Official: Turbine won’t generate noise complaints

LYNN – It is scheduled to start generating electricity on Friday, but a top Water and Sewer Commission official is confident the new 190-foot-tall turbine will not produce unwanted noise.Commission Operations Director Robert Tina said noise studies conducted before the turbine?s installation this month determined existing Lynnway noise levels, including sound produced by sewage treatment plant generators and Lynnway traffic, are louder than the loudest noise produced by the turbine.?We found out that surrounding noise is six times greater,” Tina said.Noise protests raised by Falmouth residents prompted a Superior Court judge last Friday to limit operating hours for the Buzzard Bay town?s two wind turbines. Residents complained about headaches and ?psychological disturbances? caused by noise from the 400-foot-tall structures, according to the Associated Press.Like the Lynn turbine, the Falmouth wind towers are located next to the town?s sewage treatment plant and provide electricity to power the plant. But Tina pointed out that the Lynn wind turbine?s location on Water and Sewer property at the end of Commercial Street extension means it is blocks away from homes.?We?re located in an industrial area,” he said, adding the Falmouth turbines “should never have been put in the location where they were installed.”With its three 75-foot-long blades and generator box located on top of the turbine tower, the Lynn windmill is designed to contribute one-fifth of the electricity needed annually to power the treatment plant for a savings of about $100,000 a year.Tina said the treatment plant uses 14 million megawatts of electricity a year in the sewage treatment process. State grant money helped the commission pay for roughly two-third of the turbine?s $1.8 million cost. Once it starts generating power on Friday, Tina said the turbine will pump electricity directly into the treatment plant.Boston-based organization Environmental Massachusetts released a report last week detailing wind energy generation?s growth potential in Massachusetts over the next five years. In a statement, the organization said the report examines wind power?s impact on air pollution, water use and global warming through 2018.?As federal officials consider extending key incentives for wind energy…a combination of offshore and onshore wind development can dramatically expand Massachusetts? renewable energy capacity,” the statement said.