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The legal winds are shifting! Many city councils and wind park planners are going to have to clean up their acts when pushing through their pet wind park projects.

Germany’s Fundamental Law specifically expresses that the State is obligated to protect the life and physical body of the individual, foremost from illegal attacks by others.

Consequently, according to German legal experts Prof. Michael Elicker and Andreas Langenbahn here, city councils approving the installation of wind parks may be held personally liable for damage to the health of persons who live close to them.

And when it comes to wind parks, even if only a certain part of the population are susceptible to the health hazards of infrasound (frequency below 20 Hz), it does not preclude the requirement being complied with. They write (my emphasis):

If the state (in this sense the term also includes the towns and communities) allows large wind parks to be constructed at a completely inadequate distance – at times only a few hundred meters – then it violates the state obligation to protect and may be held liable for the health consequences. With this backdrop there are large risks also for communities and their participants if during the planning of so-called “wind-park priority areas” they willingly follow along with the ‘considerations of the contracted planning companies, of whom most of them belong to – and the term is indeed appropriate – the ecological-industrial complex.”

In Germany this puts city councils who onesidedly base their decisions to build wind parks on dubious planning/approval processes and feasibility studies squarely in the legal line of fire.

Too often windpark approvals are fraught with conflicts of interest and crony deals. Finally in Germany the spotlight is getting aimed at the dark underside of the renewable energy industry and their tactics used in ramming projects through against the will of the people.

Also city councils and wind park planers are finding it increasingly difficult to dismiss infrasound produced by wind turbines by claiming that “it cannot be proven scientifically”.

Experts Elicker and Langenbahn calls claims there is no scientific evidence supporting the health hazards of infrasound “false” and that the State is in any case obligated to protect life and body of persons not only after a hazard is conclusively proven.

The authors of the report write that it is extremely difficult to dampen the very low frequency infrasound and that it can travel for kilometers, noting that contrary to wide-spread belief, the frequency is audible, and that it is perceived as pulsations and vibrations.

Even Germany’s Ministry of Environment writes, summing the results of investigations and contradicting earlier claims, that starting at a certain acoustic level, infrasound can have a variety of negative effects on the human body and can interfere with the cardio-vascular system, adversely effect concentration, reaction time, balance and the nervous system. Victims often complain of dizziness.

Elicker and Langenbahn believe that many councilmen and planners have been too careless in their dismissal of infrasound when planning their wind parks. They write that this could all lead to a “rude awakening” for those involved in the slipshod approval of wind parks, and warn they may even be personally liable with their own private assets.

High time.

Also see: www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCJh03-BpG4