Shortly after the Financial Town Meeting, where residents voted to approve funding for the construction of a wind turbine in town, Ms. Cuzzone started researching wind turbines and attending meetings for the renewable energy committee. She said the project's initially proposed location - the Barrington High School campus - propelled her to get involved. She lives on Lincoln Avenue, not far from the high school. A new location has since been selected - Legion Way near Brickyard Pond - but Ms. Cuzzone is still interested in the project.

As the state moves forward with the creation of zoning regulations for Rhode Island's coastal waters, commercial fishermen are worried their interests will not be adequately represented when key decisions are made about where they can fish. ...The fishermen, for their part, say they are supportive of efforts to develop renewable energy and are not looking to derail the SAMP project. "We can absolutely live together," said Wallis. "We just want to have a good say in that."

The owner of the Wayne Auto Spa, who sparked controversy in proposing a wind turbine at his business, wants a judge to overturn new township zoning rules that prohibit the project. The Township Council adopted a zoning ordinance in September that bans wind turbines within 1,640 feet of residential neighborhoods, schools or day-care centers. ...Burke argues in court papers that the township should not be allowed to frustrate state policy objectives that promote the use of wind and other renewable energy sources.

The chairman of the committee exploring a wind turbine for the town is warning that the project is facing "paralysis by analysis" and he is calling on Barrington's "silent majority" to "break the deadlock and move forward on this first-of-many renewable energy solutions." ...Critics have called for actual wind measurements to determine if the breezes will be strong enough to make a turbine at Brickyard Pond economical. The committee has, instead, relied on historical wind speed data collected from other locations, data that have been extrapolated for the Barrington site.

Even though a New York-based wind farm developer has abandoned its plans to build a facility off the coast of Rhode Island, the company is still hoping to get into the wind-energy business here. Allco Renewable Energy Group Ltd. has approached a half-dozen Rhode Island communities with what some see as an appealing offer. The company will finance, build, operate and own a wind turbine within a town and sell the power at a price that's at or below what's available from the local utility company. And Allco will guarantee that price for 20 years.

The thought of a wind farm in waters off Rhode Island is "frightening" to commercial fishermen, an industry representative told state officials Wednesday at a meeting of those potentially affected by a proposed wind farm. ..."I can't stress enough how frightening this is for the commercial fishing industry," said Lanny Dellinger, president of the Rhode Island Lobstermen's Association. "I see people getting displaced."

Lance Miller, chief of policy and planning at the state Board of Public Utilities, which is steering the energy plan's implementation, agrees that the scope and scale of some of its objectives are unprecedented. Principally, these are the massive scale of energy audits planned for buildings, finding ways to finance the improvements needed in those buildings to cut energy use and getting utilities to buy into a plan where there is less demand for their power. "New Jersey is the first to do [energy audits] on such a big scale," Miller said of the inspection plan, which will cover 3.7 million buildings, of which 3.2 million are residential. At an average annual clip of 300,000 building inspections, Miller estimates the task would run through 2020.

Ongoing studies of birds, marine mammals and sea turtles off the Jersey Shore have found an abundance of life in an area where hundreds of wind turbines could be spinning by 2020, participants in a public meeting said today. ..."We're trying to figure out where are the areas of sensitive habitat, if you will, areas that perhaps we should think twice about or avoid before we build something," he said. "The objective here is to try and steer these facilities to areas where impacts will be reduced."

A contingent of opposition soaked up the first 90 minutes of a public workshop on the proposed wind turbine project in Barrington on Tuesday night. One by one, residents, some of whom were members of the group Citizens Wind Watch, approached the microphone at the front of the Barrington High School auditorium and reeled through questions and concerns about the project while some offered reasons the town council should not support building a wind turbine on Legion Way. ... Despite all the comments, the majority of council members said the workshop did little to sway their thoughts on the proposed project.

Official documents and a video recording of last May's Financial Town Meeting confirm that the bond vote regarding the proposed wind turbine project was to allow the construction on any town-owned property and not just at the high school. ...The wind turbine project has received some staunch opposition, including the recent circulation of an e-mail discussing the "catastrophic failure" of a wind turbine in Searsburg, Vt. The release, from the website www.windaction.org, was dated Oct. 16 and included photos.

[H]igh electricity prices, along with a conservation ethos that has led to the protection of more than 40 percent of the island in reserves and land trusts, have prompted many Block Islanders to embrace the offshore wind project. "A lot of the residents recognize the need for wind power," said Nancy Dodge, town manager for New Shoreham, the municipality that encompasses the island. "The major concern is that anything we have to look at, we share in, so we don't bear the brunt visually without getting the benefits."

The battle to block a wind turbine on town-owned land in hopes of saving on Barrington's electric bill has gone multimedia. Opponents have begun circulating a professional-quality 16-minute video blasting the $2.4-million proposal, accusing the town of rushing into the project without fully assessing the costs and benefits. It also asserts that the spinning blades, high on a peninsula at Brickyard Pond near the East Bay Bike Path, will generate too much noise for neighbors and kill birds.

The hotly debated wind turbine proposal will not see a town council vote before the November election. That's what current council members stated at the Oct. 6 meeting after news surfaced that the deadline for the interest-free loan associated with the wind turbine project was extended from Dec. 31, 2008, to Dec. 31, 2009. Just weeks ago the council was planning to hold a special meeting in October to vote on the project.

The letter's author, Andrew Dzykewicz, the commissioner of the office on energy resources, wrote that a "well-executed feasibility study typically will include a year's worth of data gathering using a meteorological tower erected on-site for that purpose." ...Barrington Town Council President Jeff Brenner defended the council's decision not to install a test tower. "We weren't sure where the site was going to be," Mr. Brenner said. "Frankly I'm glad we didn't put it up at the high school because we have since switched sites and it would have wasted taxpayers' money."

After 10 months of work, the Committee for Renewable Energy for Barrington (CREB) has recommended the town accept a bid to install a 600 kilowatt wind turbine generator at the Legion Way site. The town council is saddled with the final decision - whether to follow the CREB recommendation and award the bid for the work to Lumus Construction Inc. ...The recommendation report goes into detail, explaining specifics about the proposed project. The council was scheduled to hear from CREB members at Monday night's meeting and were expecting some other vocal residents to attend also.

New Jersey is one step closer to bringing an offshore wind farm to the coasts of the U.S. Garden State Offshore Energy (GSOE), a joint venture between utility Public Service Enterprise Group (PSEG) Renewable Generation and Deepwater Wind, was selected by the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities today to build an offshore wind farm far off the Jersey coastline. The proposed 350-megawatt wind farm would consist of 96 turbines nearly 20 miles offshore. GSOE will receive a $4 million state grant to help cover permitting costs and spur project financing though the final project, to be completed by 2012, will likely cost well over $1 billion, according to the state.

The School Committee last night decided to put off a vote on whether to remove the high school from contention as a location for a proposed turbine. ...School Committee members agreed to take up the turbine matter at its Oct. 16 meeting. That group is expected to recommend an alternative site at the end of Legion Way, which would essentially make the school committee's rejection of the high school site unnecessary. ...And because the device would be as close as 190 feet from a school building, the committee has been under pressure to withdraw its approval of the high school site.

State Senator Josh Miller is rasing concerns about the wind farm project announced by Governor Carcieri last week. "While the General Assembly has fully supported developing renewable energy projects in Rhode Island, I am concerned that Governor Carcieri has unilaterally moved Deepwater Wind to the front of the line when major questions remain about their experience and background. I am troubled by the lack of disclosure from Deepwater Wind's CEO about his financial relationship with First Wind," stated Senator Miller.

The minty ring of "live green" can look easy. But it's about more than recycling and taking one's tote bag to the grocer's. Trying to live green in New Jersey collides, environmentalists said Friday, with a warren of real-world twists and turns that make it harder than it looks.

Gov. Donald Carcieri chose Deepwater Wind -- formerly Winergy -- on Thursday to develop a privately financed project that would provide 1.3 million megawatt hours of offshore wind power per year. ...The decision brings to three active plans to build wind farms off the U.S. coast. Besides Bluewater, there's Cape Wind, a private wind farm proposal on Nantucket Sound. New Jersey is nearing the selection of a developer for its own offshore farm. All projects will have to seek federal permits, the rules of which have not been finalized.