A bill to create uniform siting standards for wind power projects across Wisconsin is being introduced in Madison after stalling a year ago. ...The bill is expected to fare better this year because it is being handled earlier in the legislative session and there is less confusion about what the bill would do, Plale said. But opponents are raising similar concerns as they did a year ago - that the bill is taking away local control.

A legislative effort to figure out how to assess wind farms for property tax purposes is gaining momentum, state Rep. Frank Mautino, D-Spring Valley, said recently. At present, Illinois counties can use different methodologies to assess wind farms, a situation that complicates assessments for any wind farm straddling county lines. Wind farms are a relatively new, but growing, industry in Illinois. "There's nothing like it out there," Mautino said. "How do you make a statewide standard for something that didn't exist during your whole 150 years as a county?" For about a month and a half, Mautino has been negotiating with other interested parties - including county assessors and the Taxpayers' Federation of Illinois - to try to settle on a methodology for assessing wind farms. The legislation is House Bill 380. The negotiating group has decided that the assessment should be based on the cost of construction. Mautino said his legislation would specify a number - still subject to change - to represent the cost of construction, and a formula then would be applied to come up with a final calculation.

On Monday, the borough was granted a stay pending appeal by Judge Mary Catherine Cuff of the state Superior Court's Appellate Division.

In August, it was ruled that the authority needed site plan approval from the borough Planning Board before it could install and operate the wind turbine. Now, BRSA will be asking Union Beach to correct what Fischer has called a mapping error. The borough's zoning map places the BRSA property in a residential zone.

Unlike the deluded hero Don Quixote, municipal officials in this Bayshore town think they have the clout to derail a giant windmill proposed for their town. In this case, it's a 380-foot wind turbine with 118-foot blades that, according to a plan proposed by the Bayshore Regional Sewerage Authority, would sit on authority property in the west end of this 1.2-square-mile town.

The Planning Board will hold a second meeting on Dec. 8 to consider the Bayshore Regional Sewerage Authority's application to purchase a tract of land adjacent to its facility so the three rotating blades of its $7.7 million wind turbine rotate over BRSA property, officials said.

Residents of this Bayshore town say they're not ready to give up their fight. They are trying to stop the Bayshore Regional Sewerage Authority's proposed electricity-producing wind turbine. More than 80 Union Beach residents attended the Borough Council's Dec. 3 meeting. ...90 percent strongly opposed construction of the estimated 360-foot-high wind turbine.

The Union Beach Borough Council authorized a special counsel in late June to seek an injunction from the state Superior Court that would block the transport of the wind turbine, but so far no hearing date for the injuction has been set.

The Bayshore Regional Sewerage Authority has been given the OK by the state Department of Environmental Protection to go out to bid for construction of a 380-foot-tall, energy-producing wind turbine, officials said. ...The project price tag is estimated around $7.7 million. ...Union Beach officials have opposed the project, and they sent a formal objection in writing to the DEP in September.

The Town of Union Plan Commission unanimously approved a recommendation for an ordinance regulating wind turbines Thursday. ...Plan commission member Doug Zweizig expects the board to take action on the ordinance after the hearing. The ordinance prohibits construction of turbines within a half mile of occupied structures, Zweizig said. The setback may be reduced to 1,000 feet with permission from property owners or neighbors, he said.

John Gibbons and the other four members of the town's land use ordinance revision committee have drafted an ordinance that would regulate the types of wind turbines that could be allowed in the town. "The big concern with the windmills is the noise - the sound of the slowly rotating blades," Gibbons said Thursday.

Union County citizens will have a chance to express their opinion of a $600 million wind farm planned near Union. The board of commissioners voted Wednesday to place a nonbinding advisory issue on the November ballot.

A local man who worked on the state council to write wind siting rules says the slanted make-up of the committee toward the wind industry created a disservice to the process. The resulting rules likely will increase local dissent and resistance to proposed projects, which he predicts will end up in court, said Doug Zweizig, who co-chaired the wind siting council.

Between 15 and 25 union members held what they call an informational picket outside the St. Joseph Community Centre during the two-day job fair hosted by Mortenson Construction for the upcoming wind farm project. The members were protesting what they called an unfair decision by Mortenson to pay non-union wages to some workers.

The Knox County town of Union is the latest in Maine to try to regulate development of new wind farms. Although there has been no apparent interest expressed in Union as a potential commercial wind farm site, town selectmen and residents say they wanted to be ready, just in case. The town's Land use Ordinance Renew Committee has developed an ordinance to regulate wind power.

The town of Union is in the process of drafting a proposed wind energy ordinance and will hold a public meeting to gather feedback on the issue. The town may even impose a temporary moratorium on wind power facilities to give it time to establish regulations, according to a press release issued by the town Feb. 9. The town has scheduled a public hearing on the draft wind energy facility regulations.

Members of several area labor unions plan a protest today against UPC Wind, a wind farm company developing projects in the Cohocton area. Tom Stephens, business development specialist for the International Union of Operating Engineers in Rochester, said the protest concerns what he called "UPC Wind's plan to use non-union, out-of-state labor" to construct the wind farms.

On November 13, the Union town board unanimously voted to adopt regulations governing noise limits and setbacks pertaining to industrial scale wind turbines. With this vote, the board brought to a close a controversial issue involving the safe placement of industrial turbines within the town of Union. The vote comes just months before the expected intense political wrangling by some members of the State legislature who seek to assign all wind siting authority to the Public Service Commission, leaving local governments out of the process.

The Town of Union Planning Commission on Monday night, July 28, 2008, spent three hours reviewing with counsel, the text of the draft wind turbine ordinance. The purpose of the review was, as explained by counsel, to simply and forcefully connect the facts that were found in the evidence to the text of the ordinance. Thus, one of the most discussed topics was the factual evidence of damage that "noise" produced by wind turbines create---and whether the set back in the ordinance reflects the evidence cited in the appendix of evidence that has been gathered.