The Highland Independent School District learned earlier this month that it is a property wealthy district after being notified of its status by the Texas Education Agency. In TEA terms, Highland is a Chapter 41 district for the 2008-09 school year. Chapter 41 of the Texas Education Code makes provisions for certain school districts to share their local tax revenue with other school districts. ... The Highland ISD has been declared a Chapter 41 district because of significant increases in property values due to the new wind farms in the district. Nelson said those wind farm values will peak in the 2008-09 school year and then decline due to tax code Chapter 313 property tax limitation agreements ...

Sue Brander of Advocates of Stark and also a wind farm opponent, sees several other economic disadvantages. Brander sees the wind farms as a federal tax scam. She said the federal policies were designed by Jeffry Skilling, the former Chief Financial Officer for Enron, who is now in jail. The 68-turbine project proposed for the Stark, Jordanville, Warren area would cost approximately $136 million. Under the current system, the owner of the project can deduct 64 percent of the investment in two years, which comes out to $96 million. Brander said that Congress needs to review these laws and change them because investment banks, such as Goldman Sachs, are buying them just for the tax write off. She also sees an economic disadvantage for real estate value. Brander said that although some developers and market analysts have said property prices would not go down, properties up for sale around wind farms see less interest than homes away from wind farms. “It is all supply and demand, and people are seeing losses in their real estate value,” said Brander.

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.

A group of Grant County landowners has filed a lawsuit seeking to block construction of a Mount Storm area wind-power project.

READSBORO — Officials from the two towns most affected by a proposed wind facility met on Wednesday night to discuss the economic impacts of a 30-turbine development.

The Readsboro and Searsburg Select Boards met in the Central School gym to discuss the financial benefits and strains that can be expected by a town hosting a wind farm. Robert Ide of the Vermont Department of Public Service attended, as did about 10 residents. Searsburg is now the home of the state's only existing commercial wind facility. There are 11 turbines producing about 6 megawatts of electricity. A 30- to 45-megawatt plant with 20 to 30 new turbines has been proposed for ridgelines spanning both Readsboro and Searsburg.