CONCORD – One year to the day after Granite Reliable Power filed its application for a 99 megawatt wind power plant in Coos County, the state's Site Evaluation Committee yesterday approved a certificate for wind operation on the private land.

The 60-page decision, still subject to appeal in the state's Supreme Court. will still require a federal permit.

The plan is to develop of a string of 33 wind turbines across remote ridges of the state's north country in Dixville, Erving's Location, Millsfield, Odell and Dummer. The property to be leased, which is owned by two companies, has been used in the past for logging and lumber operations.

Central to the agreement is a high elevation mitigation plan that protects species of concern such as a songbird known as the Bicknell's thrush and the elusive pine marten, a fur-bearing mammal. Contained in the approved plan are state permits for wetlands and alteration of terrain from the Department of Environmental Services.

The plan calls for the improvement of 19 miles of gravel woods roads and construction of 12 new roads at roughly a 34-foot width.

The turbines, which will be 410 feet high, will be V90 Vesta Wind System turbines capable of producing enough emissions-free power to provide electricity for 40,000 homes annually. The electricity will be placed on the New England power gird.

The Appalachian Mountain Club and the state Fish and Game Department brokered the agreement which involves the owner purchasing adjacent high elevation lands as conservation to compensate for the loss of habitat from the turbines. The state also is to get more money for lands to protect similar habitat from the deal.

The committee's formal decision yesterday also requires studies of birds, bats and other impacts into the future.

Granite Reliable Power is a subsidiary of Noble Environmental Power.

It is a Delaware-based limited liability corporation based in Essex, Conn. with an office in Lancaster.

The next step is for it to get federal permits from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers .