Apr. 5--CAPE VINCENT -- St. Lawrence Wind Farm developer Acciona is offering a more precise explanation of what the project's effects on the environment will be in its supplemental draft impact statement.

The statement, released March 25, includes several changes and decisions: -- The turbines used will be 1.5 megawatt turbines -- AW-82-1500 manufactured by Acciona, which are 390 feet tall and have a rotor diameter of 269 feet.

--The project will build four new meteorological towers and continue to use one that is already constructed.

--Access road layout was changed to avoid wetlands.

--A transmission line between the project's substation and National Grid's substation in Lyme likely will follow the abandoned New York Central Railroad corridor which also contains the Development Authority of the North Country regional water line.

--Revised and additional studies include those on noise, bird, bat, cultural, transportation, wetlands and visual effects.

Species that live in the project area that are either endangered or threatened include two plants, a fish, a reptile, 14 birds and two bats.

The statement predicts one bat death for every four turbines annually and fewer than one death per year across the entire project for Indiana bats, a federally listed endangered species. The low number of deaths likely would occur because of other population pressures on the bats, including the fungal "white nose syndrome."

The statement says: "Essentially the relative abundance of Indiana bats in the Project Area would be low enough that no measurable impact would occur."

The statement also predicts 122 to 509 bird deaths per year, but said raptor and large bird deaths were very unlikely.

The turbines are sited according to guidelines from the Cape Vincent Planning Board because the town doesn't have a zoning law controlling wind power development.

The visual studies showed that within a 5-mile radius, 37 percent of the area would see 40 to 53 turbines, but 32 percent would see none. Of the 186 light receptors placed within a distance equal to 10 times the rotor diameter of the turbines -- or about 2,700 feet -- 40 percent have less than one hour of shadow flicker per year. About 47 percent see one 10 hours per year of shadow flicker. About 9 percent experience 11 to 20 hours of flicker, and 4 percent have 21 to 30 hours of shadow flicker per year.

In noise analysis, the studies showed no sound measured below 31.5 hertz, or cycles per second, which is near the low end of human hearing.