David Parrish, who spent 16 years in the Magic Valley office of the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, including the last eight as supervisor, has been demoted and transferred to Boise as the agency's fisheries program coordinator. ...Idaho House Minority Leader Wendy Jaquet, D-Ketchum, said she is concerned that the state's agencies are not given the opportunity to assess issues as experts. Rather, the rank-and-file uniformity mentioned in Warbis' e-mail indicates that the state's leading experts must now opine as politicians.

WASHINGTON — The Federal Aviation Administration has given the go-ahead to three Minnesota wind power projects after concluding they don't interfere with military radar.

The Federal Aviation Administration has found six of the 25 wind turbines Gamesa Energy wants to build in Taylor and Snyder townships to be "presumed hazards," but the company is continuing to study the proposed location in hopes of changing that determination. The turbines in the proposed Sandy Ridge Wind Farm would be 475 feet tall. Nine of them would be in Taylor Township, Centre County. The rest would be in neighboring Snyder Township, Blair County, on land owned by Tyrone.

In a similar letter sent last month to Michael Huerta, acting administrator for the FAA, Ms. Parker said the FAA, in issuing in 2010 a "determination of no hazard" for the proposed wind farm, "ignored the warnings of the local aviation community, including airplane pilots, regional airports, and airline owners that the proposed Cape Wind project would pose unacceptable risks to the safety of local pilots and passengers."

Federal Aviation Administration employees felt political pressure to approve a wind farm planned off Cape Cod and did so amid internal disagreement over the best way to stop the turbines from interfering with radar and compromising airplane safety, according to FAA documents obtained by the project's opponents.

Two Wisconsin wind power projects that were stalled by concerns that rotating turbines would interfere with military radar have received the go-ahead from the Federal Aviation Administration. Among them is one of the largest wind farms on the drawing board in Wisconsin: the Forward Wind Energy Center in Fond du Lac and Dodge counties. The Forward project, being developed by Invenergy of Chicago, was moving toward construction this year when it ran into a roadblock of opposition. Permits have been issued for both the Forward project, a 133-turbine development near the Horicon Marsh, as well as the Butler Ridge wind farm in Dodge County, said Bruce Beard, the FAA manager in Texas responsible for the office that issues permits.

President Obama's pick to head the Federal Aviation Administration will remove himself from decisions involving his former consulting firm's clients, who include opponents of the nation's first offshore wind-energy project, off Cape Cod, the White House confirmed Friday. ...As FAA administrator, he could be instrumental in killing the Cape Wind Project and other wind farms if the agency determines they pose a threat to aviation.

The federal government has rejected a proposal to install a wind turbine at a high school in Portsmouth. The Federal Aviation Administration says the 213-foot-tall wind turbine proposed for Portsmouth High School would be too high. The FAA says the plan needs to be modified. The agency had earlier rejected a proposed turbine at Portsmouth Middle School. ...Voters last fall approved a $3 million bond to build a wind turbine at either the middle school or high school.

CHICAGO - The federal government has stopped work on more than a dozen wind farms planned across the Midwest, saying research is needed on whether the giant turbines could interfere with military radar.

Critics blame politics after agency suspends projects in Midwest

The Federal Aviation Administration has ordered the town to lower the 462-foot south wind turbine by 5 feet, saying its proposed height presents a hazard to aviation from the New Bedford Regional Airport. The federal agency told officials in Dartmouth, which plans to construct two wind turbines on town-owned land off Chase Road, that the maximum allowable height for the south turbine is 457 feet.

The Federal Aviation Administration has found that the proposed Nantucket Sound wind farm will not be a hazard to air navigation, marking another in a string of wins for the project's developer. The FAA had previously found that the 440-foot-tall wind turbines would be a presumed hazard to navigation but the finding was considered a place holder while the agency studied the effects of the wind farm more closely.

"Given the outrageous manipulation orchestrated by those who, since 2004, are seeking to site eight turbines, I decided to officially launch this hunger strike September 29th at noon in solidarity with citizens." In these terms, Tuesday, Fabienne Chovet publicly explained her decision to begin a hunger strike.

It has been almost two years since voters at Town Meeting directed the Select Board to oppose a wind project planned for Little Equinox with up to $150,000 after a contentious discussion. As this year's Town Meeting approaches, the proposal seems to have dropped from the radar of both the proponent and the town directed to stop it. Endless Energy, a Yarmouth, Maine-based company, had proposed to build five 390-foot wind turbines on Little Equinox to generate 30 million kilowatt-hours a year that would be sold to the Burlington Electric Department. ...On the municipal side, the money voters set aside to oppose the project is no longer being held in reserve and has been added to an allocated surplus fund, according to Manchester Town Manager John O'Keefe.

WASHINGTON -- Four Massachusetts congressmen say they will vote for a measure that could kill the proposed Nantucket Sound wind farm as the faceoff over the project intensifies on Capitol Hill.

Gov. Don Carcieri is gambling that he can overcome that opposition and build enough windmills to satisfy 15 percent of the state's energy needs in five years. Environmentalists say the plan is workable but ambitious considering that Rhode Island would essentially be starting from scratch.

Four Grand Valley faculty members have been awarded a grant to explore potential conflicts with locating wind power facilities in coastal areas of Muskegon, Ottawa and Allegan counties. ...The findings of the study, expected to be complete in May 2011, will be available to government representatives, environmental advocates, business groups and residents.

In the final few hours, however, there was an attempt by Rep. Jeff Mayes (D-Bangor Chtr. Twp.) to add a provision in legislation that would have exempted all property taxes on wind energy devices. Currently, wind turbines and related property are taxed as personal property with revenue going to local governments. ...no action was taken by the Senate on the legislation.

A major new £500m windfarm in the Thames Estuary is set to make a fortune for its owners - just six years after they were involved in the spectacular collapse of Independent Energy that left investors, lenders and creditors hundreds of millions of pounds out of pocket.

The Cape and Vineyard Electric Cooperative, which lost hundreds of thousands of dollars last year when Harwich voters killed a proposal to build two wind turbines, now is evaluating projects based on financial risk. The co-op's board of directors will ask towns and other public entities to assume some of that risk by paying for preliminary costs such as engineering and environmental studies.