The Importance of Zoning

Hello Friends-

Karen and I had the misfortune of looking into our future as reality hit last week.

A 476’ turbine about 5000’ away from our home filled our house with strobing during a beautiful country morning sunrise.

We tried to find a place to get away from it but as with most country homes, ours has large windows, French doors, and not so much in the way of curtains.

The impact is not as severe as we have seen in other videos, but what makes this important, is the distance at which the flicker impacts.  This turbine is about a mile away from our home.

This turbine was running for testing as the development is not yet in operation, however it was meaningful because it gave us the opportunity to compare the impact to the Consumers Energy Flicker Map.

Consumers predicts less than 10 hours per year for our home and this single sunrise cast shadow flicker on our home for almost an hour.  We later found that this turbine is not included in the flicker study and report as affecting our home at all.

All turbines outside of ten rotor diameters from our homes are not considered.

Our ordinance does have a 10 hour maximum, measured at the exterior wall of the residence.

It will be interesting to see what Consumers and Mason County do to abide by the 10 hour maximum.

Please share this video as it may help your quests for safe zoning ordinances: Consumers Energy Shadow Flicker 1

Best Regards,

Cary Shineldecker
Riverton Township
Mason County, Michigan

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Dave and Stephanie Hulthen | “Life with Dekalb Turbines” video