I have personally seen more than a few industrial windpower installations, and I will never consider the sight of even the most modest ones to be benign. Multiply them to economic proportions, and the result is undeniable and permanent visual blight. That is why windmill farms should be required to be sited away from scenic areas of exceptional natural beauty or areas otherwise dependent on tourism.

Those currently operating in remote plains and deserts get their economies of scale from erection of dozens and sometimes hundreds of towers. To accept the assertion by its promoters that their local development will stop at five towers is naive. Isn't this proposal just the proverbial camel's nose under the tent? On Mt. Equinox of all places, the line should be drawn at zero. The Mt. Equinox project is much more important for its symbolic value than for its economic value. The point is, if GE and its "partners" can get away with it here, why not anywhere in the Northeast? And for that reason, their pressure is intense. It is David and Goliath, and Vermonters are up against some very powerful moneyed interests.

Symbolism aside, Mt. Equinox may not be as impressive as Yosemite's El Capitan or the Grand Tetons, but something very real would be sacrificed on the questionable altar of renewable-energy-for-profit. Mt. Equinox and all of our mountains are not just a "back yard." They are a heritage and a legacy. And they are as good a place as any to make a stand. The issue at stake is preservation, and the face of environmentalism should be one of traditional conservation, not a heedlessly applied new orthodoxy. As a nation we need cleaner energy sources, but despoiling the scenic ridgelines in Vermont's premier recreational destination for minimal public benefit is misguided and irresponsible.

Plying their technology into a regulatory vacuum, the investors and their corporate suppliers expect to reap rich economic returns. Permitting this private for-profit project would be a giveaway in perpetuity of an irreplaceable public asset on which no price should ever be set. To true environmentalists who cherish Manchester and its mountains just as they are, acquiescence to the Mt. Equinox Project by state and local officials would be a betrayal of the public trust of historic proportions.