Efforts to reduce bird kills in the Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area may not be working, new data released this week show. The mortality rate increased 27 percent over two years among raptors targeted in an ongoing monitoring study, according to an executive summary of the data issued by Alameda County's Scientific Review Committee. The five member panel advises the county on progress being made to mitigate bird deaths in the Altamont Pass windmill area. ...The increase in the kills of the four targeted raptors - the golden eagle, red-tailed hawk, American kestrel and burrowing owl - is in comparison with a baseline study that took place between March 1998 and May 2003.

Strong neighborhood opposition to a proposed wind turbine on a Torrance elementary school campus has prompted officials to drop the project. Residents near Hickory Elementary School flooded Torrance Unified School District officials with calls Monday after reading in the Daily Breeze about the proposed turbine that would tower almost 40 feet over the neighborhood. Opponents were concerned about aesthetic, noise and safety issues.

Alameda County supervisors approved on Tuesday a new three-month, bird-monitoring contract to study the impacts of the Altamont Pass wind turbines on scores of birds, including golden eagles, red-tailed hawks, burrowing owls and other protected species. Supervisors approved the $450,000 contract with environmental consulting firm Jones & Stokes by a 3-2 vote.

Lewis calls the whole proposal, its implications and its aftermath "just weird." For instance, he didn't receive the letter from Schumacher until July 5 - almost three weeks after the board's decision. "This letter was the first anyone knew about it," Lewis said. "We were just shocked this could happen without notifying anybody." Galvin is mobilizing the neighborhood and hopes people will show up at a school district meeting tonight to complain. "It's imperative we show opposition to this thing. Otherwise it's going to get shoved down our throats, which is what the school district has done already," she said. [EDITOR'S NOTE: Windaction.org has been informed that this project has since been canceled due to complaints filed by residents in Torrance.]

The California Desert Coalition, which formed to oppose the proposal, took out a newspaper ad that urged residents to wear red to display their anger. Many did so, wearing red shirts, hats, scarves, and even tiny rubber bands to hold back their hair. They said they weren't against a quest for renewable energy but wanted it done without harm to their homes and the environment they hold dear. "We have a lot to protect here; we have a lot to fight for," said April Sall, a coalition leader. Russell Betts, a Desert Hot Springs city councilman, said one transmission route would economically harm the town by slicing through a proposed commercial zone. He suggested that Los Angeles officials are expecting desert residents to "absorb the cost of their operation."

California's big electrical utilities may miss the state's deadline for increasing their use of renewable power if Congress doesn't extend tax credits for new solar plants and wind farms, the head of Pacific Gas and Electric Co. said Friday. Like all California utilities, San Francisco's PG&E has been scrambling to sign contracts with renewable-power developers. State law requires that by the end of 2010, 20 percent of the electricity each utility sells must come from renewable sources. But Peter Darbee, PG&E's chief executive officer, said many developers have already warned him that their projects may fall through if Congress doesn't extend tax credits due to expire at the end of the year.

Despite some changes to the route of the proposed Sunrise Powerlink, analysts at the California Public Utilities Commission have not changed their opinion about the controversial line, according to an environmental study released yesterday. The revised environmental report includes an evaluation of wind power that San Diego Gas & Electric hopes to tap in northern Baja California as well as more than a dozen changes being considered for Sunrise, a proposed $1.5 billion, 150-mile power line that would stretch from the Imperial Valley to Rancho Peñasquitos. In the end, the analysts repeated findings from the first draft of the report, namely that there are five "environmentally superior" alternatives to the SDG&E proposal, including proposals to generate power within San Diego County or to build alternate lines that would - unlike Sunrise - avoid Anza-Borrego Desert State Park.

When it unveiled its Sunrise Powerlink project three years ago, San Diego County's electric utility warned that rolling blackouts like those that swept California during the 2000-01 electricity crisis could return to the region in 2010 without the new power line. Now, because of state delays in evaluating the $1.5 billion project, that high-voltage transmission line ---- even if it is eventually approved ---- won't be available to help meet the county's peak summer demand for electricity in either 2010 or 2011, utility officials say. ...Bill Powers, an activist and engineer from San Diego who has been fighting Sunrise, maintains there is another option: Ship the power west via an existing line in Baja California and north on wires that connect Tijuana with San Diego. "You've got a lot of options here that don't necessarily involve building any new transmission," Powers said.

A second local wind turbine project was proposed for an area near Camp Rock Road - the latest example in the statewide push for renewable energy as presented at the most recent Municipal Advisory Council meeting. FPL Energy of Florida plans to construct 34 turbines - which are a total of 389 feet tall, the equivalent of a 40-story building - on just 52 of those acres, explained Eduardo Batalla, director of wind energy projects for the company. The utilized property will be along the ridge of the mountains. Batalla said that West Fry Wind Project is in talks with the Bureau of Land Management to acquire 3,100 acres by Camp Rock Road in the Johnson Valley Off-Road Vehicle area.

A fund that helps the state's largest utilities buy renewable energy at above-market rates won't last much longer, possibly providing the big power firms with a loophole to get out of looming renewable energy mandates. ...Meanwhile, utilities complain, the state's method of determining market rates sets the price benchmark artificially low. As a result, the utilities will run through the renewable kitty faster than expected, and in fact, could spend the whole amount, on just a few projects. The CPUC says the money will run out in the next 12 to 18 months.

In a setback for San Diego Gas & Electric Co.'s controversial transmission line, state regulators Friday ordered that a draft report examining the Sunrise Powerlink's environmental impacts be expanded to include new information about a Mexico wind power project. The four-page ruling by California Public Utilities Commissioner Dian Grueneich and Administrative Law Judge Steven Weissman also directs the agency that runs the state power grid to recalculate the economic benefits of Sunrise and project alternatives. The ruling marked the second time in a year that the finish line for the $1.5 billion project has been pushed back.

Pacific Gas & Electric Co. has under contract all of the renewable power it needs to meet state mandates by 2010, if the promised power systems can be built in time. It's a big if. Expiring tax credits, the lag in building utility-scale renewable energy and increased competition for renewable power sources are potential roadblocks for the Northern California utility and the state's two other major utilities. ...Another issue for PG&E and the other utilities is that costs are rising 20 percent per year for renewable power.

It seems like an idea any environmentalist would embrace: Build one of the world's largest solar power operations in the Southern California desert and surround it with plants that run on wind and underground heat. Yet San Diego Gas & Electric Co. and its potential partners face fierce opposition because the plan also calls for a 150-mile, high-voltage transmission line that would cut through pristine parkland to reach the nation's eighth-largest city. The showdown over how to get renewable energy to consumers will likely play out elsewhere around the country as well, as state regulators require electric utilities to rely less on coal and natural gas to fire their plants -- the biggest source of carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S.

Speculators have filed applications to develop more than 1 million acres of desert in Southern California with solar, wind and geothermal power plants, setting up a classic clash over land use with environmentalists and off-road enthusiasts. They have submitted at least 130 proposals with the Bureau of Land Management, which oversees all of the territory, in recent years and especially since 2007. The interest is so hot that even if many of the projects fall through, the remaining ones would change the look of the arid landscape. ... "We have worked for decades to protect the desert. . . . Let's not trash what we've saved," said Elden Hughes, who has worked with the Sierra Club and other environmental groups for decades.

A rush to build environmentally friendly renewable energy in the windy, sunny Inland region has stirred up some unlikely foes: environmentalists. They say the projects mean new transmission lines and towers across some of the very mountains and desert vistas people have fought to protect. ...It's not just environmentalists who are objecting. A Riverside County supervisor said he opposes plans to erect 400-foot-tall wind turbines for the first time on the 4,000-foot elevation of Mount San Jacinto, near Palm Springs. And a San Bernardino County supervisor has strongly urged Los Angeles to abandon plans to string new transmission lines to carry renewable energy through the Morongo Basin east of Joshua Tree National Park.

On Friday morning, elected officials, environmentalists and energy company representatives heralded the unveiling of the Dillon Wind Power Project, a group of 45 turbines towering more than 300 feet above the Coachella Valley. ...The Palm Springs wind farms have been built out, and there are few options other than upgrading their aging turbines. A number of proposals have been submitted to the state Bureau of Land Management, but one - a proposal that would build up to 28 turbines six miles east of Apple Valley and is the farthest along in the approval process - could be San Bernardino County's first wind farm. ...The proposal's 410-foot ridgeline turbines, however, have created controversy.

They are an environmentalist's dream but possibly a neighborhood nightmare. Clean and renewable, wind power turbines from 30 feet to 300 feet tall could pepper the Sonoma County landscape, especially at higher, visually prominent locations. ... "You're not going to ignore them," said Alexandra von Meier, associate professor of energy management and design at Sonoma State University. Von Meier said the county is speckled with prospective wind turbine sites and suggested that local governments should "make it easy" to tap the wind with whirling machines.

Fire caused an estimated $750,000 in damage to a windmill on Thursday, the Palm Springs Fire Deparment said today. ...The top portion of the windmill was on fire and several small spot fires happened because of falling debris. The fire is under investigation.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power says it has yet to pick a preferred route for Green Path North, a proposed electrical corridor running from Desert Hot Springs to Hesperia. ...But folks from the California Desert Coalition and a local chapter of the Sierra Club say a route has been chosen, and they intend to show people where the agency intends to install the high-tension corridor. "I think it's important to educate people about what the landscape looks like and how pristine the conservation lands are," said April Sall, one of the organizers. "It's extremely sensitive habitat." ..."Green Path North, which will be our transmission corridor serving Los Angeles will transfer renewable energy from the Salton Sea," Nahai said.

From the early 1980s through the early ‘90s, California was the national leader in wind energy development and power produced by wind farms. ...Are the turbines benefiting one aspect of the environment at the expense of another? Longtime Snow Creek resident Les Starks calls the wind farms "industrial slums" - claiming the windmills have displaced wildlife and degraded the quality of life for nearby residents. "There was a canyon near Whitewater Canyon that used to have thousands of bats," says Starks, "and now you don't see any." He's also noticed a decline in turkey buzzards migrating through the pass. ...With wind energy having been harnessed in the Desert for nearly three decades, the next few years will determine its future here. Presently, it accounts for just two percent of California's portfolio. That number surely will rise along with new and bigger windmills - love them or hate them.