WAREHAM — At next month's special Town Meeting, voters will consider a bylaw allowing the construction of wind turbines.

PRINCETON— Proponents of Princeton Municipal Light Department’s proposed windmills filled the meeting room to support the new turbines plan at a Department of Telecommunications and Energy hearing last night.

PRINCETON— Supporters and opponents of the pending windmill project will have another opportunity to have their voices heard, this time to the Department of Telecommunications and Energy, at a public hearing tonight.

HANCOCK — A proposed amendment to the town's zoning bylaw would restrict the height of cell phone towers and wind turbines to 120 feet, effectively prohibiting additional commercial wind energy projects.

Important changes to wind turbine approval process: The wind turbine project will now have at least a three phase approval process.

HARWICH --- When Bill and Tina Maloney look out their window they can see the blades of a wind turbine on the abutting Cape Cod Regional Technical High School spinning in the sky, capturing wind and converting it into electricity.

A provision tucked into a massive Coast Guard authorization bill could stop the Cape Wind debate in its tracks.

WASHINGTON - Inside the Beltway, he's made his name as a champion for tapping oil resources in his own state - and for telling the federal government to butt out.

"It's massive. It's as large as Manhattan. And it's in the middle of my Senate district," O'Leary said of the Cape Wind project. "There's been no debate within the law-making body about the project and what the state's role should be in terms of the size and scale. I think we need that debate."

As the state's top attorney, Reilly would normally lead the board's defense against an appeal filed by the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound when the Supreme Judicial Court in Suffolk County begins its review of the appeal in the next few months, with hearings expected later in the year. Instead, Reilly, who opposes the Cape Wind plan, has recused himself and appointed a special assistant attorney general from outside his office to represent the state board against charges that its approval process contained "procedural and substantive" flaws.

PLYMOUTH (Feb 4) Not one to give up at the first sign of an obstacle, energy committee chairman Jim Sweeney has already revised the wind-turbine bylaw's language to include private land. He plans to have a warrant article ready in time for spring town meeting in May.

PLYMOUTH - It’s OK for the town to establish where wind towers can be built, but the town can’t limit them to municipal properties, Attorney General Thomas Reilly said.

With the costs of electricity rising, and budgets tightening, more North Shore communities are looking at building wind turbines to help power schools and other municipal properties.

As a result of an appeal by a group of citizens, EnXco has not been able to meet the test of proving substantial progress in their work, and so sought an extension to their special permit.

As soon as a few papers are filed and the ground thaws, it looks like Harwich will be getting back into the alternative energy business. Selectmen last week took another step toward the eventual construction of a wind turbine behind the high school on Oak Street.

SWAMPSCOTT - Studies will get under way to determine whether four sites in town would be suitable for wind turbines.

MATTAPOISETT -- Although the tower anchors were hammered into the ground weeks ago, the town will hold a public hearing about its proposed met tower Monday.

For now, towns like Falmouth and Orleans are taking their projects one step at a time and considering all their options.

A plan to build what could become the first large offshore wind farm in the United States would be effectively killed by a proposed amendment to a Coast Guard budget bill now making its way through Congress, people on both sides of the issue say

Which comes first, a set of guidelines or a specific review? That's the latest question being asked in the saga of a proposed wind farm on Nantucket Sound.