Last week, the State Corporation Commission granted conditional approval for the company to build up to 20 turbines, each about 400 feet tall, on Red Oak Knob and Tamarack Ridge near the West Virginia border. ...McBride's project faced considerable opposition from environmentalists. It was widespread among residents who see Highland County as a pristine rural area and "a sort of last frontier," Sullenberger said. The Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries summarized the opposition in a September 2006 letter to the SCC. "We support the use of alternative energy sources, including wind energy" the DGIF said. "However, we feel this project presents an unacceptable risk to wildlife."

Failure to build a controversial new power line could kill Scotland's renewable energy plans "stone dead", green businesses have warned.

Having dodged wind farms near Enchanted Rock, those intent on preserving the beauty and property values in and around this Hill Country city are now focused on power lines. About 250 people met here Wednesday night to hear Texas Wildlife Association speakers discuss major new power lines planned to deliver electricity to metropolitan areas from huge wind farms being developed in West Texas and the Panhandle.

From Woodward to northwest Oklahoma City, landowners are debating and bracing for the construction project. The power line is expected to carry 345,000 volts of electricity from wind turbines south of Woodward. The line will run southeast for about 120 miles to a power sub-station on NW 164 between Council Road and Rockwell Avenue. While wind power is expected to decrease the dependence on natural gas or coal to generate electricity, some ill winds are blowing down the line. Piedmont leaders are concerned OG&E's route will cut through the highest-valued property in their city limits and slow future growth. OG&E customers will foot the bill for the $211 million line by paying an extra $1.50 a month on their electric bill. A date to start construction has not been announced.

The National Trust for Scotland has attacked the proposed £230million Beauly to Denny power line, saying it would "seriously damage" some of the most scenic landscapes in Perthshire. Under the Scottish and Southern Energy plan, 600 electricity pylons, each around 200ft, would be erected along the spine of the country.

The march of the wind turbine seems to be slowing. Two major windfarm proposals for the North-east have been knocked back in recent weeks. ...Surveys show that most people support the idea of windfarms. But at a local level, campaign groups talk of industrialising the landscape and question the green credentials of the windfarm business.

Nearly 350 people attended a meeting Thursday in Cottonwood regarding the Transmission Agency of Northern California's proposal to build 600 miles of power lines across the state. Steve Kerns, a biologist who helps develop environmental impact reports for wildland resource managers, spoke to a gymnasium so full that some were forced to stand or sit on the floor.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power says it has yet to pick a preferred route for Green Path North, a proposed electrical corridor running from Desert Hot Springs to Hesperia. ...But folks from the California Desert Coalition and a local chapter of the Sierra Club say a route has been chosen, and they intend to show people where the agency intends to install the high-tension corridor. "I think it's important to educate people about what the landscape looks like and how pristine the conservation lands are," said April Sall, one of the organizers. "It's extremely sensitive habitat." ..."Green Path North, which will be our transmission corridor serving Los Angeles will transfer renewable energy from the Salton Sea," Nahai said.

Environmentalists are divided over the merits of a Pepco Holdings plan to string a 500-kilovolt power line through the heart of Delaware to better connect southern power plants with growing demand in the mid-Atlantic region. ...Clean-air advocates say it could help carry clean wind power to the homes and businesses that need it, even as they worry it will also import dirty coal-fired power from the South and Midwest. Wildlife and property-rights advocates are afraid the line will be a blight on the landscape, running through fragile areas along the Delaware River and Bay.

For those who live among the towers, the consequences of the development are palpable. The construction required building new roads and widening existing ones to make room for oversize vehicles. Hundreds of workers moved into town or stayed in trailers on the job site during the summer rush. The rural landscape was transformed into an industrial setting. Where stands of poplars and fields of corn and hay covered the plateau, the smooth lines of the light gray towers and steady rotation of the rotors now define the view. And the noises changed. The unobstructed wind has always been the dominant sound on the plateau. Now, the whoosh of the wind is mixed with the hum of the machines and a mechanical whomp of the blades turning.

Powys county council has dismissed claims that it will not decide on future wind farm plans until the local road network is improved as a "misunderstanding", writes Rachel Johnson. However, the council, along with the Welsh Assembly, has hired a team of consultants to look into concerns that local transport links are "inadequate" for the needs of wind farm developers. The Council has not made any policy statement regarding wind farms.

Iberdrola SA and E.ON AG's turbine dreams for the windswept Texas Panhandle may be stymied by the mating rituals of the lesser prairie chicken. Wind-power developers such as E.ON are scouring sagebrush and grasslands for the presence of ground-dwelling chickens that could impede turbine construction plans. Once plentiful in the southern high plains, the bird has a high priority for listing under the Endangered Species Act, which would put at risk where as much as $11 billion in turbines that are part of the U.S.'s renewable-energy push can be built.

A century ago prairie chickens may have been the most common wild bird on the High Plains. Today's lesser prairie chicken population is thought to be just 3 percent of what it was a century ago. Wildlife experts say the reason is simple: native grasslands are disappearing and without the habitat they need, prairie chickens are dying off. ...And now wind turbines threaten to blanket parts of the grassland.

Should the lesser prairie chicken become listed as threatened or endangered - and it's close now - there would be significant restrictions on companies hoping to plant towering turbines across a five-state region believed to have some of the nation's best wind energy potential. "We've never seen the likes of this," said Texas Parks and Wildlife Department wildlife biologist Heather Whitlaw, who is part of conservation efforts with the other states and believes the bird could be listed within two years. "Anybody who puts anything on our landscape would be evaluated in one form or another."

Two proposed wind farms on Kenedy Ranch could pose "significant" risk to migrating birds, according to a preliminary environmental study commissioned by an environmental group. ...After visiting the wind-farm sites, the environmental consultants concluded that the wind projects would be too close to active bird migration pathways and that bird fatalities could result. The consultants are working on a more extensive study, which likely will be completed in about six weeks, said Elyse Yates, a spokeswoman for Coastal Habitat Alliance, which paid the consultants to conduct the assessment.

Citizens in the Milton-Freewater area took another opportunity to voice their opposition to wind turbines in the Blue Mountains at a city council meeting Monday night. What started as an informational meeting by Horizon Wind Farms representative Valerie Schafer-Franklin turned into a discussion between citizens both on and off Weston Mountain about what they want to see happen, or not happen, in the Blues.

Six weeks ago, Ann Robinson of Falls Mills, Va., had never heard of wind turbines, but on Sunday afternoon, she was expressing her concerns over a BP Dominion's proposed wind turbine farm on East River Mountain in Tazewell County, Va. "At first I thought, oh well, wind energy, this is green ... this is a good thing, but then I started researching wind turbines and learned differently," Robinson said to a crowd.

Mr. Mackay is the Policy Director of the Preservation League of New York in Albany whose objective it is to protect the diverse and rich heritage of historic buildings and landscapes. He will speak on Tuesday, July 18, 2006, at 7:00 P.M. at the Homestead Event Center (the former Roxy Music Store), Batavia City Center, Main Street, Batavia, NY.

On week two of the hearing in Cromwell, Wellington law firm Morrison Kent, representing the group, opened its submission claiming that Meridian was failing in its duty to protect and preserve the landscape. Counsel Ian Gordon said the effects of Project Hayes were significant and adverse and the gaps in evidence made the effects even more adverse than present assessment allowed. The wind farm site is surrounded by areas already protected for their natural and/or landscape values.

Long before windmills festooned the San Gorgonio Pass, before Interstate 10 barreled through it and before homes and strips malls sprouted, animals rambled freely between the San Bernardino and San Jacinto mountains searching for food, mates and shelter. They still do, although they have to maneuver around some obstacles. The Pass and some of its mountain canyons are among the 15 wildlife linkages between the southern Sierra Nevada and the Mexican border that are considered key to keeping native species thriving and preventing their extinction ...