ALBANY — To some upstate residents, massive windmills are "a blight on the landscape." To environmentalists and energy companies, they are a low-cost energy source that can reduce society's dependence on oil and gas.

SANTA FE — Gov. Bill Richardson is proposing to create a quasi-government authority to plan and finance construction of new electric transmission lines in hopes of encouraging more renewable energy production in the state.

Attorney Eliu Romero filed this variance application before the Taos County, New Mexico Planning Commission to erect sixty-five industrial turbines. The purpose of the variance application is to gain permission from the County to place structures in the county that exceed the height limits. Several of Mr. Romero's responses to the application questions suggest he has no knowledge as to the purpose and intent of a variance request or the conditions under which it can be approved. The application inaccurately cites the turbine height at 284-feet rather than 384-feet.

The Santa Fe New Mexican reports that an off-the-grid community is resisting the development of a wind farm just west of Taos, NM. Residents are concerned about health risks from low-frequency vibrations, flashing strobe lights, annoying shadows, turbines killing birds and bats, and landscape blight. However, a larger issue is at hand. ...Many residents in the Cielito Lindo subdivision of Taos, where homes rely primarily on solar energy, have vocalized their objections.

Must we wait until every tract of land from Kansas to California bristles with propeller-topped towers before wondering if there's a way to concentrate this new industry and consolidate transmission costs? Will we carpet the country in concrete-based wind farms only to discover more compact means of making and storing electricity?

Early in their development, long-bladed wind turbines were seen as threats to birds, especially migrating varieties used to crossing certain mountain passes. Now, in spite of technological improvements and efforts to keep their propellers off at critical times, lawsuits are descending on wind farms - working ones and some on the drawing boards - to turn them off or to stop development in the path of some birds' migration and in bat habitat. But behind some environmentalist arguments against the increasing clusters of wind turbines is a more basic, if less compelling objection: They're ugly. They can be noisy. Besides that, opponents wonder, how do we know they're not sending surges of electricity into the atmosphere, doing who-knows-what damage to animals, two- and four-legged alike?

What this will take is an Apollo-like program focused on new technologies and renewable energy resources.