Two more Maine towns, Avon and New Vineyard, easily passed moratoriums on wind-turbine developments within their jurisdictions. They add their names to the rapidly growing list of Maine towns that have wisely moved to protect their residents and property owners from the state's weak siting laws. Also within the last few weeks, Phillips and Penobscot did the same. These four join others such as Buckfield, Thorndike, Dixfield and Rumford.

I am writing on behalf of Eileen Burkey's and the late Willard Burkey's farm located north of Walnut. My great-grandparents purchased and moved to this property in the 1890s.

The controversial decision about how close wind turbines should be placed from homes is now in the hands of the Wisconsin Wind Siting Council. Homeowners who live near wind turbines built in some wind farms in Wisconsin have complained about the turbines and effects including shadow flicker and noise.

The provincial Green Energy Act assumes that wind power is good; that its rise in modern energy production is inevitable; that anyone concerned about health or other effects is a quack; and that the province, driven by green politics in Toronto, is therefore right to ram it through despite local objections. That is a mistake.

I was at the wind turbine meeting hosted by WAIT! in Creemore on Sat., March 6 and I want to say it was one of the most informative and eye-opening meetings I have ever attended. I was shocked at the vast amount of compelling evidence against wind turbines - which the government is blatantly ignoring.

Why the rush for wind energy farms? Many will say yes the wind is free, so go for it. True the wind is free, but when the wind does not blow no electrical power is made. When this happens somewhere on the electrical grid coal-fired boilers will pick up the load. If we over-balance the electrical load on the grid with too much or too many wind turbines we may not be able to balance the electrical grid system.

Rep. Jon Hinck, D-Portland, has a perceived conflict of interest. His wife is an attorney whose clients include Maine's major wind power companies. He is a lawmaker who sits on the Legislature's Utilities and Energy Committee, whose purview includes bills affecting wind power companies. The only thing preventing this situation from being an actual, rather than perceptual, conflict of interest is the Maine Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices, which -- in a recent opinion -- said it was not a conflict.

Nevertheless, many states have adopted a Jeopardy!-like approach in their energy policies. They are imposing detailed renewable energy mandates that prescribe how much of which renewable energy types must be installed by specific dates. But as in the game show, these renewable energy policies are the correct answers only in response to the right questions. California is the leading contestant in this perilous renewable energy game.

Chinese wind power provider A-Power Energy Generation Systems(SPWR) and its U.S.-based partners announced on Thursday plans to build a wind turbine production and assembly plant in Nevada that will create up to 1,000 permanent jobs for the state and more jobs during the construction phase. The announcement about the Nevada plant was notable for two reasons: the selection of Nevada as home state for the wind energy plant, and the political power broker who is associated with the state.

Thank you to the Agency of Natural Resources for standing up for 23,600 acres of unspoiled wilderness. The ANR came out with something we have known for a long time. Herrick Mountain, Spruce Knob, Ames Hollow, Train Brook Ridgeline to the south and Bird Mountain to the north combine to form a very special piece of habitat that they call a "rare and irreplaceable natural area."

A large and quickly increasing number of residents in our county and township, as well as in neighbouring Wellington, are deeply concerned about the proposed Belwood Wind Energy Centre Project that Invenergy is seeking approval for. Seeing that there seems to be little awareness of how close to Orangeville this massive proposal will be, we would like to draw your attention why we, and many more residents in this area, do not deem the proposed site appropriate.

On Jan. 27, county staff gave the Rockingham County Board of Supervisors a draft of a new zoning ordinance, which, if approved, would give a special use permit to two wind companies. The companies, Solaya Inc. out of Massachusetts and Dominion Utility out of Richmond, want to put large wind turbines on a private mountaintop near Criders. There are a number of problems with wind farms.

I encourage the taxpaying citizens of Union County to continue to question your Union County commissioners about the benefits of the proposed wind farm(s). Maybe they'll be wonderful, with all the benefits promised. And maybe they won't. Take it from us in your sister county of Wallowa: two of your commissioners have been very effective in decisions ruining our rural beauty.

Industrial wind is perhaps the silliest modern energy idea imaginable. In the final analysis, it's a faith-based proposition, requiring people to close their minds and clap their hands to revive it from a life-and-death struggle against unbelief, bringing the technology back from the oblivion that the steam engine consigned it to hundreds of years ago. Throwing vast amounts of the public's treasure down the rathole of wind is to deny investment in infinitely more effective technologies -- such as nuclear -- that will preserve the energy requirements of modernity. It is incredibly irresponsible.

We're open to Chicago-based Invenergy's latest proposal to come into the Roanoke Valley with a plan to put 15 windmills on top of Poor Mountain. Yes, along a ridgeline in prominent view as traffic along Interstate 81 comes and goes through the Roanoke Valley. ...That doesn't mean we're ready to endorse Invenergy's project, though.

Thanks to Colorado's renewable portfolio standard, wind power is a "must take" resource for Public Service, meaning the utility must incorporate wind power into the grid even if it means ramping down a coal-fired plant. Now, Gov. Ritter and Democrats in Denver want to increase the renewable portfolio standard by 50 percent through House Bill 1001, without considering the consequences for Denver's air quality. Despite the $2 billion worth of new wind turbines installed since 2004, Denver's air quality has not improved.

Supporters of the wind farm need to honestly ask themselves whether they would like to have 130 huge turbines planted on their favorite public space, whether it be a mountain ridge in Vermont, a canyon in the Southwest, or an ocean vista off Key West. With a footprint larger than Manhattan, with turbines each the size of the Statue of Liberty, this industrial project is out of place in an area that borders marine sanctuaries on all sides. Nantucket Sound is a national treasure and it must be protected at all costs.

The Feb. 22 Your Turn "We need lasting energy plan" offers more smoke than wind when it suggests we can harness the erratic "wind that is literally passing us by to create the true clean energy economy." It is delusional to think wind can replace base load coal and nuclear power.

Money spent on wind turbines from China will not jump-start an industry in America. The whole point of the federal government's stimulus program is to create jobs. In America. Unfortunately, that's not how it's working out, according to four U.S. senators who raise concerns that should not be ignored.

I cannot believe that it took four Democratic senators to hit the White House mule with a 2 by 4 on such an obvious matter of good politics and policy yesterday, but kudos to Bob Casey, Jon Tester, Sherrod Brown, and Chuck Schumer for insisting that funds from the 2009 stimulus bill be used to create American jobs, not foreign ones.