Health Hazard or Not?

the station has not yet been built, only the foundation has.
I have in front of me the Building Autorization (50 pages or so). i have not read all of them BUT i have gone trough the first section wich details the environmental assessment ,

Decision phase.
here it`s described the location and distance it should be build in regard of the pedestrian street and the road (0.8 m from the pedestrian road and 1 m from the vehical road). after 5 pages of reading i realized i found ALOT of points that are not respected, but those are not health related. i tought maby just the proximty to the household is a problem, but from what you say it isn`t..is that corect?
that would mean that the only way to atack this project is by other means than the healt hazzard (wich is not a hazzard after all...)

The hazard from the recovery station's contents is a greater health hazard by far than the EM field radiated by its power feed.

Tackle the problem from that angle and possibly address the smell of such stations (it is garbage that they 'recover', yes?) and its impact on property values. Depending on the design (whether it is surrounded by a 'privacy' fence or not, generally) its appearance will have an impact on property values as well. Two angles: its potential health hazard and its potential impact on property values. Ask them if they've considered that the cost of this project includes the hidden costs of a declining tax base in the future should they build this station in your neighbourhood. No municipality wants to lose money if they've any sense, and this project stands a good chance of pushing their more affluent citizens over the fence.

Confronting this project from a "EM fields are a health hazard" position will get you nowhere in court. There are plenty of studies showing that low-frequency EM fields pose no health hazards at all - and plenty that do. All this project's developers need do in their defense is to pick and choose which studies best say it isn't a hazard and, as they probably have deeper pockets than their future neighbours, good bluddy luck.

Garbage is a health hazard. Flies, having just visited the recovery station, pay a visit and leave behind a present. This does not require an obstruse, impenetrable study to fathom.

Don't tackle this from an EM standpoint; tackle it from a provable health-hazard one.

Have you ever seen birds land on the power lines? If there were health issues associated with proximity, wouldn't it be logical to presume that dead birds would accumulate underneath power lines everywhere?

The reason you don't see birds landing on the very high voltage lines is because the electromagnetic and/or magnetic fields ruffles their feathers. They don't like that.

Your cell phone is actually the most dangerous piece of electrical equipment around. The proximity of the transmitter is measured in fractions of an inch. Yet because the power is so low that people can't tell when brain cells are being cooked. The same is true with alcohol.

Wind turbine blades are more hazardous to birds than the electric field from their cables. Cables are more hazardous to microlight aircraft than wind turbines, as the latter usually have a red light on their tops and there are loads more cables than wind turbines!

"I know that those things should be built NOT in a rezidential zone..."

A residential zone, someone's back yard, perhaps... just not in your back yard.

You are known as a NIMBY.

This recovery station: Just what is being recovered? Did I miss it?

I'd be a NIMBY in his shoes in a heartbeat if it's a garbage-type 'recovery station.' (don't you like the new euphamisms. I do. Theyr'e so.....so.....vague and harmless-sounding)

My mum & dad had a real nice spread out in western Colorado. Crisp, alpine air laden with the scent of pines - until the chicken farm moved in two miles away. Not quite in their back yard, but it didn't matter. Where once was the scent of pines wafting through the air, there is now the smell of rotting flesh. And flies.

If that's a garbage depot, I'd be a hundred NIMBYs if I could.

Well, it's difficult for me to believe that a refuse sorting station would be located in any sort of neighborhood anywhere in the world, but this is where the mains is 50hz, so I still have no idea what we're really taking about.

Many years ago, I worked in a steel door plant that was across the street from a rendering plant... Ugh! It was once located on the outskirts of town, and the city planners allowed more industrial construction to spring up around the originally isolated and very smelly carcass processing facility.

If this is a rezoned garbage collection site then there can be valid grounds to complain.

At the same time, what kind of a junk/garbage yard requires a 20kV power feed into it? That much electric power would be overkill for a scrapyard that crushes cars.

Maybe this recovery station is a methane powered electric power generator. The recovered methane comes from below the clay cap on top of the garbage based landfill that makes up this neighborhood. Burning the recovered methane at the site is easier and safer than piping it out. This recovery system in a residential area might be what allows the area to continue to be a residential area.

Or maybe it's a used reactor vessel processing facility, although a 20 kV feed may be a little too conservative for that. I dunno, maybe they're little ones. Little reactors. Mom & Pop size. Or expended 1960s SNAP generators or maybe it's a Co60 recovery station from some third world nuclear medicine facility, yes?

I mean if we're gunna speculate, why not? It could be anything, but has anyone actually asked? That's always a good place to start.

(sigh)

I didn't start down this speculation road. I just answered the initial question and then later down the speculation roadway I tried to use as much given information as possible for a more plausible guess.

Yeah, would be nice to get a little more information, or at least some sort of reply from 70.

Hello,

I can understand that a 20kV line would come to a transformer at the edge of the site to provide site power at some reduced voltage.

If you are "Three houses away" from the site, then get a rough estimate of how far that is (probably around 25m each for a standard house block) and compare that to other properties already near overhead power lines of similar voltage in your area.

I see here in Aus houses 10m away from the easement for a 66kV line through town on towers that I'm sure are less than 45m high. So your exposure would be less than this generally accepted practice.

Did the sums a while ago for a 332kV line and got magnetic field (ground level) at around 2% of the earth's magnetic field.

You will have difficulty convincing them on htese highly technical aspects of the site.

As others have indicated, better to challenge odour, noise, lighting at night interrupting sleep, Vermin and such that will be attracted, gasses released, increased traffic and danger to children/native animals, run-off control and so on.

What is the site targeted to "recover"?

Where else in the county would be better location?

You're probably correct that the 20kV is feeding a transformer that is feeding this recovery plant, but that's not what the OP said. Actually the OP did not say much more than than unhappiness and angst. I hope that the OP is more cogent when pleading his case to whomever has authority to do something.

Like others here, I am more concerned with what might be happening at the site the power is being taken to.

Low level electro-magnetic emissions are, at best, very questionable as a health hazard. However, they have been proven time and again as very beneficial to health...at least for the lawyers who take the money to present the cases.

The hazards from transmission lines are most likely to be from lines that have fallen to the ground and from damaged transformers. (Transformers can have some pretty nasty chemicals in them.)

You are already swimming in a sea of emissions. I don't know if anyone still does this, but years ago, when I was a budding electronics technician, I learned to do a quick check of an oscilloscope by touching the input with my finger and seeing if I got a 60Hz sine wave on the CRT. If you have electric power in your house, you already have the problem you fear.

The statistics doesn't justify the worry. It's like parents who drive (a HIGH risk activity) to the pediatrician, and then refuse a vaccination (a LOW risk activity) for fear of adverse effects.