It seems to me that so far the participants and the non-participants are busily talking past each other, each unconvinced of the others' arguments, even unconvinced of the others' good faith. This could go on for a long time with no satisfactory resolution. One solution to get past the impasse might be to frame the discussion in a different light than simply disagreeing about the problems and benefits of the project.

For those opposed, ask yourself - are you sure this project will lead to an unacceptable loss of amenity? For those in favor, ask yourself - are you sure that the turbines will not create a nuisance or even a health problem for your neighbors? I'm assuming here that the participants at least care about the health and happiness of their neighbors - if you don't, shame on you. And I'm assuming here that the non-participants at least care about allowing their neighbors the best use of their land - if you don't, shame on you.

Either extreme - an indifferently-made decision for a complete buildout of the project, or for a complete refusal to allow turbines at all - represents a potentially unpleasant and divisive result. A complete buildout may harm the Island and residents in ways that are yet unclear, and a complete refusal will deny a significant income source. In either event, even a complete buildout that is benign, the sense of AI residents as a community will be harmed - and if you don't care about that, shame on you again.

Given all that we know, or rather, given all that we don't know, I think it is unreasonable for anyone to say what all the effects of this project will be, for good or bad. And when there's uncertainty, there's risk. So instead of framing the debate in terms of who's right, can we instead frame it in terms of trying to understand the risk, and then taking steps to eliminate it as much as we can? Can we all agree to that?

The vast bulk of the unknowns, and thus the vast bulk of the risks, fall on the non-participants. If we can convince them that, as much as we can, we will lower their risk, then I think the project will face much less opposition than it now does. In my opinion, the 4 issues of most interest to residents are noise, visual effects (including flicker and strobe), harm to birds etc., and property values. Property values are primarily a result of the first three, so if we fix those they get fixed as well. Harm to birds etc. will have to be evaluated in a serious fashion, but not by residents. I don't know how to evaluate visual effects - we can argue endlessly about them - except for strobe and flicker, which ought to be minimized as much as is reasonable. That leaves noise, which may well serve as a surrogate for visual effects - fix noise, and the visual effects may be acceptable also.

So if a reasonably attainable goal is to reduce the unknowns and risks associated with noise, how do we go about doing that? Unfortunately, there are actually 2 unknowns surrounding the noise issue: first, do the standards protect the neighbors and second, will the turbines meet the standards.

The following are just my first three ideas; I'm sure some people won't like them and I'm also sure there are other schemes out there. My first scheme would attempt to shortcut both of those unknowns. We would make use of the lessons learned by those with the most experience with turbines. That would obviously be someone in Europe, probably the Germans or maybe the WHO. Adopt their standards and we could reasonably expect to attain their results, which seem to be mostly acceptable. My second scheme would validate just the second of these unknowns, and give some sense of the first - we would wait until Wolfe Island was installed and travel over there, taking measurements and seeing just how disruptive the noise and visual effects were. My third scheme would be to build part of the project in the original Vector turbine area and see how it went.

The other way to eliminate risk for the non-participants would be to set up a fund or a bond, that in the event any non-participating resident suffered health issues or was subjected to noise to above the limits, they could sell their house at current market values to the fund. The fund could then sell the property at market.

Obviously all of these would need lots of details worked out, but as long as we could jointly agree on what we were trying to accomplish we should be able to work on those details in good faith. As always, comments are appreciated.