We live in a place of few cash crops. One is the scenery that drives our tourism. The other thing we have is a few wild places where you can plant a foot, pivot like a hoop-star, and gaze at a landscape uncluttered by anything but the Milky Way. The value on that? Incalculable. Again, tourism, and the stuff of the soul. A whole bunch of far-seeing people walked both sides of the aisle to preserve the Connecticut Lakes Headwaters Tract for your grandchildren and mine, for all time, for jobs, recreational access, and the sheer value of the landscape itself. Good thing we did - just look all around at everything else.

As part of the widespread push for wind power, state and local governments are promoting "model ordinances" for siting industrial wind farms which supposedly establish limits for noise and other potential hazards. These are used to determine where wind projects can be located in communities which are predominantly rural and are often extremely quiet during the evening and night, one of the main reasons why people choose to live there.

As we look out across the river towards our Canadian friends on Wolfe Island, we see gigantic wind towers multiplying every day. These goliaths are over 40 stories high and have blades which swing over an area larger than a football field every three to four seconds. These towers take up vast amounts of real estate, and they cannot be concealed. Moreover they are noisy, create television interference, cast shadows and cause flicker as well as possible medical disorders.

Having just returned from Annapolis, where I testified on Sen. George Edwards' six wind energy bills, and preparing for the hearing on Thursday, I have a number of questions/comments about the format. It is my understanding that citizen comments will be directed only to the Planning and Zoning Commission report, The Regulation and Management of Wind Energy Devices, A Report to the Planning and Zoning Commission of Allegany County, January 29, 2009 ("Report").

One of the great pitfalls of a generation caught up in a cause of the moment is to make mistakes that will mark our hearts, our souls, our future generations and the landscape for years to come. We may be approaching such a pitfall with the proposed development of a huge wind-tower project in the still wild, still remote and still beautiful Phillips Brook tract. Fighting a massive wind-power project at a time when anything touted as "green" is perceived as patriotism is to swim against an almost insurmountable tide.

For anyone who hasn't been tuned in, the proposal involves 33 wind-turbine towers 410 feet high with blinking lights on top, strung out over 6.5 miles of ridge-line smack in the middle of the North Country, aided and abetted by nearly 40 miles of construction and service roads and a new 5.8-mile transmission line. The ballyhooed "enough power for 33,000 homes" will go as a drop in the bucket into the massive New England Power Pool -- and this from a state that already generates twice as much power as it consumes. In the end, it will support only seven jobs.

There is an awfully big push these days to have farms turned into wind factories, to take agricultural land and turn it into an industrial wind turbine complex, complete with all the infrastructure of access roads, poles and wires. This is NOT farming. This is not even remotely similar to farming even though many still like to call a gaggle of 400-foot wind turbines a wind 'farm'. They are nothing more than an industrial use of agricultural landscape.

This crisis involves far more than just our officials (though they have not handled it very well). It includes every landowner who signed a land lease and was promised wind turbines on their property before there were regulations in place to govern them. It includes every brother, sister, parent, cousin or friend of them, who refuses to consider the negative impact of these turbines on their friends, neighbors and community as a whole simply because they don't want to deny these landowners this revenue windfall.

Not surprisingly, wind companies from all over are lining up for a piece of the free money. Little citizens' groups have sprung up across the province to try to stop them from erecting 35-storey wind turbines in their backyards. But the Premier's energy minister, George Smitherman (a.k.a. The Enforcer), has declared that he will squash the NIMBYs like a bug. I have wind turbines coming to my backyard, too. I wouldn't mind - if only they made sense. If only they could really help us break our addiction to coal and oil, cut our emissions etc. But they can't.

Wind turbines do make noise, as any expert will agree. Obviously the noise dissipates with distance, and I don't know at what distance they are no longer audible. The turbine blades rotate at about 200 mph (300 kph), but appear to be moving slowly because of their tremendous size. ...The turbines will affect the view of the ridgeline tremendously. ...As I have talked to people in the community, I am amazed at their misinformation and apathy. I remember the public outcry over the power line several years back. This project will dwarf the power line a thousand times over.

Maine is a rural, relatively poor state. As such, we have become the target of multi-national corporations that seek to control our natural resources and direct them out of state. Nestle is continually expanding water mining into our communities. Plum Creek is trying to turn the Moosehead Lake region into a destination filled with high priced resorts and acreage for luxury home. Industrial wind farm corporations such as FirstWind and TransCanada seek to put turbines on ridgelines throughout the state.

A good precedent for regulation of the wind energy industry in Virginia was established by the State Corporation Commission when it issued a permit for the proposed Highland New Wind project in Highland County. The review process was systematic, and the permit included precautionary conditions based on the carefully considered recommendations of natural resources agencies and conservation organizations.

Why has California basically stalled, while other states have forged ahead? I put the question to V. John White, executive director of the Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies in Sacramento. First, Mr. White pointed out, California was the early leader in wind power - it installed several big projects in the 1980s (one of which, Altamont Pass, has been criticized for harming birds). Not much has happened since, however, and the fact that California moved early "means that the easy projects are already in," said Mr. White.

Finally, of interest to me, was the study that AES commissioned on the rate and availability of the wind resource on Laurel Mountain. That data was retracted from the published testimony and only the commissioners and a few individuals were privy to its findings. AES called it proprietary information. A little research has lead me to the U.S. Department of Energy site (www.windpoweringamerica.gov/wind_maps.asp) and it shows that the wind resources in this region are quite limited.

An anonymous writer sent letters to many citizens of Hammond in which accusations were made against Concerned Residents of Hammond. It stated that members are not true residents of Hammond, are anti-environment, are self-serving, hostile people and are making up facts. While part of me balks at responding to one who does not have the integrity to sign his own name, as a member of CROH I think clarification is important.

Finally, the people spoke and a company rolled over. Well, turned on its side just a little. News that Mighty River Power is to remove nine turbine sites on its proposed Turitea Wind Farm is great news for the opponents who were going to neighbour the project. Five of the turbine sites being removed are close to houses and four are being removed for ecological reasons.

Something awful happened in a conference room at a hotel in Falmouth on Dec. 18. The U.S. Coast Guard revealed itself to be totally politicized in its review of radar and safety issues arising from the plan of a Boston energy entrepreneur (Jim Gordon) to build a wind farm covering 25 square miles of Nantucket Sound.

The old adage, "figures never lie, but liars figure," is a most appropriate axiom when applied to the Orangeville wind turbine survey (mailed Aug. 19, 2008). The first of five survey questions is worded to elicit a desired response from Orangeville residents. It reads; "Would you be in favor of a wind turbine energy project in the Town of Orangeville if it reduced your town property taxes for at least 20 years or more?" This conditional question is both hypothetical and directional.