Operators of wind turbines are already under pressure to improve the structures' quake-resistance strength. Now, they face another problem with nature: endangered birds flying into the turbines' blades. The bird strike problem has become so serious that measures to protect the fowl are slowing the spread of wind power as a source of electricity generation. ... A total of 14 birds designated by the government as national treasures, including white-tailed sea eagles, have died at different sites by flying into completed wind turbines.

After more than a year's worth of meetings, research, wrangling and debates, the project hit a brick wall of sorts last month as a report by AWS Truewind showed lower-than-expected wind speeds at the Legion Way site. Without strong enough winds, the project does not make financial sense. On Monday night, the Committee for Renewable Energy for Barrington, rescinded its recommendation to the town council to accept a bid for the construction of the turbine.

The steady, strong winds over the Atlantic off New England have attracted another developer interested in harnessing them for power generation. A new wrinkle in the proposal by Grays Harbor Ocean Energy Company, of Washington state, is that the supports anchoring each wind turbine platform to the ocean floor would be designed in a way to turn wave action into electricity as well.

Paltry gusts have taken the wind out of a plan to erect a 200-foot wind turbine at Staples corporate headquarters off Rte. 9. The Zoning Board of Appeals gave the go-ahead for the office supply giant to build a 120-foot meteorological test tower to measure wind velocity on the side of a hill near 500 Staples Drive. The data collected from the spring until December indicates the wind is not strong enough to make the project financially worthwhile.

Dozens of residents from the Back Bay neighborhood turned out at last night's [Newburyport] City Council meeting to urge councilors to re-examine a recently passed ordinance regulating the creation of wind turbines in the city. Almost 20 speakers visited the microphone, with the vast majority asking councilors to listen to a letter sent to councilors by Ward 2 Councilor Greg Earls. ...Citing pending litigation, councilors said last night they could not act on Earls' request, on the advice of the city's attorneys, Kopelman and Paige.

A developer is proposing to build the first commercial-scale projects in New England waters to harness the power of the waves for electricity, but most of the energy they produce would actually come from attached wind turbines. Grays Harbor Ocean Energy Company, based in Seattle, applied for preliminary permits from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in October to explore mounting 100 jack-up platforms - similar to those used in the offshore oil industry - in seven tracts of ocean around the country.

The industrialization of the ocean, coastal overdevelopment, contaminated sites and global warming will be among the top environmental issues in the Garden State next year, observers said. "What we're seeing is a gold rush toward energy development in the ocean," said Tim Dillingham, executive director of the American Littoral Society, a Sandy Hook-based coastal conservation coalition. "We gotta take better care of the coast," he said.

The developer behind the Fairhaven wind turbines is abandoning the special permit granted earlier this year but not the project, according to a letter sent to the town last week. CCI Energy will now work with the town on how to restructure the project using the recently enacted Green Communities Act in order to provide the greatest benefit to the town, according to James Sweeney, CCI's president.

Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University will use a state grant to study the use of wind turbines on its sprawling campus in Grafton and Westboro. The $39,760 grant was awarded by the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative's Renewable Energy Trust Fund. ...If the study finds that wind power is feasible, university officials will weigh the costs of constructing wind turbines and then seek permission from local boards.

For Councilor Greg Earls, the recently passed law that regulates the creation of wind turbines in the city needs another look. ...In his brief letter to fellow councilors, Earls stated there is a "public safety concern affecting the health and welfare of our citizens with respect to industrial wind turbines" over 100 feet high. Earls said he will supply further information, backing up his claims, to councilors Monday.

In a Dec. 17 letter, the federal Advisory Council on Historic Preservation notified the U.S. Minerals Management Service, the lead federal agency for permitting the proposed 130-turbine wind farm on Horseshoe Shoal in Nantucket Sound, that the MMS needs to take account of historic preservation concerns linked to Cape Wind before or concurrently with issuing a record of decision on the wind farm, and not after. ...[The] council questions whether the agency has completed key aspects of that process, such as documenting to the Massachusetts state historic preservation officer its findings on the area of potential effects on historic properties posed by the wind farm.

The Coast Guard report, which is not yet released, reportedly considers the 130-turbine project in Nantucket Sound "doable" but some in the audience found the simulated radar scenarios more than a tad confusing as they tried to pick out the boats from the false echoes and turbine blades. ...There are short periods of time when the vessels are subsumed into the turbines," Rugger concluded. "Inside the wind farm there are a lot of secondary reflections, and often times it's hard to pick out the vessels from that."

In a letter to U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthome dated Thursday, the congressman [Rahall D-WV] requests that the federal Minerals Management Service delay issuing its final environmental impact statement "until the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) has provided the public 60 days to review and comment on a third-party review of the radar study submitted by the Cape Wind project developers."

Although the judge reiterated in his decision an earlier finding that the town's claims can only be reviewed based on the parts of the project in state waters, the move nonetheless opens up the state's decision to approve Cape Wind to further scrutiny. ...McLaughlin said the main questions in the lawsuit are whether Bowles had all the necessary facts in front of him when he made his determination and whether he applied the law correctly.

Despite the protests of environmental advocates who spent months trying to halt the projects, two large-scale wind farms in South Texas are now operational. Many of the approximately 250 wind turbines that were expected to dot about 20,000 acres of Kenedy Ranch, north of Raymondville, are up and spinning ...Seeing the turbines starting to spin is worrisome, Kittelberger said. "I think they were built without public input, and built (with developers) knowing they would kill thousands of birds," he said.

More than six decades of painstaking conservation efforts that have brought the majestic whooping crane back from the brink of extinction may come undone because of the proliferation of wind farms in the United States. Their flight path takes them over states that have become prime locations for wind farms, a fast-growing, heavily subsidized source of renewable energy.

With the final environmental report on the wind farm proposed to be built in Nantucket Sound now expected out early next year, letters of protest are blowing in from all sides. In the past two days, powerful members of Congress, the federal agency responsible for historic preservation and a handful of national environmental groups have, for very different reasons, questioned the timing of the report's release.

Opponents of the proposed Nantucket Sound wind farm reacted angrily yesterday to a Coast Guard-sponsored presentation on the potential impact of the project on marine radar, calling the handling of a marine radar study a "black eye" for the federal agency. The forum at the Sea Crest Oceanfront Resort and Conference Center ended on a sour note, with Cape Wind detractors claiming the Coast Guard was attempting to stifle public review of the marine radar study.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) recently classified proposed wind turbine projects at West Tisbury School and the MV Arena (MVA) as presumed hazards to air navigation, given their location in the Martha's Vineyard Airport's flight paths. The FAA's decisions, which included recommendations for reducing the height of the two wind turbines, may literally take the wind out of the ice arena's project.

Business owner Mark Richey said yesterday he hopes to see his new 292-foot wind turbine up on his property in just a few weeks. ...Neighbors to the property have appealed the city's decision to grant permission for the turbine, raising concern about the impact the 292-foot-tall structure would have, such as the whirring noise it will generate, safety, low-level vibrations and the visual effect called "flicker" that wind turbines create when the afternoon light hits them.