Town officials are researching if there is a wind-power developer interested in the town-owned Memorial Forest on Poland Hill. Code Enforcement Officer Richard Marble has previously asked the select board if they were interested in exploring the option of a wind-power development, board administrative assistant Kurt Schaub said early Wednesday.

Then he called ISO New England, the regional transmission organization that serves most of Maine, to make sure there would be room on the grid to transmit energy generated by the small 17-megawatt biomass boiler. "When I started, there was plenty of room on the grid. It was the first thing I checked," he says. But last June, when it came time to register the project with ISO, Tudan was told the grid was "maxed out," he says. In those five years, other generators had registered for grid space, including the Stetson Wind Farm, a 38-turbine wind farm with the capacity to generate 57 megawatts of electricity that went online in January.

The health risks versus the economic benefits of wind power were argued Wednesday night at a Maine Department of Environmental Protection hearing on the Record Hill Wind project for Roxbury's ridges. About 75 people attended the session at Mountain Valley High School, where more than 25 of them spoke about the 22-turbine project proposed by former Maine Gov. Angus King and Robert Gardiner.

Suits on one side, Swanndris on the other - the battle lines were staked on day one of the Waitahora wind farm hearing. About 50 local farmers crammed into The Hub auditorium in Dannevirke yesterday, for the first chapter in what promises to be a three- week-long resource consent saga. Contact Energy wants to build a $550 million wind farm on the Puketoi ranges, a long stretch of hillside in Waitahora, east of Pahiatua.

People will have a chance to ask questions and comment on a proposal to build a 22-turbine wind farm on several ridges in Roxbury at a hearing Wednesday night. The hearing, required by the state Department of Environmental Protection as part of the approval process, begins at 6 p.m. at Mountain Valley High School. ...Another wind project in the early planning stages is in the works for nearby Black Mountain in Rumford.

With the selectmen's vote, the local planning board now is expected to begin drafting an ordinance that would apply to towers. Whether the moratorium would apply only to communications towers or also to other structures such as wind turbines depends on what the planning board recommends and what voters eventually approve, if anything. MacDonald said that if voters approve the moratorium proposal in May, it would be retroactive to the selectmen's Feb. 9 vote. If voters approve the measure, and if any towers start to go up after that date, they could be found in violation of the moratorium, MacDonald said.

As Maine preps for wind power, medical staff at Rumford Hospital say turbines may make people sick. Others beg to differ. The phrase "vibroacoustic syndrome" started him Googling. The worrisome set of symptoms - allegedly caused by exposure to low-frequency noise and linked by some to wind farms - sent him on a mission he didn't anticipate. This week Dr. Albert Aniel, an internist at Rumford Community Hospital, mailed a letter to Gov. John Baldacci. He visited the Mexico Board of Selectmen. He's contacting every town manager in the River Valley.

Plum Creek owns the property west of Greenville, and its logging contractor was clearing land for TransCanada, the developer of a wind farm. The Land Use Regulation Commission issued a notice of warning to TransCanada based on the erosion. A Maine environmental group called for the state to fine Plum Creek and a logging contractor for cutting trees too aggressively. The Natural Resources Council of Maine released photos of the erosion, which it said was effectively a 900-foot-long mudslide, along with internal communications that it says show Plum Creek's logging contractor was warned to stop working in the area until after the ground froze.

Following news that several wireless communication company representatives were in town scouting possible locations for cell phone towers last week, selectmen unanimously voted to place a moratorium on communication towers Monday. The moratorium prohibits all new towers, monopoles and tower-mounted wind turbines for the next 180 days.

Legislators are trying to overhaul Central Maine Power Co.'s $1.5 billion proposal to install high-capacity power lines throughout the state. One bill would force CMP to bury high-voltage lines near residential areas, schools, playgrounds, children's summer camps and child care facilities. Another would force public utilities, including CMP, to pay for independent appraisals of land they want to take by eminent domain. ...The project would affect about 4,000 abutters statewide. If approved, it is expected to take three to five years to complete.

The company that built Maine's first wind turbine farm in Mars Hill wants to build a smaller project on the back side of Black Mountain. John Lamontagne, spokesman for the Newton, Mass.-based First Wind, said Thursday that meteorological towers have been installed along the side of the mountain - best known as a local ski area - to gauge the wind. The possible Black Mountain wind farm is part of a bigger plan to develop wind farms around the state.

Todd described the horrors she said she has endured since First Wind put some of its Mars Hill turbines about 2,300 feet from her home more than a year ago. They include headaches, sleep deprivation, nausea and vertigo - all caused, she believes, by the low-level sound constantly emitted by the turbines. Her house has also been damaged by underground blasting done during the turbine installation, she said. A recent chimney fire showed dozens of hairline fissures in the chimney that caused the house to fill with smoke. Contractors who examined the damage were stunned, she said.

This time the focus is Kibby Mountain in western Maine where Transcanada is in the process of developing a wind power project, and where related logging operations by Plum Creek and a sub-contractor have been linked to serious land use violations. Pictures taken at the site by an independent engineering firm and provided to the Land Use Regulation Commission in late October show a logging road so damaged by rain, logging activity and erosion that it created a mudslide described as nearly 900 feet long.

The Lincoln Appeals Board denied the Friends of Lincoln Lakes its due process rights when it re-jected hearing the group's appeal last month of the proposed $130 million Rollins Mountain wind farm, the group's attorney says. ...Filed in Bangor Superior Court on Friday, the Friends' action is one of the first to challenge an industrial wind project's permit application in a Maine civil court.

First Wind of Massachusetts' proposed $130 million wind farm and an associated 115-kilovolt power line might affect an Essential Fish Habitat for Atlantic salmon, but its impact will be minimal if precautions are taken, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said Tuesday.

Hoping to send a strong message, the Town Council on Monday night voted unanimously to withhold its support of a moratorium on industrial wind turbines within town limits. A citizen petition has placed the question of a 180-day moratorium on industrial wind power development in the community on the March 23 town meeting warrant.

In the two-page appeal she planned to give to the appeals board, Williams said the planning board's approval violated its own, and most other, municipal land-use ordinances for residential zones. Williams claimed that the board's decision effectively defined the farm's 40 380-foot turbines as major public utilities, which, she said, are typically considered "electricity, water, sanitary, sewer, storm water drainage, telephone and cable television" associated with residential uses in the R-1 and R-2 zones.

State regulators on Thursday dismissed a $625 million power grid expansion necessary to support a massive wind farm in northern Maine, putting the so-called Maine Power Connection project on ice for the time being. The Maine Public Utilities Commission on Thursday granted a motion to dismiss the project after Aroostook Wind Energy discovered unanticipated technical hurdles.

State regulators on Thursday formally dismissed a $625 million power grid expansion necessary to support a massive wind farm in northern Maine, putting the Maine Power Connection project on ice for the time being. Despite the setback, the partners on the power grid project and Aroostook Wind Energy insisted they weren't giving up on the idea. ...utility officials discovered that the project as proposed could cause power grid instability to the south, and Aroostook Wind decided against further studies.