Readers recall windmill noise over Boone

Some readers of Sunday's column on the possibility of building industrial wind turbines in the Western N.C. mountains reminded me of what happened a generation ago when an experimental windmill was erected in Watauga County on Howard’s Knob overlooking the town of Boone. That device made a racket that eventually led to its removal.

From a reader in Davidson:

You wrote a fine editorial in today's Sunday Charlotte Observer about windmills in the mountains, but left out one very important item.
You did not mention one word of the huge windmill that was built outside Boone on the mountain top back in the early 1970's. The few times that it worked, you could hear it go thump, thump, thump and you could feel the vibration in the ground when the blades turned. The people in Watauga County fought against the windmill, but it was built anyway and never achieved what it was supposed to do. After several years the huge windmill was dismantled.

And from a reader in the Western Piedmont:

Sure you remember this ill-conceived wind turbine, noted here in Time magazine piece of June 2, 1980:

"Shushing the swish-swish

"The world's largest windmill began operating last year in Boone, N.C. With blades that stretch 60 meters (200 ft.) from tip to tip and can generate 2,000 kw of electricity, it is also, it seems, the world's noisiest. Besides dominating the scenic Blue Ridge Mountains landscape—or despoiling it, as some of those living near by complain—the monster rattles windows, bounces cups and saucers and creates an irritating swish-swish.

"Surprised by this unexpected noise pollution from an experimental power plant that was supposed to be almost entirely free of environmental headaches, engineers from the U.S. Department of Energy and NASA flocked to Boone (pop. 8,754). Their findings: though the very low-frequency sound waves (about 2 cycles per sec.) from the windmill are below the usual range of human hearing, they can be amplified by wind and weather conditions and the terrain over which they are directed and thus become powerful enough to vibrate objects in the home.

"Muffling the wind machine may force a major retooling of the $6 million project, including a change of blades and electrical generators to allow for slower rotation. It may also require a reorientation of the basic design, so that future windmills face into the wind rather than away from it. Meanwhile, the Department of Energy has given Boone some temporary relief. Until some way can be found to hush the noisy blades, they will no longer be allowed to whirl at night, in the early morning or on weekends."

The reader went on:

During WWII my mother negotiated, entirely by mail and telephone, the lease of a summer house in the barren mesa northeast of Albuquerque. The owner was a professor at the University of New Mexico who was off to Spain on a sabatical. The property included a three-bedroom home and swimming pool enclosed by an adobe wall. Water was provided by a windmill. Upon arrival we found everything exactly as stated in the lease; what was not stated was that house did not have indoor plumbing and the windmill was soon revealed as grossly unproductive. It was a long, hot summer, albeit one that in later years we enjoyed recalling and often cited as a lesson in contracts.

I don't think I'd put a great deal of stock in wind turbines.