Plans for 276 large wind turbines in Central Otago would not "turbinise" the Lammermoor Range in Central Otago, a Meridian expert said. Landscape expert Peter Rough said while the landscape would be changed by wind turbines, its rural character would remain. "It's still fundamentally a rural landscape with an element of energy product," he said in the Environment Court in Queenstown yesterday.

The council has moved to ban turbines from Battle Hill Regional Park near Pauatahanui, park land that was once part of a major wind farm proposal. The rule change which is included in a revised draft of the park's management plan comes just five months after the council revoked permission for RES New Zealand to build three turbines in the park as part of a larger wind farm project.

A campaign to stop a huge wind farm being built near Abbots Bromley has been dealt a blow after heritage experts claimed it did not pose a risk. Council-hired consultants - in their first appraisal for 12 years - have ignored fears that plans to put up eight 115 metre-high turbines in Bagots Park could ruin the village's conservation area. Instead, they say the damage caused to historic buildings by juggernauts rumbling down the high street is a more pressing concern.

The region is also recognized as the heart of a long-running and contentious debate over whether the country's first offshore wind farm should be built in Nantucket Sound. Now, the lead federal agency to review the proposal by Cape Wind Associates to build 130 wind turbines in the Sound has found that the project would have an "adverse effect" on the view from 28 historic properties as well as the ceremonial practices and traditional cultural sites of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) and Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe.

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.

A bid to extend a controversial windfarm near a historic Banffshire castle has been criticised by Historic Scotland officials and council planning chiefs. ...Historic Scotland had raised concerns that the two turbines would have a "severe" visual impact on the unoccupied castle. ...The proposed turbine would be some 3,700ft from the castle, while the other two would be closer, around 2,600ft away.

Energiekontor Uk Ltd wants to put five 328ft (100m) turbines at Brightenber Hill near Gargrave, Skipton. A 250-strong group of residents have formed Friends of Craven Landscape and are campaigning against the plans. Craven Council has received 600 letters of objection and a 600-signature petition, but its planning committee has been asked to approve the plans.

The skyline of the Vale of Evesham will be dominated and the countryside killed if a wind farm is built in Lenchwick, a newly-formed group has warned. Vale Villagers Against Scottishpower (VVASP) are urging residents to find our more about the multi-million pound project - which could see up to 10 turbines, each 410 ft (125m) tall built in the Lenchwick area.

Residents weighed the greenness of wind power with the amount of visual pollution that the tall towering structures could bring to the popular 1860s-era tourist destination communities in the Comstock Historic District, designated a National Historic District. ...If placed on the ridge lines as the company proposes, the wind "turbines would be highly visible from Virginia City, Gold Hill and American Flat," [resident Ron] Reno said. Most of the wind turbine towers would be installed within the National Historic District and about half would in the Comstock Historic District.

The power of the people must be used to stop windmills from sullying the Tararua landscape - or the district will be ruined forever, Waitahora wind farm opposers say. ...[deputy chairman Stuart] Brown is urging people to read these submissions carefully. Power companies want to remove the protection of natural features, such as the skyline of the ranges, currently included in the plan, Mr Brown said. And their suggestions that council should consider windmills as "key parts of the natural landscape" and view all rural areas as "industrial" are ludicrous, he said.

Protesters campaigning against a wind farm in the countryside straddling Barnsley and Sheffield have been dealt a blow with a fresh council report which suggests the benefits of the scheme would outweigh the visual impact. The planning application for the five turbines, which would be 400ft tall, has gone to Barnsley Council because the land where they would be sited at Sheephouse Heights falls within the town's boundaries. But they would be so close to the border with Sheffield that the council there has been asked to comment before the application is considered.

The idea of looking out onto the foothills of the Blue Mountains from Highway 11 or Milton-Freewater and seeing wind turbines sounds like a nightmare for some people who look at that view every day. But not many of those people have had much of a chance to express their frustration. Citizen Richard Jolly hosted a meeting Thursday in Milton-Freewater where many people got a chance to vet their frustrations and discuss their concerns.

A government "in a muddle" over its energy policy has been accused of allowing developers to make a fortune out of ruining the countryside. Ivor Russell, secretary of the Carmarthenshire branch of the Campaign for the Protection of Rural Wales, said ..."What will our children make of it if they look back in a desert of useless wind turbines that have been made redundant by other major factors like nuclear power?" said Mr Russell in an address to the branch's annual meeting in Llanarthne on Saturday.

Hamilton is proposing a wind turbine farm on Bureau of Land Management property along the ridgeline of the Virginia Range, just east of Washoe Valley and west of Virginia City. The 72 turbines would be placed where the wind is strongest, beginning at McClellan Peak and extending northward to Geiger Summit, touching Carson City, Washoe County and Storey County. The whirlwind, if it comes, could be from officials and residents of Storey County, especially the Comstock Historic District, who aren't crazy about modern wind turbines being in view of the 1860s-era communities of Virginia City, Gold Hill and Silver City.

Genesis Energy, Trustpower, Meridian Energy and Mighty River Power have all made separate submissions to the Tararua district plan, currently up for review. They are campaigning for new policies to make wind farms a priority in the district, and pushing for a slackening of present guidelines. In the current policy on environmental heritage, the skyline of the ranges in the district is considered a protected natural feature. Trustpower wants this wording cut, with references to the protection of the "skyline of Tararua Ranges, Ruahine Ranges, Puketoi Ranges, and Manawatu Gorge", deleted from the plan entirely.

It is a landscape immortalised on canvas by JMW Turner and in verse by William Wordsworth, but Bolton Abbey, in the Yorkshire Dales, could be "ruined" by the construction of two wind turbines.

Opposition planning spokesman Matthew Guy said yesterday the Liberal Nationals Coalition would protect the state's greatest natural assets from wind farms. "The State Government's emphatic promise to defend our iconic natural assets from wind facilities is in tatters with the revelation that Acciona Energy has been allowed to build a $50 million 15-turbine wind farm on the doorstep of the Twelve Apostles and the Great Ocean Road," Mr Guy said.

Perth councillors drew public applause tonight when they denied permission for a new city building to site wind-turbine power generators on its roof. The three bright-red vertical turbines would have reached 9m above the roof of a five-storey building under construction on the southern side of Adelaide Tce, with frontages to Terrrace Rd and Victoria Ave. Neighbours in surrounding high-rise apartments had complained that the Dutch-designed turbines would create a visual eyesore and unnecessary noise, affecting the values of their properties.