Windmills Raise Hurricane of Opposition

The idea of windmills brings to mind bucolic Renaissance paintings of Dutch landscapes and tulip beds. But that’s hardly the experience of some who have to live next to the 400-foot electricity-generating giants being built across America’s breezy plains. They complain about the incessant “whoosh-whoosh-whoosh” of the machines at work, the flashes of light and shade across their windows, and the occasional terrifying midnight screech of turbines repositioning themselves to catch shifting winds. “It sounds like a train going through, except the train never comes through,” said Wayne Danley, whose life had been turned upside down by a giant windmill located 900 feet from his house in rural Fenner, N.Y., where he has lived since 1976. Danley said he fears the days when the winds come from the northwest. “The whoop, whoop, whoop becomes a roar,” he said. And in the spring before the trees sprout leaves, the turning turbine causes flashes of light in his living room that so annoyed his wife, the pastor of a local church, that she had to flee to the bedroom to get away from it. Danley said he has nothing against windmills or the 19 others in the neighboring windfarm. He only wishes […]

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