By a margin of more than nine to one, residents voted at a special town meeting Thursday, Aug. 20, not to hire consultants who would have pursued grants and other funding sources for a community wind project. A total of 82 residents filled the gym at the Edna Drinkwater School Thursday evening to vote on whether or not to appropriate $50,000 from the town's fund balance to secure the services of Ra Power Solutions to help the town with the wind project.

Peter Kelley, the attorney for the group, said Tuesday that his clients have seen the quality of life they experienced before the windmills were constructed slip from their grasp. He said his clients are alleging that they were not properly notified about all that the construction process entailed. Noise, which Wendy Todd said Tuesday was not supposed to be an issue, continues to reverberate from the wind farm. Headaches and frayed nerves are now a problem, according to Todd, and property values among the homes allegedly affected by the project have diminished.

The Maine Department of Environmental Protection on Tuesday gave conditional approval for a $120 million windmill project on town hills. That means Record Hill Wind LLC could get the go-ahead for its 50.6-megawatt development on Aug. 20, the day DEP Commissioner David Littell will render the final licensing decision on the company's pending site plan review permit, project manager Beth Callahan reported in an e-mail.

In one of the longest and best attended annual town meetings in recent history, nearly 150 voters Monday rejected two articles, one to explore wind power and the other to develop a road plan. ...This was the second time voters had rejected the plan by a narrow margin. At a special town meeting in April, the article was defeated by four votes. At a hearing Monday before the annual town meeting, Selectman Mark Silber discussed how property taxes could be reduced by using the only resource Sumner has: Wind. He pointed out that the town is financially stressed.

Freedom residents who hoped the wind turbines on Beaver Ridge would bring a lower tax bill got a surprise this year as other factors sucked up most of the windfall. ...Freedom town officials, with help from the state, valued the Beaver Ridge development at $9.7 million and the Central Maine Power transmission lines running up the ridge at an additional $480,000. But the value added to the town made barely a dent in the mill rate, which went from 17 to 15.5.

Over the next several months Stantec will operate a number of radar units and arrays of digital acoustic bat detector systems at select sites located 6 to 20 miles off of the coast of Maine, covering a transect of nearly 150 miles from Casco Bay north to Machias Seal Island. Stantec scientists will be monitoring the data for information on the offshore presence or absence, timing, flight heights, and passage rates of bats and birds moving south during the late summer and fall migration season.

Residents here will soon have a chance to vote on whether they want to have wind turbines erected at the town's transfer station. Earlier this year an alternative and renewable energy company called Ra Power expressed an interest in erecting wind turbines at the transfer station, which is located on Nebraska Road.

State regulators rejected arguments Thursday that the Maine Department of Environmental Protection rushed through an application for a 40-turbine wind-energy facility in the Lincoln Lakes region. ...the Board of Environmental Protection sided with the DEP ...Several board members acknowledged, however, that Maine may have to revisit its regulations on sound levels partly in response to ongoing concerns about noise from wind farms.

A group of Mars Hill residents who live near the second largest wind power project in the state have filed a lawsuit against the developer, First Wind, citing noise and health concerns and seeking compensation for a loss of property value. ...Wendy Todd says she and her husband were supportive of the project. ...Soon Todd says the intermittent sounds and shadow flicker from the turbines began to wear on her nerves.

The Friends of Lincoln Lakes will argue on Thursday that political pressure from the Baldacci administration forced the Maine Department of Environmental Protection to issue a permit far too soon for the proposed $130 million Rollins Mountain wind farm, its attorney said. Bar Harbor lawyer Lynne Williams ...said she and her clients believe DEP officials ignored "a lot of really important evidence" in their rush to comply with new state laws that fast-track industrial wind site proposals.

Residents voted 36-10 during all-day voting Saturday to approve a tax increment financing deal the Board of Selectmen negotiated with First Wind of Massachusetts for the town portion of the company's Rollins Mountain project. First Wind plans to build 40 1½-megawatt turbines along the Rollins Mountain ridgelines that run through Burlington, Lee, Lincoln and Winn.

The U.S. Senate has approved $5 million for a University of Maine research program seeking to develop wind turbine technology capable of operating in the harsh conditions in the Gulf of Maine. A state task force, meanwhile, continued on Thursday to discuss the enormous opportunities but daunting technological, financial and regulatory challenges of developing ocean-based renewable energy projects off the coast of Maine.

A proposed ordinance amendment that would increase height restrictions and allow smaller wind turbines in town will be the subject of a public hearing at Tuesday's meeting of the Planning Board. Draft amendment language would allow "a small wind energy installation" of up to 80 feet, with approval granted by the town's codes enforcement office, Town Planner Kris Hulstedt said Tuesday. Larger installations would be allowed only with a special permit from the Planning Board.

The Lincoln Board of Appeals had no business refusing to hear a landowners group's appeal of a permit issued to a proposed $130 million wind farm on Rollins Mountain, the group's attorney said Wednesday. Friends of Lincoln Lakes attorney Lynne Williams argued in Penobscot County Superior Court that Lincoln's appeal process was chaotic.

An appeal of a local board's decision to reject a property owners group's protest of a permit issued for a $130 million industrial wind site on Rollins Mountain will be heard in court next week. Attorneys for both sides will present arguments in Penobscot County Superior Court in Bangor at 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, July 29, Town Manager Lisa Goodwin said.

Petitioners have garnered enough signatures to put the issue of a tower to measure wind power on Mollyockett Mountain to a vote at the annual town meeting on Monday, Aug. 10. At a special town meeting on June 24, voters rejected by 5 votes a proposal to authorize the town to spend $11,000 to survey and clear land for the possible siting of the tower. The petition had 56 signatures.

Selectmen decided at Tuesday night's board meeting to wait 60 days from June 23 before rendering their decision on a petition that seeks to rescind previously approved town laws allowing wind power facilities to be built on town ridges. Responding to lawyer Maura Horodyski's question about the petition and the board's response, Chairman Bob Sutton said they agreed to have lawyer Jennifer Kreckel of Rumford review the petition before they decide whether to follow its intent.

A 2- to 3-mile section of the Saddleback Mountain ridge in the northeast section of Rumford could become the area's newest wind turbine farm. Andy Novey, project manager for Patriot Renewables of Quincy, Mass., said Thursday that the first season of environmental studies of bird migration patterns and visual surveys has been done. The company will complete a second set of similar studies in September and October.

For a few tense moments, Monday, it appeared as if Buckfield was going to get a wind farm, ready or not. Kirk Nadeau presented plans to put three wind turbines atop Streaked Mountain, after which the planning board mulled its options, including how to amend and /or draft local ordinances to deal with the development.