The battle over a new wind farm in Tehachapi is now heading to the Kern County Board of Supervisors. Kern County planning commissioners approved the Alta-Oak Creek Mojave wind project late Thursday night after hearing both sides of the debate. After hours of emotional testimony from Tehachapi residents, the planning commissioners approved a 9,000 acre wind farm in the small mountain town. It could be the largest wind energy project in California, but it has Tehachapi residents' heads spinning.

Hundreds of Tehachapi residents are trying to ban a wind farm from blowing into their part of town, but Kern County may not have legal grounds to stop the San Diego company that wants to build it. The nearly 700 Tehachapi residents have signed a petition against giant wind generators, but it's not because they're anti-environment. It's quite the opposite. They just don't want the wind farms blowing in their back yards. "If you picture a football field spinning in the air, that's how big they will be," Kassandra McQuillen explained.

Boulevard residents are upset about a proposed electric substation despite promises by San Diego Gas & Electric Co. officials that it will provide more reliable electricity for the backcountry. A 58-acre substation to be built near Jacumba would take electricity from wind projects in East County and northern Baja California and put it onto the Southwest Powerlink, a power-transmission line that runs along the U.S.-Mexico border.

A controversial new medical study gaining supporters claims living close to windmills can give you migraines and panic attacks. These windmills are at the center of a medical debate brought on by this controversial new study. Dr. Nina Pierpont in New York lists a dozen possible health problems ranging from migraines to panic attacks. She calls it "wind turbine syndrome." Spinning windmill blades allegedly cause a vibration we can't hear. ...Ear, nose and throat specialist Dr. Syed Ahsan at Eisenhower Medical Center weighs in.

Nearly 350 people attended a meeting Thursday in Cottonwood regarding the Transmission Agency of Northern California's proposal to build 600 miles of power lines across the state. Steve Kerns, a biologist who helps develop environmental impact reports for wildland resource managers, spoke to a gymnasium so full that some were forced to stand or sit on the floor.

Shasta County residents fighting the power line plan make up just one pocket of resistance. A Yolo County environmental group and the Colusa County Board of Supervisors have expressed concerns about the planning process. Faced with opposition and mountains of questions, the Transmission Agency of Northern California, often referred to as TANC, extended public comment for the project's environmental study until May 31. Some critics suggest a more radical route: Restart the process from scratch.

Officials got an earful when they visited Redding earlier this month. Nearly 200 Shasta and Tehama County residents packed the Red Lion Hotel ballroom asking skeptical and sometimes hostile questions about the proposed project. ...The new line would also allow TANC members access to wind, solar and geothermal energy that may one day be developed in Lassen County and other rural areas.

A 5-mile swath of the proposed path through Chino Hills would double the size of existing, though inactive, Edison power lines to about 200 feet, and about 1,000 residents would live within 500 feet of the power lines. Residents and city officials said they are concerned about the large electrical towers possibly falling over or near homes during an earthquake or high winds and the potential for adverse health impacts from the electromagnetic fields created by the power lines.

The Lompoc Wind Farm was on the supervisors' plate this Tuesday after neighbors of the project site, George and Cheryl Bedford, and the California Department of Fish and Game filed appeals of its unanimous approval at the County Planning Commission last fall. The latter objected to the undeniable impact that the wind turbines, with their 135-foot blades approaching 200 miles per hour at the tip, would have on bird and bat populations. The former was more concerned about the desecration of viewsheds and noise pollution.

Santa Barbara County's first renewable wind-energy project, which proponents say could provide enough electricity to serve up to 50,000 homes, was given hands-down approval Tuesday by the county Board of Supervisors. The supervisors agreed that the benefits of having a wind farm southwest of Lompoc far outweighed the unavoidable environmental impacts it will bring. ..."I look at these monsters and I don't like them, but they're part of making wind energy, and I guess they're needed," said 5th District Supervisor Joe Centeno.

The proposed wind energy project is before the board because two appeals were filed - by Lompoc area residents George and Cheryl Bedford and the California Department of Fish and Game - after it was approved by the county Planning Commission in September. As it stands, the project was given the green light for a maximum of 65 wind turbines.

Should wind turbines hundreds of feet tall -higher than the existing Kumeyaay wind farm turbines- be allowed in the rural McCain Valley/Boulevard region in East County? Does the nation's critical need for "green" energy outweigh the concerns of residents seeking to preserve the rural character of their backcountry communities? With new industrial-scale wind farms proposed across America, East County Magazine's Gayle Early set out on a quest to explore these issues in depth for our three-part series on wind energy.

The Palm Springs Planning Commission approved about 50 windmills on Wednesday. ...The turbines would be about 3,000 feet from the Mountain Gate housing community and 2,000 feet from where College of the Desert's west valley campus is planned.

The towers are visible from the back of Milligan's Cavi at The Big Oaks, but he says it's not those power lines that concern him. The restaurateur is bothered by the lines that Southern California Edison will soon install midway down the slope in Bouquet Canyon as part of the Tehachapi Renewable Transmission Project. The towers would dominate the view from Milligan's backyard bar and grill and he believes they would spoil Bouquet Canyon's rare natural environment.

Residents in the East County are sounding an environmental alert about future wind farms in their community. The battle is heating up over plans to build hundreds of wind turbines near Boulevard. ..."And we're talking over 500 to 600 turbines for now, over 400-feet tall silhouetted on that ridge line," she said. That ridgeline to the south is in Mexico, where Sempra Energy - the parent company of SDG&E - Is planning on building a massive wind farm. So big, in fact, it will be visible from San Diego County.

"Our little community is under such an assault from all these wind energy corporations," Boulevard Planning Group Chair Donna Tisdale said. Tisdale is one of the property owners who was approached by a wind farm company called Invenergy. She says Invenergy offered her more than $20,000 per year for the rights to build wind turbines on her property - this on land that is not zoned for a wind farm.

Growers and ranchers in the southern reaches of California are posing the latest obstacle to the state's push for green power. Facing the possibility of losing land to power transmission lines, they have urged state commissioners to avoid their property when selecting a route for a project linking consumers on the coast to renewable energy operations in the Southern California desert. ...The dispute is part of a growing conflict between farmers and utilities, as California's mandate for power providers to boost their use of renewable energy prompts new projects across the state.

Despite some changes to the route of the proposed Sunrise Powerlink, analysts at the California Public Utilities Commission have not changed their opinion about the controversial line, according to an environmental study released yesterday. The revised environmental report includes an evaluation of wind power that San Diego Gas & Electric hopes to tap in northern Baja California as well as more than a dozen changes being considered for Sunrise, a proposed $1.5 billion, 150-mile power line that would stretch from the Imperial Valley to Rancho Peñasquitos. In the end, the analysts repeated findings from the first draft of the report, namely that there are five "environmentally superior" alternatives to the SDG&E proposal, including proposals to generate power within San Diego County or to build alternate lines that would - unlike Sunrise - avoid Anza-Borrego Desert State Park.

They are an environmentalist's dream but possibly a neighborhood nightmare. Clean and renewable, wind power turbines from 30 feet to 300 feet tall could pepper the Sonoma County landscape, especially at higher, visually prominent locations. ... "You're not going to ignore them," said Alexandra von Meier, associate professor of energy management and design at Sonoma State University. Von Meier said the county is speckled with prospective wind turbine sites and suggested that local governments should "make it easy" to tap the wind with whirling machines.

From the early 1980s through the early ‘90s, California was the national leader in wind energy development and power produced by wind farms. ...Are the turbines benefiting one aspect of the environment at the expense of another? Longtime Snow Creek resident Les Starks calls the wind farms "industrial slums" - claiming the windmills have displaced wildlife and degraded the quality of life for nearby residents. "There was a canyon near Whitewater Canyon that used to have thousands of bats," says Starks, "and now you don't see any." He's also noticed a decline in turkey buzzards migrating through the pass. ...With wind energy having been harnessed in the Desert for nearly three decades, the next few years will determine its future here. Presently, it accounts for just two percent of California's portfolio. That number surely will rise along with new and bigger windmills - love them or hate them.