It may soon be getting easier for energy corporations to build wind farms in the East County. Several firms are already offering landowners money for the rights to build huge wind turbines on private property. Now, the energy companies are taking their fights to the County Board of Supervisors.

The rural community of Boulevard is just off Interstate 8, an hour east of San Diego. The people who live there can see and hear the winds of renewable energy.

"It's like a shhh, shhh, shhh, and it's just constant," homeowner Michael Moran said.

He's talking about two-dozen 20-story wind turbines that have been up and running on the nearby Campo Indian Reservation for the past three years.

"It's an eyesore... distracting. They do make noise," he said.

If big energy companies get their way, there would be hundreds more of the wind turbines in the East County.

The first ones were built on Indian land. Then earlier this year, the Bureau of Land Management opened up 20,000 acres of federal land near Boulevard for future wind energy. Private property could be next.

"Our little community is under such an assault from all these wind energy corporations," Boulevard Planning Group Chair Donna Tisdale said.

Tisdale is one of the property owners who was approached by a wind farm company called Invenergy. She says Invenergy offered her more than $20,000 per year for the rights to build wind turbines on her property - this on land that is not zoned for a wind farm.

"They slid this contract across the table at us. Thirty years for what is not allowed under the current zoning. So guess what? They're trying to change everything," Tisdale said.

County Supervisors Bill Horn and Ron Roberts want the county to change the zoning laws to make it easier for companies like Invenergy to conduct wind speed testing in the East County.

"What we're talking about today isn't about windmills, it's about a test pole," Roberts said.

Horn and Roberts have proposed easing permitting restrictions so energy companies can put up 200-foot towers on private property to measure wind speeds. It's the first step to building new wind farms.

"I understand not wanting to have a wind farm in your community, but I do think the ability to test for this, they shouldn't have to go through a major use permit," Horn said.

Tisdale says the motivation is money in the form of massive tax credits offered to energy companies that build wind farms. She worries new wind turbines would decrease property values in the East County and increase fire danger.

"They are motors. They malfunction, they spark, they blow up. They catch fire," she said.

Brit Coupens, an executive with Invenergy, declined to be interviewed for this report.

Supervisor Roberts insists it's all about the environment.

"This is about the entire San Diego County moving forward with projects that generate renewable energy that we are mandated as producing in the very near future," Roberts said.

Late Monday, Invenergy issued a statement to News 8 saying the county's current zoning ordinance imposes unnecessary delays and additional costs to the development of wind energy, and the company says its testing equipment will have no environmental impact of any kind.