Biomass Incinerator Noise a Nightmare to Neighbors

Bio­mass Incin­er­a­tor Noise a Night­mare to Neighbors 

A “con­tin­u­ous roar.” Jet planes “revving” up for take­off. Being on an “air­craft car­ri­er dur­ing oper­a­tions.” That’s how neigh­bors of the Gainesville Renew­able Ener­gy Cen­ter (GREC) describe the noise com­ing from the 100 megawatt bio­mass incinerator’s ini­tial test runs.

Air pol­lu­tion, cli­mate dis­rup­tion, for­est degra­da­tion, and water con­sump­tion are the most obvi­ous draw­backs of bio­mass incin­er­a­tion. Yet com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers unlucky enough to live in close prox­im­i­ty to bio­mass pow­er facil­i­ties must also endure wood dust, truck traf­fic, and — most dis­tress­ing­ly — noise from the facil­i­ty itself.

As a rash of tax­pay­er sub­si­dized bio­mass incin­er­a­tors spreads across the U.S., more and more com­mu­ni­ties — from Gainesville, Flori­da to Roth­schild, Wis­con­sin — are lit­er­al­ly wak­ing up to this unbear­able noise.

A “Report to the Coun­ty Man­ag­er Regard­ing Noise” accom­pa­nied an inspec­tion of the Gainesville Renew­able Ener­gy Cen­ter in Sep­tem­ber, not­ing “sev­er­al sources of noise… of  dif­fer­ent fre­quen­cies, dura­tion and loud­ness.” These includ­ed the “truck/fuel unload­ing oper­a­tion, the con­vey­or sys­tems and reclaimer, the dust col­lec­tors, the deaer­a­tor vents, the  boil­er, and  the  water  cool­ing  towers.” 

The inspec­tion also described a “high pitched ‘squeak­ing’” from con­vey­or belts and a “low pitched   con­stant  ‘hum­ming’” thought to be caused by var­i­ous aspects of the facility. 

The World Health Orga­ni­za­tion list sev­en health haz­ards asso­ci­at­ed with noise pol­lu­tion from indus­tri­al facil­i­ties such as GREC: hear­ing impair­ment, sleep dis­tur­bances, dis­tur­bances in men­tal health, car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­tur­bances, inter­fer­ence with spo­ken com­mu­ni­ca­tion, impaired task per­for­mance, neg­a­tive social behav­ior and annoy­ance reactions.

Gainesville Was Warned

Noise from bio­mass incin­er­a­tors isn’t a new issue, but it’s still news to a lot of res­i­dents who believed devel­op­er promis­es that they wouldn’t even notice the facil­i­ty oper­at­ing in their backyard.

The 27 year old McNeil Gen­er­at­ing Sta­tion, one of the old­est bio­mass pow­er incin­er­a­tors in the U.S. and cit­ed as “the mod­el” for the Gainesville Renew­able Ener­gy Cen­ter, has been the source of numer­ous noise com­plaints by Burling­ton, Ver­mont res­i­dents over the years.

“Impacts of McNeil Sta­tion,” a report by Ver­mont Chap­ter of the Sier­ra Club, doc­u­ment­ed “dis­turb­ing noise and vibra­tions” com­ing from the incin­er­a­tor dis­rupt­ing the neigh­bors. The infor­ma­tion from that report was pro­vid­ed to elect­ed offi­cials in Gainesville and Alachua Coun­ty, and dis­sem­i­nat­ed through an op-ed in the Gainesville Sun pri­or to the per­mit­ting and con­struc­tion of GREC.

“Lessons Learned from Exist­ing Bio­mass Pow­er Plants,” a report writ­ten by the Nation­al Renew­able Ener­gy Lab­o­ra­to­ry in 2000, not­ed that the McNeil Gen­er­at­ing Sta­tion result­ed in a num­ber of “neigh­bor­hood com­plaints about odors and noise.” The report con­clud­ed that “sit­ing the plant in a res­i­den­tial neigh­bor­hood of a small city has caused a num­ber of prob­lems and extra expens­es over the years.”

Res­i­dents React

How bad is bio­mass incin­er­a­tor noise, real­ly? Bad enough that dozens of retirees in the Turkey Creek neigh­bor­hood adja­cent to Gainesville Renew­able Ener­gy Cen­ter, who were hop­ing to spend their gold­en years in peace and qui­et, are now find­ing they often can’t get a night’s sleep. Sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers aired their griev­ances at a Gainesville City Com­mis­sion meet­ing on Sep­tem­ber 19. 

“Con­dem­na­tion with­out com­pen­sa­tion,” is how neigh­bor Russ Pisano described the sit­u­a­tion, sug­gest­ing that the noise that keeps him from his legal right of qui­et enjoy­ment of his home is the same as hav­ing his prop­er­ty tak­en away from him. 

Mean­while, a mar­ried cou­ple lament­ed being “shut out of our bed­rooms at night due to the extreme noise.”

In an email to Gainesville City Com­mis­sion­ers, Peter Perkins, med­ical ento­mol­o­gist and Retired Colonel in the U.S. Army, com­pared the sleep depri­va­tion he has suf­fered as a result of the incin­er­a­tor noise as “tor­ture,” a prac­tice that is not legal­ly allowed to be used on “pris­on­ers at Guan­tanamo Bay.”

“Our Com­mu­ni­ty rep­re­sents some 1,240 house­holds who will have to change their lifestyles, wear hear­ing pro­tec­tion, or move to a new com­mu­ni­ty fur­ther from this pow­er plant,” wrote Perkins.

Even with dou­ble win­dows sealed tight, Ubal­do Schibuo­la can’t shut out the sound of the “extreme­ly ele­vat­ed amount of con­tin­u­ous noise,” includ­ing in the mid­dle of the night.

After liv­ing in the “qui­et” Turkey Creek neigh­bor­hood for more than twen­ty-five years, “with the win­dows and doors closed we can hear a noise that sounds like a jet engine,” wrote John Kaswinkel. “Now we have to have both addi­tion­al air and noise pollution.”

Tim Keagy said the incin­er­a­tor “sounds like a con­stant dis­tant blow torch with a whine.”

“Sleep­less in Alachua,” is how Lar­ry Noegel has signed his com­mu­ni­ca­tions to elect­ed offi­cials, blam­ing the City of Gainesville and devel­op­ers for not warn­ing res­i­dents about the noise.

“This con­tin­u­ous roar is ter­ri­ble!! Please make it stop!!!” wrote Sharon Mac­Neille. “Prop­er­ty val­ues in this neigh­bor­hood will sure­ly drop when buy­ers hear the noise.”

Eco­nom­ic Impact

“As Real­tors we are oblig­at­ed to dis­close any prob­lems of this nature to any prospec­tive Buy­ers,” explained Mar­i­an­na Kam­pa, real­tor and Turkey Creek res­i­dent, “which will make it impos­si­ble to sell a home here, and it will dec­i­mate our prop­er­ty val­ues and make life mis­er­able for every tax pay­ing home­own­er in this area.”

Kampa’s state­ment is backed up by a report on the impact on prop­er­ty val­ues from near­by incin­er­a­tors. “The Effect of an Incin­er­a­tor Sit­ing on Hous­ing Appre­ci­a­tion Rates” explains that “indi­vid­ual hous­ing appre­ci­a­tion rates are affect­ed by the pres­ence of an incinerator.”

“A drop in house val­ues may take place as ear­ly as the first rumors of the facil­i­ty” and the drop can con­tin­ue through­out the plan­ning, con­struc­tion, and oper­a­tion of the incinerator.

“The observed dif­fer­ences in appre­ci­a­tion rates expe­ri­enced by hous­es close to the incin­er­a­tor and those far­ther away,” reads the report, “indi­cate that the local hous­ing mar­ket has not ful­ly adjust­ed to the facil­i­ty, even after 7 years of operation.” 

Sound and Fury

The Alachua Coun­ty Com­mis­sion decid­ed in ear­ly Octo­ber to “take part in pub­lic nui­sance lit­i­ga­tion if there isn’t accept­able progress in reduc­ing in reduc­ing dust and noise” from the facil­i­ty, which isn’t only impact­ing Turkey Creek neigh­bors, but also adja­cent coun­ty prop­er­ty and workers. 

Neigh­bors have formed an orga­ni­za­tion, Turkey Creek Home­own­ers for Envi­ron­men­tal Jus­tice, in order to “pur­sue suits in nui­sance and to seek a per­ma­nent injunc­tion against the oper­a­tion of the GREC,” accord­ing to a let­ter to the City Com­mis­sion writ­ten by the group’s Pres­i­dent, Russ Pisano.

As a result of the pub­lic pres­sure, GREC has agreed to install “6‑inch-thick, 48-foot-long noise-absorb­ing acoustic pan­els inside the pow­er plan­t’s stack” by Decem­ber, though it’s uncer­tain whether this adap­ta­tion will reduce the noise enough for the local community. 

At least one Turkey Creek res­i­dent isn’t inter­est­ed in lit­i­ga­tion, but anoth­er form of jus­tice. “I sin­cere­ly wish that all the offi­cials, rep­re­sen­ta­tives, etc. who pro­mot­ed and/or approved the con­struc­tion of the bio­mass plant should be bom­bard­ed with the same fre­quen­cy and lev­el of noise pol­lu­tion that we are expe­ri­enc­ing now.”