Wind machines test credibility skills.

In what has been a slightly bizarre twist to the normal towing of the Winegrowers line by the Marlborough District Council, the MDC have agreed to accept several points suggested in the Maassen report put out earlier this year.

Read more here from stuff.co.nz

Specifically, they have agreed to accept the following recommendations (the numbers are the paragraph numbers from the report);

(4) There needs to be a forensic enforcement / monitoring methodology developed by MDC and implemented to identify in at least two key 'hot spots' to understand the scale of the alleged problem including its frequency and duration.

(5) The Permitted Activity Rule should be changed promptly so that:

(a) classification of the activity of constructing and operating wind machines is at least a controlled activity to enable the imposition of conditions that provide for effective monitoring by MDC and a requirement wind machine operators adopt BPO options in line with technological improvements;

(b) the noise performance standard is 55dBA L10 and no other penalty under NZS6802:1991 for SAC applies

While the report contains a number of curious findings and frankly misses the big ticket question "At what level does the noise from frost fans become a health hazard", there are bright spots amongst the murk.

Someone will hopefully be feeling sorry for Stuart Smith (Some head schrang for the NZ Winegrowers clot) who addressed the Committee after they had decided to accept the recommendations (which actually seems fair, since the other respondents to the reports contents were not given an opportunity to speak).

While they're at it, they can feel sorry for Councillor Hope who was stood out of discussions because of the glaring conflict of interest his involvement would have produced.