It seems few in this town of about 1,500 people can agree on UPC Wind Management’s newly completed $85 million project, which makes the unassuming potato-growing and truck-brokerage community home to New England’s largest wind farm. But there’s one thing everybody can agree on: The place sure looks different. Long before a visitor arrives at Mars Hill, the towers become visible along what used to be just another mountain. The total height from the ground to the tip of the blade is 389 feet. Each tower has three blades, which spin in winds whipping west to east toward Canada just a few miles away.

Three environmental organizations agreed to back the proposed Kibby Mountain wind-power project in Franklin County after the developer agreed to pay $500,000 to protect several high-elevation acres in Oxford County. According to a late Tuesday afternoon report, the Appalachian Mountain Club, Maine Audubon and Natural Resources Council of Maine negotiated the deal with TransCanada Maine Wind Development Inc.

Many of the landowners whose property abuts the Beaver Ridge windmill project met at the Beaver Ridge Road home of Sally Hadyniak Saturday afternoon to voice some concerns about the windmill project and explain why they want the town to reinstate its commercial development review ordinance. ...[Resident Jeff] Keating explained at Saturday's press conference that he wants to see in writing that the builders of the project, formerly referred to as Competitive Energy Services (CES) but now known as Beaver Ridge Wind LLC, will abide by the standards set forth in the ordinance. Originally, CES had worked with the town while it created the ordinance but, according to the abutters, were ultimately unwilling to make the windmill project meet the ordinance's guidelines, and encouraged the town to get rid of the ordinance after it had been enacted.

At Tuesday night's nearly two-hour informational meeting, about 70 people learned that blasting begins Wednesday morning on Record Hill Wind LLC's $120 million, 22-turbine wind farm project. It will be a single blast at 10:30 a.m. at a depth of 10 feet by a Maine Drilling and Blasting crew ...Foundation work will start Nov. 1 on the Turbine 22 site and progress northward until winter conditions stop work, said DeFilipp.

More than 30 people expressed their concerns about a massive power line upgrade project proposed by Central Maine Power at Lewiston City Hall Monday night during a public hearing before Maine's Public Utilities Commission. About 70 people were present. ...Nearly all of those who spoke before Commissioners Jack Cashman, Sharon Reishus and Vendean Vafiades were apprehensive about the project, anticipating noise pollution, loss of property value and health risks.

First Wind of Massachusetts' proposed $130 million wind farm and an associated 115-kilovolt power line might affect an Essential Fish Habitat for Atlantic salmon, but its impact will be minimal if precautions are taken, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said Tuesday.

The town of Mars Hill...is the test bed for all that is good and not so good about wind power in Maine. ... With the failure of two other wind power proposals - a thirty-turbine project in Redington Township outside Rangeley and a three-unit installation in the town of Freedom in central Maine - the Mars Hill experience raises the question of wind power's future in the state. An energy technology praised as the green alternative to fossil fuels and one of the solutions to global climate change has produced controversies that have split the environmental community in Maine and made enemies of natural allies.

This time the focus is Kibby Mountain in western Maine where Transcanada is in the process of developing a wind power project, and where related logging operations by Plum Creek and a sub-contractor have been linked to serious land use violations. Pictures taken at the site by an independent engineering firm and provided to the Land Use Regulation Commission in late October show a logging road so damaged by rain, logging activity and erosion that it created a mudslide described as nearly 900 feet long.

Forum organizers wanted to help residents of Fort Kent, a likely site for a large wind development, to explore the pros and cons of wind farms before any applications are filed, said David Soucy, a lawyer who helped organize the event. Texas-based Horizon Wind has been negotiating lease agreements with landowners in the Fort Kent area and in other parts of Aroostook County with an eye toward building a wind farm. "The issue is not whether wind farms are a good idea or not," Soucy said. "The issue is where can they be ideally situated."

On Capitol Hill, the Audubon Society is leading the fight to increase production of climate-friendly power. So why are Audubon enthusiasts battling a wind farm that could help meet that goal? For one thing, there are trout in nearby streams, which activists say are at risk from chemical and sediment runoff from construction of 30 turbines, each soaring about 400 feet -- taller than the Statue of Liberty. Then there are the bats and hawks, which might be puréed by the giant blades that would catch the wind gusting along the Allegheny Mountains of Western Pennsylvania. "They're enormous," says Tom Dick, a retired veterinarian who founded the local Audubon chapter. "When you start looking at this, it's like, 'hell, this is not right.'"

"My fear is that the aesthetics, the whole feel of the area and the views of the ridge, I really feel that this will be gone soon," Wotton said. "That's my biggest fear." That's why Wooton is a member of the newly formed Friends of Rollins Ridge group, an organization of about a dozen town residents that is investigating, and likely will oppose, a proposed $120 million wind farm that, if approved, will go on sites in Burlington, Lee, Lincoln and Winn, including Rollins Mountain.

As opponents of a $120 million wind power development slated for Rollins Mountain, the Friends of Lincoln Lakes residents group will ask the Town Council and planning board next week for a moratorium on all pending wind projects, its organizers said Thursday. Group members will attend council and board meetings next week after taking in the third hearing held by wind farm proponent First Wind of Massachusetts on Wednesday at Mattanawcook Academy, group member Gary Steinberg said. They fear that local boards haven't had adequate time to learn enough about wind farms' potentially hazardous impact upon municipalities and wildlife.

State regulators unanimously approved a proposal Wednesday to build New England's largest wind farm on a remote ridgeline in northern Washington County. ...Stetson Mountain is located in a sparsely populated area of Washington County's northernmost border with Penobscot County and Canada. It's a scenic area with rolling, heavily forested hills that help support the local timber industry. Hunting, fishing, snowmobiling and other forms of outdoor recreation are also an important part of both local culture and the regional economy. So UPC's proposal to build 38 wind turbines, each standing nearly 400 feet tall, has not gone over well with everyone. ...Opponents also raised concerns about noise from the turbines, which has been a problem for some homeowners near the Mars Hill farm.

FARMINGTON–The Maine Land Use Regulation Commission voted, 6-1 against rezoning 1,004 mountaintop acres in northern Franklin County for a 30-turbine wind-energy project today. Only commissioner Stephen Wight, of Newry, supported the rezoning request. The commission's staff had previously recommended the rezoning be approved.

Wiscasset is being considered for the largest energy development proposal - and potentially the largest development project of any kind - in the history of the state. A Toronto entrepreneur who has developed Canadian wind farms has floated the idea of building a massive $2 billion underground hydropower station at the old Maine Yankee nuclear power station site. The project would be one of the first of its kind anywhere. The proposal raises questions about impacts on the Back River and groundwater, and it would use as much energy as it creates.

In the Aroostook County town of Mars Hill, 28 wind turbines will soon be generating electricity. Even before they begin commercial operation, however, the windmills are generating considerable controversy. The biggest issue is noise.

People opposing Record Hill Wind LLC's proposal to site 22 wind-power turbines in town have launched a petition drive to rescind approved ordinance changes allowing such facilities. The petition asks selectmen to call a special town meeting to amend the comprehensive plan by deleting all language and sections referring to wind power that were added by a majority vote at a special town meeting Jan. 15.

Plum Creek owns the property west of Greenville, and its logging contractor was clearing land for TransCanada, the developer of a wind farm. The Land Use Regulation Commission issued a notice of warning to TransCanada based on the erosion. A Maine environmental group called for the state to fine Plum Creek and a logging contractor for cutting trees too aggressively. The Natural Resources Council of Maine released photos of the erosion, which it said was effectively a 900-foot-long mudslide, along with internal communications that it says show Plum Creek's logging contractor was warned to stop working in the area until after the ground froze.

BREWER - As wind power begins to blow into Maine, state regulators on Wednesday considered its potential to squeeze increasingly expensive - and less environmentally friendly - fossil fuels out of the region's energy mix.