Wind Farm location sparks renewed debates on health and property values

Mr Keogh’s property is situated on the border of the approved White Rock wind farm, between Inverell and Glen Innes, and said, for all their green energy potential, the project has left him unable to sell his land.

“From the minute I heard about it, I put the place on the market and everybody walks away,” he said.

“I have agents who have had buyers come in, and they have asked why they said no, and two of the buyers have actually put in writing that it is because of the wind farm. There are two sides to this story. I can’t stop it, and I’m not trying to stop it, but I just feel that both sides of the story has to be put across.”

The mixed response to wind farm developments was spurred by the Prime Minister’s recent rebuke of the green alternative, in interview with Alan Jones, where described them as “visually awful” and having “a potential health impact”.

The comments preceded a renewed debate over the turbines, like Mr Keough’s and South Australian grazier Clive Gare, who had 19 turbines constructed on his property 

“If we had to buy another property it would not be within 20km of a wind farm,” Gare told The Land on June 25.

“There’s the story that makes out they are the greatest thing ever put on earth. There’s a story from a bloke that has them on this place and wished he never had them,” Mr Keough said.

He said he believed it was the constant, low emission noise of the turbines was at the core of health concerns, citing an NASA investigation into links between health and the long range propagation of low frequency sound.

“It’s just the noise, the uncertainty of the health (issues). I know some people say there is no health (issue), but there is NASA saying there could be,” he said. Despite debate over the health impact of turbines, the National Health and Medical Council found “no direct evidence that exposure to wind farm noise affects physical or mental health”.

While exposure to environmental noise has been linked to health effects, the reports argued that these effects occur “at much high levels of noise than are likely to be perceived by people living in close proximity to wind farms”.

University of NSW mechanical and manufacturing engineering associate professor Con Doolan has also weighed in on the issue and called for more comprehensive research to determine the truth of the debate.

“Most experts believe that the level of infrasound produced by wind turbine is too low to be heard or create health problems,” he wrote in June.

“Recent measurements show that infrasound can propagate many kilometres from a wind farm—what we don’t know is of the very low level sounds can cause health effects.”

Research published by NASA in April, 1985, concluded that low frequency sound could be measured up to 10,000 metres from a designated turbine, but made no links to health effects.

Mr Keough said he had no ambitions to stop the development, but was more concerned with moving away from the site.

“I have never ever tried to stop the thing,” he said.

“I just want an outcome where we can get away from it. We just want to get out and we can’t.

“I can’t sell the place because no-one will come near a wind farm because of the uncertainty of the health issues.”