However, if tax credits for renewable energy sources aren't restored in a legislative session by the end of this year, then there will be no wind farm because the company can't afford to build and operate it without the credits.

In addition to having the first full-scale wind farm in Utah, Thomas said the city will benefit from the lease payments and the schools will benefit from the property taxes.

Air conditioning uses a lot more energy. Non-industrial energy use has gone up a solid 1.7 percent a year, but peak load power demand in the heart of the summer is rising at 5 percent annually.

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- Seven utilities have announced formation of a partnership to advance the Frontier Line, an electric-power transmission grid that would serve Wyoming, Utah, Nevada and California.

SPANISH FORK — Developers of a proposed wind farm at the mouth of Spanish Fork Canyon were scrambling Monday to secure the necessary leases to move their project away from a residential neighborhood.

SPANISH FORK — Residents, developers and city officials in Spanish Fork are inching closer to a mutual agreement that would relocate a planned wind farm that has generated the ire of homeowners near the area where it was originally planned to be built.

Spanish Fork Mayor Joe Thomas said he is feeling cautiously optimistic walking into tonight's City Council meeting.

After a heated string of presentations, the Spanish Fork City Council held off making any decisions Tuesday night on the future of a wind farm project in the city until other options are considered.

Monstrous. Colossal. Shocking. These are a few words Spanish Fork residents are using to describe a set of five wind turbines that are scheduled to tower in the community -- unless they can change the City Council's mind.

SPANISH FORK - A slow-moving project to create Utah's first wind farm could grind to a halt this spring. A group of residents unimpressed with the idea of 300-foot-high turbines whirling overhead at the mouth of Spanish Fork Canyon will ask the City Council next week for a six-month moratorium on the project.

It wasn't a selfish case of N.I.M.B.Y. - the "Not In My Back Yard" syndrome -- that inspired Aaron Fisher and a couple of other Spanish Fork residents to rise to the podium at the February 7, 2006 City Council meeting and state their case against wind towers. The concerned property owners just wanted to take pause, investigate what it is that Wasatch Wind, LLC is building in the Spanish Fork Canyon and get community approval to continue with the testing of the 82 meter meteorological tower which Wasatch Wind has installed to verify wind speeds.

Imagine the brouhaha if an oil company built a series of 300-foot-high oil derricks along the foot of Mt. Timpanogas. Or if an advertising firm erected billboards as tall as the Statue of Liberty in front of Y Mountain. The fur would fly. But see how different it is with the Spanish Fork wind farm. State and local dignitaries line up to praise the turbines that are a visual blight at that end of Utah Valley.

The $21 billion tax package passed last year by the House of Representatives, then defeated by the Senate, would have done serious harm by stifling production and investment. The proposed taxes would not even go to rebuild our deteriorating national infrastructure; they would simply punish U.S. energy companies and be used on a variety of pork-like, speculative projects favored by some in Congress. ...Sen. Bennett's constituents should know that his vote was crucial in removing these unwise provisions and in moving a more realistic energy policy on to final passage and signature.

According to an article printed in the Deseret Morning News on Dec. 21, the wind farm planned for the Milford area will receive tax subsidies from the state of Utah to the tune of $4.3 million. Since all of the electric power from this subsidized project will be sent to California, it is akin to exporting Utah money, by wire, to the Golden State.

Wind power has all the ingredients of a good brain buster. The non-fossil fuel energy windmills produce helps preserve the environment, but the wind generators themselves have to be added to the environment. Wind power is going to make us redefine what we consider pollution. They may not be billowing smoke or leaking radiation, but they do make a lot of noise and can change a scenic horizon into a jumble of technology. Like dams in rivers, they interrupt the free flow of natural settings.

Before those of us who will be forced to live with these windmills looming over our homes and lives fall on a grenade for the rest of the city, Hoban needs to provide more convincing evidence of the supposed benefits.