Holy Transfiguration Monastry Writes to ACNC in support of Waubra Foundation

13 February 2015

To ACNC Commissioner, Ms Susan Pascoe

Dear Commissioner Pacoe

Although the appeal against the finding that the Waubra Foundation was found erroneously not to be a Health Promotion Charity, closed on the 9th of February we nonetheless forward here our letter of support for this very important Foundation.

We reject outright the claim made on 11th December, 2014, from ACNC Assistant Commissioner David Locke ruling that the Waubra Foundation was not a Health Promotion Charity, because according to him:

“to date there has been no rigorous independent scientific evidence that finds that the ill health complained of is caused by the physiological effects from wind turbines nor that there are human diseases called “wind turbine syndrome” or ‘vibroacoustic disease”.

As the leader of a good standing monastic community of the Russian Orthodox Church of Australia and New Zealand here in Bombala, southern NSW, we have been involved both here in Australia and overseas with people and their families who are living adjacent to or within close distance of wind turbines for the past 5 years.

There is no denial of the fact, that from the experience of our outreach programmes and work with people, that there is a noticeable segment of the population who are adversely affected in their health – physically and emotionally – from turbines. To deny those affected from wind turbines is an insult to justice and basic human rights of healthy living. The Waubra Foundations work has been fundamental in profiling those impacted by the industrial scaled noise produced by wind turbines.

Ireland’s Department of Health Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Dr Colette Bonner, recently confirmed Wind Turbine Syndrome is a serious and real risk in a report to Ireland’s Department of Environment. This report is one of many that have come from esteemed doctors and medical practitioners from around the world showing consistent detrimental symptoms that has been now called Wind Turbine Syndrome.

We also recommend the ACNC familiarise itself with Steven Coopers recent findings: that infrasound is to be identified as real ‘sensations’ of pressure pulses rather than whats been assumed all this time as noise.

Mr Locke, we feel, limited his findings to physiological effects and ignored the evidence about psychological and psychiatric health problems which we have witnessed at first hand.

By limiting the focus on wind turbine related research evidence, ACNC Assistant Commissioner David Locke avoided the issue of the extensive body of evidence about diseases caused by sources of environmental noise other than wind turbines, in spite of accepting that the Waubra Foundation works to help people adversely impacted by a range of noise sources.

The support the Waubra Foundation has given to so many people is invaluable. I commend the Foundation as an honourable and effective organisation deserving every respect from all government authorities and those interested in adverse health effects from industrial noise (now ‘sensations’) and pollution.