that several factors may influence perceptions of self-reported symptoms.
An impact to air pollution is probable, according to the report, as alternative energy is generally billed as a replacement to coal-powered energy, and coal particulate matter is linked to greater mortality rates and years of lost life.
Concerns from the public
Some of the concerns that members of the public have voiced to the commissions include effects on livestock, “including spontaneous miscarriage and birth deformities”; ice throws — ice detaching from blades or falling; lightning strikes; and shadow flicker impacts for people who are neurodivergent.
There is no evidence to support the concerns about livestock, according to the report: “There are exceedingly few cases of this (e.g., deformities in horses) documented in peer-reviewed literature. A few cases (e.g., spontaneous miscarriages among farmed minks) are noted in the grey literature with no additional verification.”
There was no evidence to support risk to humans from lightning striking wind turbines, according to the report, but several studies examine the risk of damage to turbines and efforts to reduce the impact of lightning strikes on turbines.
The concern about ice throws and falls was considered speculative, though it is a risk that should be acknowledged, according to the report. The concern could be mitigated by using models to estimate distance for industrial wind farms. Also, researchers wrote that no studies noted any focus or concerns about shadow flicker for people who are neurodivergent.
Lastly, the report presents research on a number of negative impacts of climate change overall on county residents, including temperature-related illness and death; extreme events; water-borne illness and more. Using information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, staff concluded that no information currently exists that ISW and SE development poses risks to the public health, though they wrote that it was difficult to characterize impacts to climate change that the county would definitively experience.
The full report, by Vickie Collie-Akers, Sara Obermeier, Madilyn Mikko and Shelby Ostrom, is available at this link.
Commission meeting
The Douglas County Commission will meet at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, May 1 to consider approving the draft regulations. The meeting will be held at the Public Works/Zoning and Codes Building, 3755 E. 25th St., because the commission’s regular meeting room is undergoing renovations.
See the full meeting agenda at this link. Agenda materials from the commission’s April 24 work session on wind energy regulations are available at this link.
The meeting will be available via Zoom. Find the link to join the Zoom meeting at this link. People may give public comment in person during the meeting or via Zoom.
People may also submit written public comment through 5 p.m. Monday, April 29 — a day earlier than the normal deadline — to publiccomment@douglascountyks.org or via the online form at this link. Comments received after the deadline will not be posted with the agenda materials.
Commissioners are not considering any specific wind projects in connection with this agenda item.
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August Rudisell (he/him) has been a photographer and videographer for The Lawrence Times since March 2021. He is a former dispatcher, he avidly consumes and creates local news, and he would love to meet your dog when out and about at a community event.
See more of his work for the Times here.
— Reporter Mackenzie Clark contributed to this article.
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