Despite a bankruptcy declaration filed by its financier, the Hatchet Ridge Wind Project will continue with plans to set 43 windmills in eastern Shasta County, representatives of the business said.

Nevertheless, opponents of the turbine project, like Bob Nelson of Save Burney's Skyline, said they found hope in the news of Australian-based Babcock & Brown's financial troubles.

"They make AIG look like Boy Scouts. I mean, these guys are tough players," Nelson said Friday.

The Save Burney group wanted the turbines planned for the ridge west of Burney to be more out of sight, and joined in local American Indians' concerns that blades on the 418-foot-tall windmills will kill bald eagles and other birds.

Babock company spokesman Matt Dallas said by phone Friday from New York that the bankruptcy filing applies to Babcock & Brown Limited, not Babcock & Brown International, which owns the wind operation.

However, the international branch's North American energy group is being sold off from the Australian parent company, as are various other worldwide business units, to repay creditors, Babcock Senior Developer George Hardie said in an e-mail Friday.

That potential sale will have no impact on the Hatchet Ridge project, which the new buyer would continue, both representatives said.

Scott Piscitello, vice president of development for RES America Developments, said his company sold the turbine project to Babcock & Brown more than a year ago, but RES will finish developing the job.

Construction remains scheduled to begin this spring, he said Friday.

Piscitello said he'd rather Babcock & Brown were not in bankruptcy, but is reassured by a market hungry for renewable energy.

"One thing that the wind industry does not lack is people with money, looking to get into the wind business," he said.

Mark LeBeau, co-chair of the Advocates for the Protection of Sacred Sites and an organizer of a protest last month in Redding against the project, called the bankruptcy announcement "great news."

"We believe this provides the (Shasta) County Board of Supervisors more time to review the decision of last year's board, and to hopefully change their decision," he said Friday.

In November, the supervisors declined opponents' appeals of the wind project's approval. LeBeau said he hopes the board would consider new evidence his group has presented about how lethal windmills are to protected golden and bald eagles, based on studies of the Altamont Pass region's thousands of turbines.

Even if a new financier funds Hatchet Ridge, LeBeau said opposition to it will continue.

"This is the largest public works project of this type in the county since the building of Shasta Dam, so it's a huge project," he said. "It's going to have a devastating effect on the environment."