LOWELL - A proposed wind farm on Lowell Mountain will be the subject of a public meeting on Thursday night, November 5, at the Lowell school. The meeting, organized by the project's would-be developers, has no official status, and thus won't affect the permitting process the project would ultimately face, if the developers and the voters of Lowell agree to proceed.

Such a meeting comes a few days later on Monday, November 9, also at the school. Both meetings start at 7 p.m.

Monday's meeting is on the limited, preliminary issue of whether Kingdom Community Wind can put up three test towers to measure wind and other weather factors that might affect the project.

According to a spokesman for Green Mountain Power, the chief utility behind the project, the Public Service Board has already indicated that it will limit testimony at Monday's board hearing to the test towers themselves. The board is not ready to hear public testimony for and against the underlying project itself, said Dottie Schnure, manager of corporate communications for
Green Mountain Power.

Thursday's meeting, however, promises to be a lively debate on whether Lowell Mountain should play host to as many as 24 wind turbines, stretching to heights of up to 430 feet.

Andre Tetreault, who with his wife, Gertrude, runs a small information center in support of the project from their farmhouse in Lowell, has posted notices of the meeting around town and in Albany, Troy and Westfield.

Opponents of the project have taken out fullpage newspaper ads that urge residents of towns as distant as Barton to attend "and hear what is planned for you and your family."

Though the developers say they don't yet know the answers to such fundamental questions as how many wind turbines are involved, or what the project will cost, some details have emerged, based on "handshake" agreements with the parties involved.

Though they support the project, says Selectman Richard Pion, the town selectmen have agreed that the residents of Lowell should vote on the project.

And the lead developer, Green Mountain Power, says it will withdraw if the voters say no. The selectmen's support, Mr. Pion said, is due to an unwritten agreement that Green Mountain Power will pay the town a minimum of $400,000 a year if the project is built. That's a little less than the town budget of $410,000 approved by the voters last March. "That would mean basically no town tax," Mr. Pion said, though local school taxes would not be affected. He added that the vote would probably be scheduled for Town Meeting in March, and conducted by Australian ballot. That would confine any debate to a public meeting before Town Meeting, he noted, because the project could not be argued on the floor during the vote.

In an interview Tuesday, Ms. Schnure emphasized the point that the project's lead developer, Green Mountain Power, is a Vermont utility that will supply any power generated on Lowell Mountain to its in-state customers. Even closer to home, Vermont Electric Cooperative has joined Green Mountain as a "partner" in exploring the feasibility of the Lowell Mountain Project. The Johnson-based co-op serves not only Lowell, but also many of the towns whose residents would see the big towers. Vermont Electric would not invest in the turbines, Ms. Schnure said, but would buy the power at its cost to Green Mountain, and pass it on to its customers.

In a press release announcing that its board of directors had "signaled support for the proposed project at their September meeting," the co-op said it would gain the right to buy as much as eight megawatts of the project's capacity, which could be as high as 63 megawatts.

News that Vermont Electric's board supported the Lowell project must have come as a disappointment to one of its closest neighbors and most determined opponents, Donald Nelson of Albany.

This summer, he said in an interview Monday, Mr. Nelson attended a co-op board meeting and urged that the cooperative's members - its customers - in seven nearby towns be invited to vote on the project. He suggested that a ballot could be included with the utility's monthly bills.

"I talked for 15 minutes," he said. "I asked the directors to please let people have a say in this. This doesn't affect Lowell anywhere near as much as it does Albany. Albany looks right at it."

The Nelsons' 600-acre farm sits high above the village of Albany, just below the ridge where the wind towers would stand.

The couple's opposition is based both on what they consider the ruinous impact the wind towers would have on their area, and a growing conviction that wind power doesn't offer a serious solution to the state's energy problems.

"It's a pipe dream," Mr. Nelson says of wind developers' promise of ample supplies of renewable energy.

"I believe so strongly that the state cannot do this," Mr. Nelson said. "It going to hurt our future, and our kids' future, when we industrialize our mountaintops for something that doesn't work." On the other side of the mountain another retired farm couple, Andre and Gertrude Tetreault, have come to the opposite conclusion.

Mr. Tetreault, who represents the fourth generation of his family in Lowell, said he has supported a wind farm on Lowell Mountain since it was first proposed five or six years ago.

"We need more clean energy," he said. "It's good to bring something to Lowell." During an interview Monday, Lowell resident Robert Naramore dropped in to talk about buying some hay.

Mr. Naramore said he wasn't opposed to the wind farm, but added, "as a real estate agent and a landowner, I have some questions." What good would taxes on the project do the town, he wondered, if it hurt property values enough to reduce taxes on homes and farms? After Mr. Tetreault outlined Green Mountain Power's agreement to pay at least $400,000 a year, and increase that by $25,000 a year every five years, Mr. Naramore seemed satisfied.

"If that's the way it's going down," he said,

"I'm satisfied."