But a new nationwide study that analyzed data from 300 million home sales and 60,000 wind turbines finds turbines’ impact on home values is much lower than previously thought – about a 1% drop on average for a home with at least one wind turbine within six miles. Even for homes close to a turbine, the study finds the negative impact to property value “diminishes and eventually disappears” within a decade. Getting the answer required building a massive mapping database of the distance between US homes and wind turbines, accounting for changes in topography and other factors. The study also explored just how big wind turbines appear to the human eye. Much of the growth in wind turbines in the US has been on farmland in the Midwest, Great Plains states and Texas.

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Persons: Max Auffhammer, “, ” Auffhammer, Wei Guo, Auffhammer, Aaron Heley Lehman, you’re Organizations: CNN, University of California, Italian Centro, Iowa Farmers Union Locations: United States, Berkeley, Italian, Midwest, Great Plains, Texas, Iowa