People wanted to know whether it would be beneficial for the town to enter into such an agreement with a wind-power company. "It's solely the town's decision," Rogers said. "No TIF money can go into the general fund, because a TIF is designed for qualified projects that create economic development."

Members of the State and Local Government Committee voted 8-3 Monday morning in favor of a bill that would allow Carrabassett Valley to move forward with the annexation of Redington Township. The original proposal, sponsored by Sen. Walter Gooley, R-Farmington, was amended to include the entirety of the township in the annexation process instead of just a portion.

A summer-long transit of trucks loaded with wind turbine components may play out differently than expected after it was determined that most of the loads are smaller than anticipated.

Questions about wind turbines or tax increment financing did not appear anywhere on the warrant Saturday, but a pair of ongoing lawsuits relating to the Beaver Ridge wind development affected discussion of the town's budget for legal services. Last year, Freedom appropriated $25,000 for legal fees and spent $18,000 on the two ongoing lawsuits. This year the budget committee again recommended setting aside $25,000.

Another wind energy project for a mountain in Maine may be in the works. A subsidiary of TransCanada Corp. has submitted an application to gather wind and weather data on Sisk Mountain by installing up to four meteorological poles there, state regulators said Wednesday. The 3,245-foot mountain in far northern Franklin County spans portions of Chain of Ponds Township and Kibby Township in the Boundary Mountains and is not far from the border with Quebec Province.

This small Franklin County town is the latest site for possible wind turbine development. If constructed, the project would more than double the valuation of the town. Todd Presson, chief operating officer for Patriot Renewables, a Quincy, Mass.-based company, said at least 12 turbines capable of producing about one-and-a-half megawatts each, are in the early planning stages.

The final sections of a crane that will erect 410-foot windmills began arriving Tuesday at Kibby Mountain in western Maine, where New England's largest wind farm is scheduled to be completed next year. Last September, Canadian energy company TransCanada Corp. began construction on the $320 million project that will power up to 50,000 single-family homes.

The best route as recommended by MDOT, she said, would require the 182 annual over-sized loads to take Route 1 to Route 3, bypassing the low High Street and Waldo Avenue underpasses by traveling in the wrong direction up the on-ramp to High Street, across Field Street and down the off-ramp at Waldo Avenue. To accommodate the unusual route, Sewall Co. was asking to cut down three trees ...

Newton, Mass.-based First Wind has put its 57 MW Stetson wind project in Danforth, Maine up for sale. Credit Suisse is running the deal. The reason for the sale could not be learned, though industry executives note a smaller player like First Wind might simply need capital.

Town officials are researching if there is a wind-power developer interested in the town-owned Memorial Forest on Poland Hill. Code Enforcement Officer Richard Marble has previously asked the select board if they were interested in exploring the option of a wind-power development, board administrative assistant Kurt Schaub said early Wednesday.

Then he called ISO New England, the regional transmission organization that serves most of Maine, to make sure there would be room on the grid to transmit energy generated by the small 17-megawatt biomass boiler. "When I started, there was plenty of room on the grid. It was the first thing I checked," he says. But last June, when it came time to register the project with ISO, Tudan was told the grid was "maxed out," he says. In those five years, other generators had registered for grid space, including the Stetson Wind Farm, a 38-turbine wind farm with the capacity to generate 57 megawatts of electricity that went online in January.

Suits on one side, Swanndris on the other - the battle lines were staked on day one of the Waitahora wind farm hearing. About 50 local farmers crammed into The Hub auditorium in Dannevirke yesterday, for the first chapter in what promises to be a three- week-long resource consent saga. Contact Energy wants to build a $550 million wind farm on the Puketoi ranges, a long stretch of hillside in Waitahora, east of Pahiatua.

As Maine preps for wind power, medical staff at Rumford Hospital say turbines may make people sick. Others beg to differ. The phrase "vibroacoustic syndrome" started him Googling. The worrisome set of symptoms - allegedly caused by exposure to low-frequency noise and linked by some to wind farms - sent him on a mission he didn't anticipate. This week Dr. Albert Aniel, an internist at Rumford Community Hospital, mailed a letter to Gov. John Baldacci. He visited the Mexico Board of Selectmen. He's contacting every town manager in the River Valley.

The company that built Maine's first wind turbine farm in Mars Hill wants to build a smaller project on the back side of Black Mountain. John Lamontagne, spokesman for the Newton, Mass.-based First Wind, said Thursday that meteorological towers have been installed along the side of the mountain - best known as a local ski area - to gauge the wind. The possible Black Mountain wind farm is part of a bigger plan to develop wind farms around the state.

Todd described the horrors she said she has endured since First Wind put some of its Mars Hill turbines about 2,300 feet from her home more than a year ago. They include headaches, sleep deprivation, nausea and vertigo - all caused, she believes, by the low-level sound constantly emitted by the turbines. Her house has also been damaged by underground blasting done during the turbine installation, she said. A recent chimney fire showed dozens of hairline fissures in the chimney that caused the house to fill with smoke. Contractors who examined the damage were stunned, she said.

State regulators on Thursday formally dismissed a $625 million power grid expansion necessary to support a massive wind farm in northern Maine, putting the Maine Power Connection project on ice for the time being. Despite the setback, the partners on the power grid project and Aroostook Wind Energy insisted they weren't giving up on the idea. ...utility officials discovered that the project as proposed could cause power grid instability to the south, and Aroostook Wind decided against further studies.

Residents of Dixmont will vote Wednesday on a proposal to impose a 180-day moratorium on industrial wind farms in order to give town officials time to study the pros and cons of such projects. The moratorium proposal is in response to a Portland company that is exploring placing several large wind turbines on Dixmont's Mount Harris. The company, Competitive Energy Services, is also affiliated with the three-turbine Beaver Ridge Wind Project that was completed recently in Freedom.

New England's largest wind farm went on line Thursday highlighting what Gov. John Baldacci said makes Maine the region's leader in the creation of clean, oil-free wind power. ...But there also were 10 protesters at the project entrance. Accompanied by residents of Mars Hill and Danforth, the Friends of Lincoln Lakes group, which opposes First Wind's proposed Rollins Mountain wind farm, picketed what they considered the project's rushed permit approvals, which they felt trampled citizens' rights.

A wind-energy project that will produce the equivalent power needs of 23,500 homes officially goes on line this week when Gov. John Baldacci attends an opening ceremony for the 57-megawatt project in Stetson.

A wind-power project for the western mountains that was rejected by the state's Land Use Regulation Commission last year is back with a new angle. Endless Energy Corp. founder Harley Lee, of Yarmouth, is proposing to restore his 30-turbine project in Redington Township by having Carrabassett Valley annex about 10,000 acres in the adjacent township that his corporation owns.