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Statement of Evidence in Chief of Daniel Shepherd on Behalf of Glenmark Community Against Wind Turbines, Inc 30 April 2012

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Statement of Evidence in Chief of Daniel Shepherd on Behalf of Glenmark Community Against Wind Turbines, Inc 30 April 2012 BEFORE THE ENVIRONMENT COURT CHRISTCHURCH REGISTRY ENV-2011-CHC-090 UNDER The Resource Management Act 1991 BETWEEN MERIDIAN ENERGY LIMITED Applicant AND HURUNUI DISTRICT COUNCIL and CANTERBURY REGIONAL COUNCIL Consent Authorities Statement of Evidence in Chief of Daniel Shepherd on behalf of Glenmark Community Against Wind Turbines, Inc 30 April 2012 Malcolm Wallace Barrister PO Box 13254 Armagh Christchurch 8141 Phone: 03 379 6976 [email protected] CONTENTS 1 Introduction Page 4 Qualifications Page 4 Scope of Evidence Page 5 Code of Conduct Page 8 Executive Summary Page 9 2 Wind Turbine Noise Page 11 3 Amenity Page 12 4 Noise Sensitivity Page 18 5 Annoyance Page 23 6 Sleep Page 28 7 Health and Wellbeing Page 33 8 Mitigation Page 37 Standards, noise limits and NZS6808 Page 37 Set-back Distances Page 43 9 Recommendations Page 44 Conclusion Page 47 10 References Page 48 11 Appendices Page 53 A: Shepherd et al., 2011 Page 53 B: Correspondence with Ruth Paul Page 54 C: Responses to open-ended questions Page 55 Page | 3 1.0 INTRODUCTION Qualifications 1.1 My name is Daniel Shepherd. I hold a PhD in psychoacoustics, a Master of Science degree in experimental psychology, a Bachelor of Science degree in psychology and biology, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in history and politics. My PhD dissertation was a study on the abilities of human observers to discriminate between low level sounds. My Masters thesis investigated a newly emerging paradigm in physics, stochastic resonance, and applied it to the processing of low level sounds in humans. 1.2 Currently I am a Senior lecturer (Above the Bar) at the Auckland University of Technology, lecturing in the areas of psychological assessment, biopsychology, and statistical data analysis at both the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. In 2010 I was named Senior Researcher of the Year in the School of Public Health. Since 2005 I have undertaken substantial supervision of postgraduate students engaged in a range of psychological and health research, including psychophysical topics, and noise and health topics. At the University of Auckland I am an honorary research fellow in the Department of Psychology, an associated staff member in the Department of Chemistry, and have a strong working relationship with members of the Section of Audiology and School of Population Health. In 2008 I co-founded the World Health Organisations’ Quality of Life (WHOQOL) field centre in New Zealand. 1.3 The impact of environmental factors on health defines the scope of my research practice. I approach the study of noise and health both descriptively and experimentally, conducting both epidemiological (i.e., in the community) and controlled (i.e., in the laboratory) research. I have published papers on both noise- induced health impacts and the psychophysical measurement of human hearing abilities, and have presented data at numerous international conferences on the topic. Frequently I receive invitations from top-tiered psychoacoustic and health journals to peer-review scientific manuscripts, and from universities to grade research-based masters theses and PhD dissertations. 1.4 In both an official or unofficial capacity, I also contribute to a number of international organisations dedicated to the scientific assessment and mitigation of environmental Page | 4 noise. I am a scientific advisor for the Society for Wind Vigilance, an international federation of physicians, engineers and medical professionals promoting the development of authoritative international wind turbine guidelines to protect the health and safety of communities. Currently I am in the process of formalising a New Zealand branch of the Noise Abatement Society (http://noiseabatementsociety.com), an organisation dedicated to providing solutions to social and industrial noise issues. In April 2011 I was invited by the European Union, at their expense, to present on the impacts of environmental noise on health at a special think tank convened by the European Union’s Science Foundation, and I have been invited to chair a special session dedicated to noise and quality of life in an upcoming European conference next year (INTERNOISE 2013, Innsbruck, Austria). 1.5 Over the last six years I have spent a considerable amount of time in the Manawatu (around four weeks per year), where I have resided in a dwelling located approximately 2.5 kilometres from a major wind turbine installation. During these times I have been exposed to a substantial amount of wind turbine noise, and have regularly visited wind farms in the area to make physical measurements and experience the noise. Scope of Evidence 1.6 I have been invited by Glenmark Community Against Wind Turbines, Inc to provide an evaluation of the impact of turbine noise on health and well-being. I have accepted this invitation and present findings from research projects I have personally initiated and undertaken in the last five years. Having reviewed all accessible expert opinions available at this time, I opine that the Doctors’ McBride and Black hold exclusive expertise in medicine and health amongst the submitters. Thus I do not address health- related comments offered by other expert witnesses on the basis that medicine and health are outside their scope of expertise. 1.7 I have visited the Huruniu district (20/04/2012) and familiarised myself with its layout and character. The area appears to be one of mixed use, consisting of farms and Page | 5 lifestyle properties. I had the opportunity to speak to a number of individuals residing in the vicinity of the proposed wind turbine installation, some of whom have been in the area since birth. 1.8 Relatively, wind turbines are a new source of community noise, and as such their effects on public health are only beginning to emerge in the literature. The recognition of a new disease, disorder, or threat to health usually follows a set pathway. First, doctors and practitioners attempt to fit symptoms into pre-defined diagnostic categories or to classify the complaints as psychosomatic. Second, as evidence accumulates, case studies begin to appear in the literature, and exploratory research is undertaken to obtain better descriptions of the symptoms/complaints. Third, intensive research is undertaken examining the distribution and prevalence of those reporting symptoms, the factors correlating with the distribution and prevalence of those symptoms, and ultimately to cause-and-effect explanations of why those reporting symptoms may be doing so. 1.9 In my reading of the literature the health effects of wind turbines are only beginning to be elucidated, and is caught somewhere between the first and second stages described above (Paragraph 1.8). The important point to note is that case studies (e.g., Harry, 2007; Pierpont, 2009) and correlational studies (e.g., Pedersen et al., 2007; van den berg, 2008; Shepherd et al., 2011) have already emerged in relation to the health effects of wind turbine noise, and so the possibility of detrimental health effects due to wind turbine noise must be taken with utmost seriousness. 1.10 Noise is a recognised environmental pollutant that degrades sleep, quality of life and general function (WHO, 1999, 2009; 2011). On the basis of data currently available in peer-reviewed scientific publications, it can only be concluded that industrial-scale wind energy generation, involving the saturation of an optimum number of wind turbines in a fixed area, is not without health impact for those residing in its proximity. Based on my experience of wind turbine noise, and my reading of the data available in the scientific literature, I recommend that all turbines displaced at least two kilometres (or more) from any dwelling be consented. Page | 6 1.11 In this statement I focus on the health impacts of audible wind turbine noise, and I do not focus on issues outside of audible noise. Any valid judgment of noise-induced health impacts necessitates a model from which cause-and-effect relationships can be described and considered. In the context of the proposed Wind Farm I employ a model (see Figure 1) that has been applied to New Zealand rural localities containing wind turbines (Shepherd et al., 2011). This model has been adapted from the aviation context (Shepherd et al., 2010) and has been modified to accommodate a major factor associated with rural / semi-rural living, namely amenity. Visual Wind Turbine Noise Stimulus Impact Moderators Amenity Noise Sensitivity Annoyance Sleep Disturbance Primary Health Effects Quality of Life Stress-related Disease Secondary Health Effects Figure 1: A schematic representation of the relationship between wind-turbines and health in a rural setting, such as that proposed in Project Hurunui Wind. Arrows represent cause-and-effect relationships, which maybe bidirectional. The multiplicity of relationships emerges due to variability in the response of individuals to noise (From Shepherd et al., 2011), and supporting evidence for each relationship can be found in the peer-reviewed literature. 1.12 Figure 1 is a simple model, informed by my own research and that research reported in the literature, demonstrating that, in the rural/semi-rural context, feasible mechanisms exist by which wind turbine exposure can degrade health and wellbeing. In this scheme turbine noise can lead directly to annoyance and sleep disturbance (i.e., direct health effects), or can induce annoyance by degrading amenity (an indirect Page | 7 health effect). Additionally, the trait of noise sensitivity constitutes a major risk factor, with annoyance and sleep disturbance the likely mediators between noise sensitivity and health (Shepherd et al., 2010). In relation to secondary health effects, it would be expected that quality of life will be affected immediately, while stress- related disease emerges from chronic annoyance and sleep disturbance over time. Contemporary medicine argues that both noise-induced sleep deficits and annoyance can induce stress-related disease. Any object or event that an individual perceives as a threat to their safety or to the resting and restorative characteristics of their living environments can be classified as a stressor.
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