At what price do we give the nod to wind towers on mountaintops in sight of the Appalachian Trail?

The question is not whether to build wind farms, but where to build them. For the most part developers have done a good job in siting projects in areas where the environmental and scenic impacts are not of great concern. (The Mars Hill project is a good example.) The Maine Mountain Power proposal is an extreme exception to this rule. Mainers should oppose this project and ask their public officials to protect one of the state's most spectacular wild landscapes.

Energy efficiency is by no means a permanent solution, but it should be a permanent part of the solution. Sensible energy use, combined with new power resources, is the only workable answer for New England.

From the south, the mountains begin with the magnificent Bigelow Range and extend into Quebec. Few people are aware of this area, but it is now the target of corporate juggernauts sensing the profit to be made from production tax credits, accelerated deprecation and other taxpayer financial schemes.

It is not enough to simply talk in symbolism. You must state facts. May I suggest you start with these crucial questions. ....

That kind of sacrifice is surely admirable and we here in Massachusetts would gladly pass the Cape Wind project along to you.

....we believe there are places where this type of development is inappropriate, and the proposed location of the Redington Mountain project is one such place. We are concerned about the detrimental effects the project would have on one of the region's wildest mountain environments.

Upon extensive research on the wind farm industry on the Internet, talking with the Cape Cod and Vermont citizens dealing with wind farms, I have reached this conclusion. They are masters of giving the public a half-truth then guiding us to an assumption that is not true, but one they want us to believe.

Missing from that harsh logic, however, is any evidence that industrial wind power can indeed "stem global warming's progress." With 20 percent of its electricity supposedly coming from wind, Denmark's greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise. That country has not reduced its use of other fuels despite a landscape saturated with wind turbines.

It is nice to be able to use a newspaper to push one's own viewpoints on the environment, social issues or whatever the editors of the newspaper feel is their liberal duty. But you should at least have a clue to what you're talking about.

Wind turbines generate much more cash than they do electricity.

At the sound of the ruckus, I looked out a window to see a tractor-trailer rig hauling two of those preposterously huge 125-foot wind turbine blades north from Searsport to the site of a controversial wind farm project at Mars Hill, an endeavor commonly known by more than a few disgruntled County residents as the Great Mars Hill Mountain Defacement Boondoggle.

All renewable energies have a common fault: They are very dilute. Massive areas are needed to produce small amounts of energy. Solar and wind have strong periodicity and do not match actual electricity use.

Other places in Maine suitable for wind farms would not involve destroying wilderness or decreasing tourist dollars.

This means that concerned citizens from all over the state who love our Maine mountains must make themselves aware of this outrageous proposal, as well as the larger question of uncontrolled wind power development and the damage it will cause.

I feel that your paper's endorsement of the wind project is based upon an incomplete understanding of its impact upon the western mountains' nature-based tourism.

My viewpoint was, and still is, that the huge towers (260 feet high), gigantic blades (add another 150 feet), blinking strobe lights, permanent removal of wind-hindering vegetation, and highly visible road and transmission infrastructures are totally inappropriate for wild, undeveloped, scenic and highly visible settings. And I said I thought that opponents should focus on those issues, as well as the small return in electricity for the massive public price paid, aesthetically and otherwise, and should perhaps stay away from the issue of bird mortality caused by the rapidly spinning blades. The jury is still out on that, I said, and conventional wisdom is that vastly more birds are killed by high-rise windows and free-running cats......Well, so much for conventional wisdom.

Editor's Note This opinion piece was written in response to a letter received from Lisa Linowes that is available via the link below.

The costs are “the loss of the mountains,” said Dr. Dain Trafton of Phillips, Maine, speaking for the friends group to the Original Irregular newspaper. “Is it worthwhile introducing this huge industrial plant into these beautiful mountains when, in fact, very little power will be produced, very few emissions will be avoided, and very little economic benefit will come to the area?”

Good winds coincide with neither the heating nor air-conditioning season. Wind is a willy-nilly source of electricity, and as such is not very useful.

And, while I agree with Mr. Shutkin that wind power, as a source of clean and renewable energy, should and will play a role in our future energy portfolio, its role will necessarily be small because of its fundamental limitation as an energy source: wind power is ‘intermittent’, i.e. it provides energy only when the wind blows, and, as such, wind power is a source of supplemental, not ‘base load’ energy.