"Hypothetically, Risch said, a grid of copper wire buried beneath the substation to provide protection to workers inside the perimeter might be leaking voltage. The Evans home is 10 feet from the substation's chain-link fence."

Hypothetically if it's +80 years old - does the ground grid even exist today as copper conductors or is it just a corroded mess?

Definitely close enough for EMF issues. Potentially any conductive object could be energized by the magnetic fields.

I agree, If the problem is stray voltage/currents - single point grounding can alleviate those. However, it takes an engineer with a sound understanding of grounding systems to design the appropriate single point grounding solution. All potential earth paths have to be analyized. These should include the water service, telephone service, electrical service entrance, and cable TV service. If the home has a combination of plastic and copper water pipes. Bonding of the metallic water pipes to the home's service panel grounding electrode system is mandatory per the NEC as is bonding of any available grounding electrodes.

With either earth leakage or utility ground faults Mr. Kirchhoff law's will not be denied, i.e., the return currents take all available paths. I would be very worried about potential utility fault return current paths.

Have you ever seen a substation burn-down. I have and it's not pretty! Actually started by a squirrel. I would not want to live within 100 yds of a substation, let alone 10' from the fence........

Acoustic noise from a substation can include tones caused by harmonic currents flowing in the transformer windings and or the utility conductors. Todays power system load includes harmonics components at 180hz, 300hz, 420hz, and 540 hz, 660hz, etc. When these harmonics are combined they may create a complex tone that is objectionable to humans. There have also been studies on the use of noise too torture prisoners and also the psychological impact of noise on humans. Most individuals won't like a pure 8kHz tone.

Quantifying the noise problem shouldn't be rocket science, i.e., the test equipment & methodologies are pretty well known.

Excellent posts - really shows the practical value of Mike's Forum/website.