RURAL campaigners have accused a Government quango of encouraging “the industrialisation of the countryside” after failing to stand up to wind-farm developers. Natural England was set up by the Government a year ago with the aim of conserving and enhancing landscapes in rural areas, and has a £500m budget to help preserve countryside life across England. But the conservation body has come in for criticism from the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE), which says the quango is turning its back on places, such as Northumberland, which are fighting plans to build wind farms in scenic locations. ...A spokesman for Natural England said: “We are committed to improving the environment and the aim of providing more renewable energy with the highest environmental standards. “But we will only support these developments in the appropriate place and with due consideration to their impact.

PUGWASH - Opponents of a proposed wind farm on the Gulf Shore got more fuel for the fire Friday night. Mark Harris, a pastor from Bridgewater, Maine, spoke Friday night at the Ground Search and Rescue in Pugwash about how a wind farm in Mars Hill, Maine has terrorized locals. He bought property in Mars Hill roughly 1200 feet away from the turbines, but hasn't done anything with it because of how unbearable the sound and strobing from them is. "Many of the mills we have, on certain days when the wind comes from a certain direction and the humidity is such and such, it will be all but silent at 1200 feet away where my home site would be. But come back the next day and it'll pound until you can't tolerate being there and there's no predicting when that will happen," he said. He said the wind farm has wreaked havoc on the town, with many people now dealing with health complications allegedly caused by the turbines' sounds and shadows.

Dwayne Bailey has some simple advice for Gulf Shore residents fighting a proposed wind farm in their area, don't give up the fight because they may regret the consequences. Bailey recently abandoned his Elmira, P.E.I., home because noise from a nearby wind farm was becoming intolerable. It kept the family awake at night and impacted their health with headaches and vision problems. "Don't let them put up the windfarm, it's way too close to the houses. It chased us out of our house and it could happen to someone else. We didn't have much a choice and it resulted in us leaving our home," Bailey said, adding his parents also abandoned their home.

FAIRHAVEN - WindWise Fairhaven has released a video about the adverse noise and flicker impacts of the Hull wind turbines, but the proponents of a similar project in Fairhaven have released studies showing impacts will be acceptable locally.

A wind turbine that was planned to help power the London Olympics may have to be switched off during games to stop disturbing the athletes, the organisers admitted today. Plans for the turbine were designed to underline the organiser's ambition to stage the greenest-ever games. But they face embarrassment following a report in New Civil Engineer magazine which discovered that the engineers for Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) are looking at a number of options for minimising distractions from the turbine, including locking them in a fixed position. It reported that ODA's infrastructure director Simon Wright is concerned that the turbine will cause the light to flicker and distract competitors.

An energy and environmental consultant hired by opponents of the proposed White Oak Wind Energy Center maintains Invenergy Wind LLC fails to meet several requirements for a special-use permit for the wind farm. Tom Hewson of Energy Ventures Analysis Inc., Arlington, Va., spoke to the McLean County Zoning Board of Appeals during a hearing Wednesday night. He said the proposed 100-turbine wind farm in McLean and Woodford counties would be a detriment to the public because of noise levels and visibility. Hewson said he did a “simple approach” simulation of one turbine to see how far a person had to be away from the turbine before it complied with Illinois’ noise regulations. “At 750 feet away, it exceeded the range,” he said, noting that three property owners have asked for waivers to allow a turbine in about that range. Hewson said it wasn’t until a person was 1,200 feet away from the turbine that the noise met Illinois’ requirements.

It is the first wind farm proposal for the shire, and will be located along its border with the Moyne Shire between Penshurst and Caramut. Between 13 and 15 wind turbines have been proposed with a maximum nominal rated power of 29.9 Megawatts (MW).

Stamford town officials agreed last week to propose a 2,500-foot setback requirement in an ordinance they are creating to regulate wind-turbine installations. “It’s the strictest I’ve seen,” said Dave Groberg, director of business development for Chicago-based Invenergy, LLC, which hopes to install a line of turbines along a mountain ridge between Stamford and Roxbury. Town officials have been working on the ordinance since last year, and regulations are still in the early stages. A year-long moratorium on the wind-turbine development expires in February.

Three months after all 67 turbines of the Spearville Wind Energy Facility became active, the blinking red lights atop the towers have become a familiar site on the western Kansas landscape Construction, which began in April of this year, was able to be completed a month early.

What EnXco Inc. in 2005 said it would do after Kittitas County rejected its wind farm north of Ellensburg it did Monday: the wind power development company filed a downsized wind farm proposal with the state in hopes to get better treatment and possible approval.

If you have ever driven off campus, you have likely noticed giant windmills looming on the horizon. Part of a system of some twenty turbines, these iron giants comprise the Fenner Windpower Project, just one component of a nationwide initiative to utilize clean and renewable energy. Operational since the fall of 2000, the mills have the capacity to power about 10,000 homes solely by harnessing the energy of the wind as it sweeps over the Adirondacks and down the Chenango Valley. Despite their efficiency, the mammoth cost to assemble just one of these turbines (about $2.5 million dollars) has stirred local and national debate over cost versus benefit at the Fenner site, not to mention the intrusions they cause for residents.

The twinkling red lights of the Spearville Wind Farm look like a Christmas display at night, but Kansas City Power & Light isnÕt waiting until Christmas to celebrate. The company has invited the entire community of Spearville to attend a picnic to celebrate the completion of the new Spearville Wind Energy Facility.

About fifty residents of Ashfield-Colborne-Wawanosh packed the council chambers last night to voice concerns over the noise from wind turbines in the municipality.

Within weeks of the Government's Energy Review (1) proposing that planning controls be relaxed to speed up the introduction of wind farms, a new report (2) reveals that badly-sited wind turbines can cause real noise problems for local communities.

But I was sitting at my kitchen table in North Buffalo, far from the wind farms of the Southern Tier, and such distance makes for simple, black-and-white comprehension. There are places in Western New York where wind energy isn’t so clear a choice. Places with names like Perry, Sheldon and Arkwright, rural towns perched atop the high glacial ridges to the east and south of the city, whose landscapes might soon be dominated by hundreds of towering, 400-foot windmills. As wind companies eye their windswept fields and make overtures to local town boards, divisions run deeper and deeper between citizens who disagree on the merits of wind farm development in their backyards. In such locales, the gray areas of wind development come into sharp focus.

Those blinking warnings lights on wind energy machines at the northern tip of the Big Island have residents blinking mad.

The idea of windmills brings to mind bucolic Renaissance paintings of Dutch landscapes and tulip beds. But that is hardly the experience of some who have to live next to the 400-foot electricity-generating windmills being built across America's breezy plains.

"'Shadow-flicker' is a recognised problem with wind turbines. That's why they aren't built near housing developments. And we want to be good neighbours."

"It's a mechanical monstrosity. ... It's ugly. It makes noise, said Beverly Whitcomb. It makes a whopping sound which will just drive you nuts."

They introduced the world to "environmentally friendly" energy, but now some of Europe's "greenest" countries are under pressure to backtrack on wind farms as public anger grows over their impact on the countryside.