More and more critics say windmills aren't that green, aren't a great source of energy -- and can be harmful to people's health

The 200- to 300-foot-long blades on industrial windmills look almost whimsical from afar.

They appear to turn slowly. People sometimes stop to take pictures. "They look cool," said Eric Burch, director of policy and outreach for the Indiana Office of Energy Development.

The tips of those giant blades, however, move at speeds approaching 160 mph, creating forces that send low-frequency vibrations through the ground. People three-quarters of a mile away sometimes say they can feel the vibrations in their chests.

Cases of nausea, headaches, insomnia and other ills have become common enough in states with wind farms that they've been given a name: "wind turbine syndrome."

That newfangled illness is just one of a growing list of health effects, inconveniences, risks and cost considerations that have resulted in a backlash against wind farms in other states, even as Indiana is in the midst of a rapid buildout of wind energy.

What's happening in other states suggests that the warm and fuzzy feeling many Hoosiers have for wind farms could change as the big turbines creep closer to more populated areas near Indianapolis, Lafayette and other cities.

Benton County farmer John Gilbert said several farmland owners he knows refused to lease space for turbines. He can't quite understand that. He and his family leased ground for four turbines being built by French-owned enXco.

"My thoughts are, they are going to have to look at 'em, so they might as well get paid."

Wind turbine energy is here. But groups have sprung up nationwide to fight it.

Jon Boone, a retired University of Maryland administrator who helped found the North American Bluebird Society, has become a leading wind-energy critic from his rural Maryland home, where he helped fight a wind farm proposal several years ago. Now he duels with the windmill lobby through his Web site, stopillwind.org.

"Wind is neither clean nor green," he said. "It's like something from the Emerald City of Oz. It's entirely political. Well-intentioned people are coming in and being ginned by promises of a better environment."

Eric Rosenbloom, who got his start in the wind energy debate fighting a wind farm near his former hometown of Kirby, Vt., now heads National Wind Watch. The nonprofit coalition of about 300 groups fights wind farm projects across the country.

"We are still fighting a denial that there is any downside to industrial wind farms," said Rosenbloom, who's seen the debate intensify since National Wind Watch formed four years ago. "There is a lot of rancor that develops in communities" when wind farms come to town, he said.

A growing industry

Fueled by federal tax credits and write-offs that can pay for up to two-thirds of their project costs, as well as state mandates requiring utilities to use "green" power, industrial wind farms have become a new industry, one of the few that is growing in the recession-racked economy.

Developers installed more megawatts of wind power in the first half of this year than last, with more than 1,000 newly erected turbines in 10 states, according to the American Wind Energy Association. There are more than 35,000 turbines across the county.

The Department of Energy is pushing for more. It wants wind farms to generate 20 percent of America's electricity demand by 2030. (It's now about 1 percent.)

And the federal government is lavishing subsidies on developers to make it happen. In fiscal 2007, wind energy developers collected $724 million in federal subsidies, putting wind behind only solar as the most subsidized energy form per megawatt hour of production.

Indiana is fast becoming a player in the wind business. One reason is because the state sits at the edge of two power grids serving the Midwest and parts beyond.

The state got its first wind farm last year, in Benton County, a wind-rich spot where more than 600 turbines are up or proposed by several developers. In at least 14 other Northern Indiana counties, where winds also blow hard, developers plan sprawling wind farms holding thousands of turbines.

Like oil wildcatters of old, agents for wind developers are persuading hundreds of Indiana landowners to sign leases that allow turbines on their land for as long as 80 years.

Steuben County attorney John J. Schwarz II compared the leasing activity with California's Gold Rush of the 1840s.

Developers have homed in on Clinton and Boone counties, trying to lock competitors out of favorable areas. And the leases are written to strongly favor the rights of the developer over the landowner, Schwarz said. For instance: Leases often don't require developers to remove turbines if the company goes bust.

"Let's say they find out 10 years from now wind energy is not the way to go. Is a guy going to be looking at a huge, useless monument on his property?" Schwarz asked.

But such considerations are hardly front and center for developers looking to profit from wind farms and landowners angling to get a turbine and the typical $5,000 to $7,500 annual lease payments that come with it.

The downside

Kenny Holbrook said he's wary of two proposals by European companies to put 100 to 260 wind turbines in western Boone County.

"Potentially, there could be one 1,000 feet from our house," said Holbrook, who lives with his wife and two children in the countryside near Advance.

"Our greatest concern is one of us will have a physical issue with it -- headaches or migraines. We'd be put in a position where our only option would be to move away from it."

New York pediatrician Dr. Nina Pierpont, who coined the term "wind turbine syndrome," compared the symptoms to seasickness. She's found an analogy to wind turbines: a passive weapon used by the Israeli army to disband unruly protesters with low frequency blasts. It is called The Scream.

Then there's the annoying "shadow flicker." It comes from the rotating blades' reflection, which creates a strobe light effect on nearby homes.

With their location in rural areas, often on ridgetops or in mountain passes, wind farms also have broad environmental impact. They require quarter-acre clear zones for the turbines and long cuts through forests for permanent service roads.

The blades, turning day and night, are efficient killers of birds and bats. Some studies show large wind farms located in migratory paths or on ridgetops can kill thousands of birds a year, though other studies put the death toll much lower.

And where would the Holbrooks move to get away from a wind farm? With hundreds of turbines proposed in the western part of the county, living choices in the area could come down to "you either live in town or in a wind farm," Holbrook said.

A hefty cost

Wind farms are hardly cheap.

One large wind farm easily can cost as much as a coal-fired plant, at $400 million to $500 million. Each turbine is $2 million to $4 million. Most are made in Europe, though production is shifting to the United States.

Unlike a coal plant that can be counted on to run at 80 percent of capacity or higher, most wind farms run at full power only 20 percent to 30 percent of the time, when the wind blows briskly.

In a modern power grid, where brownouts or dangerous power surges can occur if the flow of electricity doesn't precisely meet ever-changing demands, wind turbines aren't easy to integrate and require conventional-fuel backups, typically natural gas plants.

Boone, the Maryland critic, compared utility use of wind energy to an airline being required to fly some of its passengers on gliders.

The Midwest Independent System Transmission Operator, which runs the power grid in the Midwest, handles the growing number of wind farms being hooked into its system with a kind of tail-wagging-the-dog approach.

The power that MISO's wind farms generate is the first power assigned and used by its utility members, said Eric Laverty, director of transmission access planning for MISO.

MISO then turns to its conventional coal and gas plants to fill its remaining power needs with its boilers, which can be scaled up or down as demand warrants.

A German meteorological company hired by MISO forecasts when it can count on getting power from its wind turbines.

Dennis Stillings, who lives with his wife, Cathryn, in North Dakota within a third of a mile of two giant wind turbines, can give Indiana residents an idea of the downside some feel living near a wind farm.

"It makes sounds almost like a jet plane taking off and just hanging in the air. A whoosh, a whup. It's just about at one-second intervals."

At night, the sound seems louder and often wakes up his wife, despite her earplugs.

Bruce Buchanan is just getting used to living near four turbines built within several thousand feet of his farmhouse in Benton County. They went in service this spring.

So far, he doesn't mind the growling noise. But one of Buchanan's neighbors who lives near a turbine "is troubled by it because he doesn't like the sound at all. He said that to me more than once," Buchanan said.

And some tell of the odd social dynamics that wind farms can bring.

Jealousies can arise in rural communities as developers seek out the owners of favorably located land to receive the coveted lease payments, while others are left out in the cold, forced to view the turbines from their front porches or backyards but not get a nickel of revenue from them.

When wind farms move in, "there is a whole range of reasons why people get upset. That's a fact," Stillings said.

At a Christmas party, "I brought up wind turbines, and the room just went silent. There are lifelong friends who won't even talk to each other."

Additional Facts: The issues: Point and counterpoint

It's inefficient

Because wind is variable, turbines operate at peak capacity 20 percent to 30 percent of the time, reducing their usefulness and cost-efficiency.

Energy grid operators must pair wind farms with conventional power generators to assure they will get power when needed.

"To believe energy from wind can be cost-competitive with other sources of power is ludicrous," said Tom Hewson, principal of Energy Ventures Analysis, an Arlington, Va., energy consulting firm.

• Counterpoint: The American Wind Energy Association says that better weather forecasting to predict when the wind will blow will let utilities rely more on wind farms without needing fossil-fuel backup power.

Turbines cause health problems

Industrial wind turbines generate low-frequency sounds that can cause ailments in those living nearby, from headaches and insomnia to nausea and irritability.

• Counterpoint: A modern wind turbine placed 1,000 feet from homes is no noisier than a kitchen refrigerator when it's running, the wind energy association said. "The sound of blowing wind is often louder."

They harm the environment

One large wind farm of 100 or so turbines sprawls over several thousand acres and can require cutting thousands of trees to build permanent service roads.

The rotating blades also kill birds and bats.

The turbines also ruin scenic rural vistas.

• Counterpoint: Wind farms' "footprint on the land. . . is actually pretty minimal," said Jesse Kharbanda, executive director of Hoosier Environmental Council. "We haven't encountered any wind farms yet in the state we think of as being environmentally problematic."

They hurt property values

Because of their size and the noise they generate, wind turbines can reduce the desirability of nearby homes and limit nearby land uses, which typically reduces land values.

"A wind farm fundamentally changes what you can do long term" with the land, said Justin Schneider, an attorney for Indiana Farm Bureau who advises farmland owners on wind farm leases.

The tradeoff for landowners is the rent they receive for allowing a turbine on their land, typically $5,000 to $7,500 per year, plus royalties and an upfront payment.

• Counterpoint: A nationwide 2003 study found that "not only do wind farms not harm property values, but that in some cases the values increased," according to the wind energy association. In Palm Springs, Calif., a wind farm is a tourist draw, with bus tours to the site.