The Windsor hum will be the source of two university research projects funded by the federal government.
The Canadian government signed off on $62,000 to pay for work by the University of Windsor and Western University.
The issue came to light about two years ago. Since then, there have been hundreds of complaints, countless meetings and even a telephone town hall for local residents to pinpoint where the hum was.
Two professors plan to identify exactly what the Windsor hum is and where it’s coming from.
University of Western Ontario researcher Peter Brown says they have special microphones that record very low frequency sound waves. Brown plans on putting dozens of them on the ground in Windsor.
“Based on the time it takes for the sound to get from one to the other, we can figure out where it comes from,” says Brown.
The data will be handed off to Colin Novak, a professor at the University of Windsor. Novak also has a gadget with 30 microphones and a camera in the centre.
“We're able to take a picture of the noise,” says Novak. “We want to be able to characterize the sound, determine its fingerprints, its DNA.”
Three noise monitoring stations will also be strategically placed in the Windsor-LaSalle area and left to record all it hears.
“We hear it every day,” says Gary Grosse, a west Windsor resident. “It’s difficult to go outside and not be annoyed by it.”
Grosse and other residents living with the hum now have the federal governments’ attention.
Bob Dechert, parliamentary secretary to Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird, says they are acting on a recommendation of the International Joint Commission to find the source of the hum.
The work is expected to be completed by the end of the summer.
