BP's Chandler is Promoting a Flawed Sound Study

  BP held an open house Nov.10/2012 in Cape Vincent NY as required by the Public Service Commission to pursue their project under an article 10 process. It was abundantly clear that this open house was merely a formality as was completely devoid of meaningful dialog or public involvement.  

 BP’s Project developer  Richard Chandler was on hand to answer questions and respond to feedback from the community.     

 I expressed my concerns to Chandler about turbine setbacks and noise, he responded  to my feedback like a robot using scripted a dialog.

   He cited the sound study completed by Acciona for the St. Lawrence wind project as reassurance that noise is a non-issue.  This was hardly reassuring...

Acciona's noise study was flawed a fact that was kept from the public.

Because there were concerns early on among local citizens that the developers noise report was misleading, the Wind Power Ethics Group (WPEG) contracted Schomer and associates to conduct an independent background sound survey of Cape Vincent.

Dr.Schomer is chair of the International Organization for Standardization working group on environmental noise and chair of the American National Standards committee on noise and holds other leadership roles in noise measurement. His findings identified "tricks" used by Hessler to arrive at pre-determined conclusions.

In Schomer's summary he explained how Hessler permitted summertime insect noise to contaminate the sound surveys to show background noise levels as high as 45-50 dB(A). In fact, Schomer's own survey showed noise levels in Cape Vincent to have an overall level of 30 dB (arithmetic average using A-weighted L90 levels). This included day, evening and night sound levels.

Dr.Schomer found that Hessler's study for the Cape Vincent Wind Power Facilities appears to have selected the noisiest sites, the noisiest time of year, and the noisiest positions at each measurement site.
Collectively, these choices resulted in a substantial overestimate of the a-weighted ambient sound level, 45-50 db.
Consequently, Dr.Schomer’s report had the potential to cause big problems for Acciona, and British Petroleum if it were not discredited.

Previously the Town of Cape Vincent had commissioned Cavanaugh Tocci and Associates to analyze the noise study by the wind developers. The Cavanaugh Tocci report was critical of the current flawed sound study as well ; and subsequently the report was suppressed.
This was discovered with the legal release of FOILED documents by Supervisor Hirschey . Because the information that was released pertaining to Cape Vincent’s sound study would be damaging to Acciona ,Acciona's project manager Tim Conboy led a charge at the Town Board meeting to discredit Supivisor Hirschey by accusing him of releasing the engineering documents illegally.

The email below is from David Hessler ~ [Hessler and Associates ]the Acoustical Consultants hired by Acciona to conduct the noise studies for Acciona's St. lawrence Wind project to Blayne Gunderman ~[Environmental Permitting Manager for Acciona energia and BP ]

This email is part of the engineering correspondence concerning Acciona's flawed sound study. That was legally released through a FOIL request.


Kris Dimmick
From: Mathes, Todd
Sent: Monday October 26, 2009 1:35 PM
To: Kris Dimmick
Subject: FW: FW: St. Lawrence Wind
From: David Hessler
Sent: Monday, October 26, 2009 1:14 PM
To: Gunderman, Blayne
Cc: Zedick, Pete; Mathis, Todd
Subject: Re: St. Lawrence Wind
Blayne,
I just tried several times to call Schomer to get to the bottom of this, but he’s not there.
This is what I know-
When we first were made aware of the Schomer study in July I wrote a letter to Paul explaining the circumstances surrounding the summer test and summarizing some of the results of the winter test, which he had not known about. The gist of the letter was to ask that he make a serious effort to retract his criticisms, which were overly harsh, totally undeserved and apparently written with the express intent tell his client, the Industrial Wind Action Group, what they wanted to hear.

Some time prior to this in the late spring , my father , George Hessler ( the other half of the company) was asked by Paul to chair a session a the Noise- Con 2009 conference in Ottawa in late August . At that conference, the two of them talked face to face about the Cape Vincent situation. During that discussion, my father was told that Paul now understood the background circumstances and no longer objected to our study principally because the levels he measured during his own wintertime survey were comparable to and in some cases even higher than we got. Amicable relations resorted, my father was told that Paul was going to immediately write a letter to Cavanaugh Tocci essentially retracting his objections. We had no reason to doubt he was going to do that. However, we have never received a copy as we had requested.

As an additional note, our work on the BP project largely ended with the submittal of the summer and winter background test reports and we did not prepare an impact assessment for the project, but rather an assessment was written without our knowledge by the general environmental consultant (ERM) basing the impact on, I believe, the summer background levels because they were much more favorable to the project. Evidently, it was this DEIS assessment that rankled the anti- wind people and prompted them to hire Schomer to do an “independent” field survey.

David
~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 Clif Schneider Re: Hessler

I was at the Ottawa INCE conference when David Hessler's father George was lobbying Dr. Paul Schomer to recant his criticism of Hessler Associates BP study. In fact, George Hessler was the chair of the section when I presented my paper on background sound levels in Cape Vincent.
I am very familiar with the issue and the circumstances outlined in this post. Hessler's complaint was Schomer's report was "overly harsh, totally undeserved and apparently written with the express intent tell his client, the Industrial Wind Action Group, what they wanted to hear." On the contrary, Hessler was upset because someone of impeccable professional standards, Dr. Schomer, exposed his questionable, unprofessional study for BP.
Hessler can complain all he wants, but in the end he was the one who recanted his summer study.
Schomer stood by his report and its conclusions, and he stands by them today.


Clif Schneider




--------------Original Message------------------
From: Mathes, Todd
Sent: Monday, October 26, 2009 11:57 AM
To: Zedick, Pete
Cc Cogen, Richard; K. Dimmick; Gunderman Blayne




View Schomer Report -->here