Home-grown energy generates hot neighbors and ill winds

We had to see this one coming.

Tempers are flaring in a Scarborough subdivision about one homeowner's new yard ornaments: solar panels mounted on 10- foot-tall metal poles.

Laurence Gardner said his family installed the photovoltaic panels to reduce pollution and slow global warming. Some neighbors, however, say the structures have spoiled the scenery, dragged down property values and violated the homeowners' covenant.

Why do the words "billable hours" come to mind?

Solar panels are still a rare accessory for Maine homes, especially ones in manicured suburban neighborhoods such as Gardner's; but that may change before too long. As one of his neighbors said so well, "You could go home at night and there's a possibility of you having a windmill or five telephone poles with solar panels sitting on a neighbor's front lawn."

Fights about the effects of alternative energy projects are not going to be limited to industrial-size windmills on the remote mountaintops of western Maine. The way Maine generates energy is changing, and the transition will affect a lot of communities.

The state's first large wind farm started up last winter in Mars Hill, and three more are planned for western and northern Maine. A state agency held public hearings last week on a proposed liquefied natural gas terminal in Robbinston, and another is planned in Quoddy Bay.

Earlier this month, developers announced plans for a new- generation, $1.5 billion coal gasification plant on the former Maine Yankee nuclear reactor site in Wiscasset.

Meanwhile, the University of Maine is developing a process to turn wood waste into ethanol for motor vehicles, and entrepreneurs have been racing to stake legal claims in Maine's coastal rivers in hopes of turning the strong tides into electricity.

It's all happening for some of the same reasons Mainers are switching to more efficient light bulbs, appliances and cars: high oil prices, global warming and financial incentives.

Virtually all of the new energy projects will be unpopular with some people because of the effects on their environment. As the Scarborough flap illustrates, however, it's not just the big industrial projects that have the potential to rile the neighbors.

And it's not happening just here. In New Jersey, for example, one man is defending his new backyard wind turbine in court, and both his neighbors and his town -- Beach Haven Terrace -- want it taken down.

Whether such quarrels become common in Maine may depend on whether communities head them off with formal standards for things such as wind turbines and solar arrays.

The town of Wiscasset recently adopted what is believed to be one of the state's first ordinances for small-scale wind power projects. It sets caps on height and power capacity, and it limits turbines to properties in the town's rural zone that are at least an acre in size.

The basic idea is that introducing alternative energy in a less threatening way will help neighborhoods through the energy transition that's coming their way.

Ready or not.