Tax Dollars Pay for a 
Study to Study Other Studies

Petunia awards her first 'Porker Award' to the Oregon Health Authority for the wasteful 'Shadow Flicker' study. 

You would think that state bureaucrats would want to track how much taxpayer money they spend on their activities, like conducting a study. Not so with the Oregon Health Authority's Public Health Division, which produced a 134 page study of other studies over 18 months and they don't know how much they spent on it, had no budget for it and conveniently claim it is 'unclear' who authorized it according to this email Oregon Capitol Watch obtained from them. 

I spent 8 years in the Oregon House of Representatives sitting on budget committees and I can tell you this is a big red flag that perhaps spending in one of the state's largest agencies is unaccountable, out of control and wasting taxpayers dollars. Especially when you consider the main issues of the 'Wind Energy Health Impact Assessment' (we call it Shadow Flicker study) are if giant wind turbine blade shadows trigger epileptic seizures in humans and if the sound of wind turbines creates human stress. Why would these issues be wasteful to study? It's simple really. In order for both of these issues to be a problem for humans, people would have live in significant numbers amongst the wind turbines to be affected and since hardly no one does, it would be a waste to even study those issues. A 5th grader could have figured that out, right? 

Essentially, the study admits that there was no evidence of 'Shadow Flicker' triggering epileptic seizures in humans and  they can't measure the impact of wind turbine sounds on humans either. This story's  misleading headline doesn't offer any proof wind turbines may be bad for your health and corroborates the study's conclusion that Shadow Flicker isn't a problem in Oregon. They do however, omit the study's own words on page 9, bullet point 4 that says there have been 'no complaints' related to wind energy facilities operating in Oregon and the department has only 'anecdotal' evidence of complaints and are 'unable to assess' health impacts. Gee, I wonder why? Maybe because virtually no one lives out amongst the wind turbines in Oregon? Perhaps a little common sense planning by the agency would have reached that conclusion before they spent an unknown amount of money on the "Shadow Flicker' study. 

You can watch our full length video on this subject here as it explains even more interesting conclusions of this wasteful study of other studies. 

The bottom line is this. Whether you are liberal or conservative, no one likes their hard earned tax dollars being wasted by a state agency, especially when a little common sense could have stopped it to begin with. 

I wonder if the legislature would be interested in why the agency doesn't know how much they spent, why there was no budget and why no one wants to claim credit for authorizing the expenditure?  

 The Oregon Health Authority deserves Petunia's 'Porker Award' for wasteful spending.  

Congratulations!