Our community is filled with environmentally savvy folks. We recycle, turn off lights, use the right bulbs, cut down on our driving, maybe even buy a hybrid car! Most of us are concerned and trying.

We aspire to changing our direction and doing positive things including putting up windmills. I contemplate one small windmill at my house to supplement my solar system which has cut my electric bill in half!

However, the planned factory of turbines for the tops of our ridges will not fulfill the promised energy amounts touted by the big corporations who sponsor them. It would be important for all of us to know the factual results from wind turbines actually built, such as at Jiminy Peak. We subsidized construction of that turbine and we ought to have open and public information as to its actual output, not general numbers put out by the public relations folks.

Building hundreds of wind turbines for a tiny fraction of our electricity is not only foolish but it is a tradeoff which is absurd in the entire picture. Forest fragmentation from the roads required to install and service turbines (the blades alone can be 150 feet in length), the subsequent tree elimination (trees absorb carbon emissions and are our allies for the atmosphere), the extensive space required for installation and maintenance of those monster day and night flashing light turbines make the tradeoff a Faustian bargain! (Approximately five acres per turbine causing radical destruction to our pristine forest blocks.)

Amongst others, I have spent years and resources protecting open lands and have served on The Nature Conservancy's Boston board, The Berkshire Natural Resources Council board (still there), Project Native (also still there) and am active on the Green Berkshires board which is the principal advocate for information and facts pertaining to wind . It is a betrayal of our many years of conservation work for preservation of our forest lands to litter our hilltops with turbines for the minuscule difference they can possibly make.

I did not work all these years to preserve open land in order to throw turbines all over it! Wind turbines only operate when the wind blows which means they have to be fully backed up by another system. Wind energy cannot be stored. Turbines should simply be the last resort after we do serious conservation, solar, and retro-fit our houses to conserve energy.

The subsidies for wind which will profit the foreign corporations and General Electric could be better spent on we the people of the commonwealth. Taking the numbers and factoring out how much money we would have for Massachusetts folks to put a solar panel up, screw in the right light bulbs, and insulate their houses, etc., our energy gains would be triple, quadruple whatever the wind turbines could conceivably provide.

It is a choice between corporate interests and the people. Haven't we had enough of the private interests and corporations winning at our expense?