In the local news, Tri-State Generation, an independent electricity generation company ...and Duke Energy, the third-largest coal consumer in the American electric utility business, have announced that they're going to put up 34 big wind turbines near Burlington in eastern Colorado. The governor's office said this would equal 55 megawatts (55,000,000 watts) of new, green power. ...Actual wind production is never more than about 30 percent of nameplate over an annual average, since the wind doesn't blow constantly, even in Burlington. So the news should have been that another 15 megawatts, on average over the year, has been added to the Front Range grid.

The active engagement of citizens concerned about decisions imposed on them from above and afar - especially in seeking to protect the health and wealth that constitutes their most precious assets - is more to be applauded than demeaned. Across the province are numerous examples of local folks fighting just such David and Goliath battles.

Living in Vermont is not like living in the rest of the east coast megalopolis that stretches from Washington, D.C., to Portland, Maine. The dominant identity of our state is found in and of the mountains. The past 40 years of citizen-legislative effort has been to preserve the breathtaking beauty of our home. ...Big wind turbines, and developers trying to force them onto mountaintops, result in uproar everywhere in Vermont.

The town of Ira is enveloped by this massive proposal, even after some recent scaling back by the developer. Opposition in Ira and west Clarendon to this project is extensive, vocal, persistent and persuasive. ...The Vermont Community Wind "Farm" is a bad idea for this already settled, beautiful, unique spot on Earth. Let's hope the developers, Herald editor, and other regional politicians come to this same conclusion and soon.

Before we put "The Windy State" on our license plates, let's note that only one of these plants - LM Glasfiber - is up and running, and lately it's been turning out almost as many announcements of layoffs and cutbacks as it has windmill blades. The others, also afflicted by economic downturn, are moving slowly, if at all, toward actual production.

Windaction.org has posted the below opinion piece as a show of how little wind advocates and public-relations "experts" understand of the facts behind why industrial-scale wind facilities generate more oppostion than electricity.

Most people's understanding of wind turbines, as those gathering signatures for the petition realized, is that of "closed" systems promoted decades ago. You had wind or sun; it collected the energy and stored it in batteries in your basement to be used as needed. Industrial wind turbines are, comparatively speaking, an "open" system whereby the energy is distributed immediately. This sounds wonderful except for one significant issue. The industrial wind turbine process is intermittent.

The line _ intended to provide more electrical power to New York City _ would not only have marred large tracts of upstate landscape and had a deleterious effect upon the environment, but would actually have raised electricity rates for those of us who live near where the line would have been built. After a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ruling went against NYRI in March, it withdrew its application ...On June 9, NYRI requested a time extension to file comments with FERC to appeal its ruling. The firm has until July 9 to provide additional comments.

Col. Howard "Dave" Belote, commander of the 99th Air Base Wing at the Nellis Air Force Training Range, pledged to work together early in the process on projects like renewable energy in an attempt to dispel the military's image as an obstacle. "We're not trying to stop development, but we want to say we're here, we're going to be here for a long time," Belote told Nye County Commissioners Tuesday.

I was surprised to learn that the federal government has allocated $476,000 for the rehabilitation of haul roads used for the Wolfe Island wind turbine development. ...We were certainly led to believe that the company would foot the bill for the restoration, but now it seems that the taxpayers will be on the hook once again for subsidizing the wind energy boondoggle.

Now, as far as I'm concerned, the taxpayers of Random Lake can spend their money whichever way they like, but as with many good sounding proposals, the devil is usually in the details. ...One question that came to mind is: Just what is the educational benefit of the wind turbine?

Despite our region's decades-old dependence on hydropower as a reliable, reasonably clean and inexpensive power source, Washingtonians have embraced the concept of extracting energy from wind. In 2006, 52 percent of voters approved Initiative 937, requiring large utilities to increase renewable energy sources to 15 percent of their power production by 2020. Still, wind energy in the Northwest has raised valid concerns. For example, last month a golden eagle was killed at a wind tower southeast of Goldendale; it was believed to be the state's first casualty of an eagle killed by a wind turbine.

This is the perfect feel-good legislation for lawmakers, and they get double green stamps for this one because it also seems to gin up their environmental credentials. But as a practical matter, no state prisons are in Litchfield County where the U.S. Department of Energy says Connecticut's best breezes blow. To be sure, the wind is fierce at times in Cheshire, but conditions can be deathly still in the dog days of summer, when turbines would be reduced to gigantic lawn ornaments and expensive lightning rods.

On Thursday, May 7, the Orangeville Town Board held a public hearing on its proposed changes to their zoning laws. Over 200 people were estimated to be in attendance at the three-hour hearing. Despite the Wyoming County Planning Board's recommendation that Orangeville address the section specific to Wind Energy Conversion Systems (WECS) in a separate law, the Orangeville Town Board chose to ignore the county's recommendation. Predictably, the hearing became entirely about the wind issue.

The excellent letter by Dorothy K. Biggs leaves unsaid what must be said ("County shouldn't let US Wind Force write its own regulations," May 16 Times-News). We really need to know all about the dealings which the Allegany County commissioners have had with U.S. Wind Force, LLC.

Today Vermont is once again facing a significant threat to its environment and one which, ironically, was specifically dismissed as essentially unimaginable 40 years ago in the commission's report. In section 3 of their recommendations, the commission states: "Generating plants for electrical energy do not differ appreciably from other manufacturing installations." They couldn't imagine back then wind turbines as a generator of electrical power, scattered about our ridgelines and mountains, standing over 400 feet tall and consuming hundreds, if not thousands, of acres.

The "going green" statement are becoming boring and redundant. Those of us in rural agriculture production have been "going green" for more than 100 years; the press just keeps changing the term. If wind were such a great idea here, why didn't the power companies build wind turbines years ago? The turbine I built five years ago is for sale. The reason: not enough wind!

The experts say electricity produced by lake-based wind turbines would cost three times more than that produced by land turbines, and nearly eight times more than electricity from existing coal-fired plants. But Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason says we have a lot to lose if we don't make the big bet. Just what would that be?

Our work has shown that people in Mars Hill living within 3,500 feet of turbines there are truly suffering, in a real medical sense. Clearly, any regulation that results in placement of turbines, anywhere in Maine, at less than a 3,500-foot setback is courting a bad human outcome, regardless of sound modeling used by the industry to show there will be no ill effects in that range. As clearly demonstrated by post-construction measurements at Mars Hill, the model used by the wind industry for that project was seriously flawed.

As for green jobs, since the scores of construction workers left in early winter ...Lempster Wind has just three. There's a plant manager; a local man training to become a wind technician; and a representative from Gamesa, the Spanish company that made the turbines for Iberdrola, the company that built and owns Lempster Wind. He's on-site to tweak performance during this first year of operation, which is common for wind farms.