When debating wind energy, there is one point we can all agree on: there are sites suited for wind energy and sites that are not. Our beautiful township is not suitable. The moratorium passed unanimously by our Township Council reflects this. One visit here and it will be clear to you. ...The point is, Mr. Smitherman, our main industry is tourism and recreation. Visitors drive for several hours to enjoy the sense of wilderness our beautiful township offers. They come here to get away from industry. Please understand, this township's livelihood and way of life depends largely on the natural beauty of this land.

Of the proposals under consideration, at least one would be off the coast of Ocean County, 18 miles from Long Beach Island. Although a study prepared for the BPU noted the impact of wind farms off the Jersey coast on the fishing and tourism industries would be temporary and relatively minimal, it indicated there was far greater sensitivity to the visual impact of wind farms in Ocean County than in Cape May and Atlantic counties. The BPU should take that into account. ...The projected loss of tourism revenue would drop off dramatically if wind farms were located 6 miles or more off the coast.

If they are going to "talk the talk," it is time to "walk the walk." The foreign windmill promoters that are covering Montana like a swarm of locusts will be more than happy to sign you up for a giant industrial wind plant (subsidized by taxpayers) that you expect the rest of us to live with.

Coal mines always have been big business. Wind farms are getting to be. And when heavy-hitting companies such as North American Coal Corp., Minnesota Power and Florida Power and Light are eyeing an area of real estate, you bet it's consequential. The real estate isn't paltry; it's a lot of acreage in Oliver and Morton counties. Minnesota Power and FPL want to build separate wind farms. But the coal company says, "Wait a minute, we may want to mine where you guys are talking about putting up wind turbines. That won't work."

...to think that wind turbines are going to offer a long-term stimulus for tourism revenue is foolish. These giant wind turbines are a novelty to Michiganders right now. But as time goes by, the novelty will wear off. And as more and more wind turbines are built, there will be more and more people living here and paying the price for this "green" energy. ...and those living in the Thumb with these wind turbines towering over their homes will pay again in loss of property value and quality of life.

Small Montana wind energy producers are challenging NWE's proposal to charge them more for "integrating" their product into the portfolio. The wind producers contend that the costs NWE wants them to pay are more than what "integrating" their electricity actually costs. Further, the wind energy producers say NWE's proposed pricing could put them out of business. NWE has said that its customers will have to pay these costs if the wind energy producers don't. In its portfolio proposals, NWE assumes a carbon tax will be implemented in the future, making coal a less appealing source than in the past. The proposed portfolio also assumes the customer will increase energy conservation.

These towers will forever change the scenic value of the Musselshell River Valley. They will have a devastating effect on land values, adversely affect wildlife, create high noise levels and block the beauty of the night sky with red strobe lights. Wind power is being "sold" as green power. It is not green power. The United States Department of Energy study completed in 2007 indicates wind farms operate at 21 percent of capacity. That simply means other sources of conventional power, such as coal-fired, nuclear or natural gas, must back up the power generated by these turbines. ...Will we change from the Big Sky Country to The Big Tower Country just so a foreign utility and a couple landowners can line their pockets?

On Lewis the turbines will dominate the shores of many trout lochs, yet Lewis Wind Power's environmental survey makes no mention of the environmental impact on the lochs; it makes no reference to the existence of the lochs at all. The "green lobby" often use terms like "sustainable" to describe the industrial complex that Mr McIver hopes the Barvas Moor would become once the turbines are built. Industrialisation and the current sustainable lifestyle which has protected a unique ecosystem for thousands of years are incompatible, it is impossible for them to work hand in hand ...

[P]urchasers of green energy will find that wind energy produced in Pennsylvania is much more expensive than wind produced in, say, Montana. This mainly has to do with the location of wind resources. Montana has more areas with a higher sustained four wind than Pennsylvania. Also, since Montana is less densely populated, there are fewer troubles in siting the windfarms. The drawback, obviously, is that Montana is very far away, and electricity grids lose power over long distances. However, some researchers in Europe claim to have found a solution: DC current.

The message gets repetitious: There needs to be more electrical power transmission capacity in and from North Dakota ... more transmission capacity ... more ... So, isn't the answer as simple as stringing a bunch of lines? The fact is, no. The power has to have somewhere to go and must travel by an extraordinarily complex network of technology. For our area it's managed by a strange entity called the Midwest Independent Transmission System Operator. ...The snag is the process of hooking in a new power source. ...Midwest's queue has 224 wind projects, a 64 percent increase in one year. Not all will make it through the process; actually only 32 percent will end up connecting and producing. About 40 percent of requests drop out before even commencing the required FERC study. And 10 percent of those in the queue don't help matters at all, because they're just sitting on approvals ...

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 was an attempt to pave the way - almost literally - for energy companies to take advantage of pre-approved corridors that cut through public lands in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming. The problem is that much of the land that would be pre-approved is in sensitive wildlife habitat and cherished wildlands. Routes were chosen more with an eye to economic efficiencies than environmental impacts, and the result is a plan that is blatantly skewed to favor the interests of the energy companies over the interests of the general public. ...The Energy Department recently released a draft of its Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement and will be accepting public comment on the statement until mid-February. It plans to hold a public meeting in Helena on Jan. 29, but you can provide your comments now by going to its Web site at corridoreis.anl.gov. We hope Montanans from all over the state will take the opportunity to firmly oppose the plan as it's currently proposed, because it will take all of Montana to sink this awful idea.

About "getting used to the turbines," I live under the existing eyesores. I have not, nor will I, get used to them. They are noisy, with constant whirring and intermittent clunks that I first mistook for gunshots. I can hear this inside my house with the windows shut. The proposed expansion will, by the developers' estimates, put the average noise level at my house at 44.9 dBA. The World Health Organization defines 45 dBA as unfit for human habitation. Several acres of my property, and that of dozens of neighbors, will be above this limit. I doubt that I would get used to that. Would you? ...There are better alternatives for electricity production. One is located right in Somerset. Vermont leads the nation (by a large margin) in percent of energy consumption from renewable sources. Adding more wind turbines would not alter that ratio, for reasons stated above. The turbines will not help our energy needs and don't belong in the National Forest. Let's keep it a forest.

Environmental groups are not concerned with energy costs to low-, fixed- or middle-income citizens. Their only mission is to ban coal use. They don't care if the new coal steam plants are very clean. They don't care that by capturing half of the carbon dioxide, a coal plant is comparable to a gas plant. Environmental groups are insisting that electric generating plants be natural gas or a wind/natural gas combination. By the way, wind coupled with natural gas is more expensive than straight natural gas generation and always will be.

As we look to increase the use of wind power, some discussion about the suitability of specific sites for wind development makes sense. Just as there are a lot of opportunities in the state for wind energy development, there are also some places that are better left as they are today. That's the crux of the concern that The Wilderness Society and other conservation and sportsmen organizations expressed concerning a proposed wind project in Valley County. A Texas-based company, Wind Hunter, proposed developing a 20,000-acre project on Bureau of Land Management, state and private land that included 334 turbines and a new 34-mile transmission line. The project was proposed for development immediately adjacent to one of the most remote, wild, and picturesque places left on America's northern prairie, the Bitter Creek Wilderness Study Area/Area of Critical Environmental Concern.

We're all for energy conservation and alternative energy sources being brought online as part of an overall U.S. energy strategy that also includes developing traditional energy sources, regardless of opposition from the enviro-regulation litigation industry. But reality has to fit in that strategy somewhere, not just feel-good rhetoric.

Gordon Yancey of Martinsburg, N.Y., (about 55 miles northeast of Syracuse) ...owns Flat Rock Inn on Tug Hill, where 195 nearby windmills spin in the breeze, make noise, throw ice from the blades in winter and drive away the snowmobile and ATV riders who are his main customers. The 400-foot-high towers don't attract tourists, but instead lure rubberneckers, Yancey says. "They drive up the road, look at that these things, get out of their cars and take some pictures and then drive away." Yancey says. "They don't stay and spend their money here." Curious people may find the windmills interesting the first time they see them, Yancey says. "But by the second and third time, they realize how truly ugly and distasteful they are...

Add to this the damage to the tourism industry, and the whole concept of ranks of wind turbines across the roof and shores of Wales, producing intermittently and unpredictably amounts of electricity far less than developers lead us to expect, seems utterly foolish, especially when there are much less damaging ways to produce electricity (in which Wales is self-sufficient, in any case).

The ski industry is the "lifeblood" of northern New England precisely because it draws visitors eager to appreciate the rural splendor - and spend their money. While Cape Wind supporters often make hasty, anecdotal references to wind farm-related tourism in obscure European enclaves, the Cape's fickle, tourist-based economy relies on loyal return visitors - not curious one-timers. Just a small dip in tourist-related spending would result in thousands of lost jobs and millions of lost dollars.

The Rahall plan may not be the final answer, but a gold-rush mentality that promotes such huge numbers of heavily-subsidized, industrial-scale wind farms with no controls on industry is not a good answer either. As a first-draft work-in-progress, Rahall's proposal might just be a step in the right direction.

Wind is a great source of power. It is clean and plentiful. But it is hard to rely on as a major power source unless you figure out where to get power when the wind isn't blowing. In the power industry this is called "firming." NorthWestern Energy firms the power from the Judith Gap Wind Farm by purchasing contracts from other power companies. The problem is the contracts are not long-term and the prices are not stable....On the other hand, wind blows when we don't need power.