The U.S. Forest Service has rejected a proposal to build a wind farm on Great North Mountain in the George Washington National Forest - for now, at least.

Freedomworks LLC, a renewable-energy firm based in Harpers Ferry, W.Va., wanted to put 131 400-foot-tall wind turbines along 18 miles of ridgeline between Virginia and West Virginia.

The area is part of the Lee Ranger District and includes parts of Rockingham and Shenandoah counties as well as Hardy County, W.Va.

Freedomworks Managing Director Tim Williamson applied in December for a permit to erect three meteorological towers on the mountain to collect data necessary to develop the farm.

The farm would produce 215 megawatts of power that would be sent to the state grid, and could be used locally and by large metropolitan areas as far away as Washington, D.C., Williamson has said.

By comparison, Dominion Power Virginia received the state's OK in March to build a new power station in Buckingham County that's to generate about 580 megawatts, or enough electricity for 145,000 homes.

But the Forest Service put a crimp in Freedomworks' plans when it denied the permit earlier this month.

Three Reasons For Denial

The Forest Service denied the request for three main reasons, according to James Smalls, district ranger for the Lee Ranger District.

First, the proposed farm does not comply with the George Washington National Forest Land and Resources Management Plan, which states that development in the proposed area must blend into the landscape, Smalls said.

A wind farm with "131 towers that stand over 400 feet [each], would not blend into the landscape," he explained.

Furthermore, Smalls said access to the proposed site is minimal and would require at least 16 miles of new roads in an area where the forest plan says only 1.9 miles of additional road should be built.

"That was a big one, a very big one," he said. The amount of new roads needed "was way outside what was envisioned for this area."

In addition, Williamson, who wants to build the wind farm within 100 miles of Washington, D.C., failed to prove the project could not be built on private land, as required by the forest plan, Smalls said.

In a letter dated April 2 denying the permit, Forest Supervisor Maureen Hyzer told Williamson that she thinks many sites outside the national forest system would be better suited for the development.

"Some of these areas exist in the ocean, which is said to provide the best wind resources near D.C.," she said. "Other areas exist in the Chesapeake Bay and on dozens of ridgelines in Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia and Pennsylvania."

Williamson, who first proposed the wind farm more than a year ago, says he was "shocked" when the Forest Service denied his permit.

He said he's received all the other permits required for the project, including ones from the Federal Aviation Administration, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Williamson said he expected to get the Forest Service's approval, too.

"That's the only permit I was not able to get," said Williamson, who plans to focus on his wind farms in the West for now. "I guess they didn't get the memo from the Obama administration. ... We think this is, quite frankly, a failure of guidelines and policies."

Among other things, President Obama's energy plan calls for ensuring that 10 percent of the nation's electricity comes from renewable sources, such as wind, by 2012, and 25 percent by 2025.

"Right now, we don't have any national directive or any direction to change our laws or policies," Smalls said. "We have [plans] in the works to develop wind projects. But there's nothing that says we have to consider [wind farms] everywhere."

The Forest Service is considering wind developments in other states, including Vermont, Michigan and Oregon, he said.

Smalls added that while the Freedomworks project was denied at this time, it doesn't mean the issue is dead or that wind farms are prohibited from Virginia's national forests.

"We didn't tell [Williamson] no to any wind development; we told him no to this particular project," Smalls said. "If he can address these issues in any way, we will consider something."