To the best of my knowledge, this is the first proposal by any company to site wind turbines on the Kittatinny Ridge or Blue Mountain ...As an ornithologist involved in raptor migrations and hawk watching along the Kittatinny Ridge or Blue Mountain, and author of several books, I am unconditionally opposed to the installation of all wind turbines on this internationally famous, and vitally important, raptor migration corridor.

But the fact is that while wind power is being promoted as an essential part of any credible response to climate change, it is increasingly being challenged and questioned, as indeed is the case with other so-called "renewable" forms of energy, such as corn-based ethanol. ...a National Research Council study released this year entitled "Environmental Effects of Wind Energy Projects," concluded that based on the expected maximum number of windmills to be built, wind would offset total expected higher carbon emissions by no more that 2.25 percent. Is that a difference worth allowing the ridge tops of Pennsylvania to be dotted with giant industrial-sized windmills?

A Feb. 2 letter by windpower industry lobbyist Frank Maisano ignored two major problems that industrial windplants face in Pennsylvania: # Huge numbers of industrial-scale wind turbines will be needed to provide even a small fraction of the electricity we use (4,000 utility-scale turbines covering 500 miles of ridgeline to provide 10 percent of the commonwealth’s electricity). # Because Pennsylvania’s winds are relatively modest, industrial windfarms are being built mostly on forested ridgetops to capture the most powerful winds. In the Keystone State, these ridgetops are our last strongholds of unfragmented forests and the unique species there. Readers should be aware that Frank Maisano also was the spokesman for the Global Climate Coalition, a now-defunct umbrella group for companies opposed to the Kyoto treaty, and who dismissed the Kyoto Protocol as largely symbolic in nature.

I strongly agree with Laura Jackson’s recent letter pointing out that the ecological costs of industrial windfarms on Pennsylvania’s forested ridgetops far exceed their benefits. These costs include massive forest fragmentation to construct and maintain the 400-foot tall turbines, scalping of ridgetops to develop heavy-duty roads for maintenance, and further carving of the forest for the construction of substations and transmission lines. In addition to this large-scale forest destruction, there’s also the huge problem of bat deaths due to turbine blades, to the extent of 50-100 bats killed per turbine per year in forested ridgetop settings. Proponents of ridgetop windfarms attempt to justify forest fragmentation and direct mortality of bats and birds by claiming that there will be a significant reduction in greenhouse gases as a result of windfarm operation. The reality is that it would require 4,000 industrial-scale wind turbines covering 500 miles of the commonwealth’s ridgetops to meet just 10 percent of Pennsylvania’s energy needs. On the Keystone State’s forested ridgetops, the huge ecological costs of industrial windfarms far exceed their small environmental benefits.

Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Katie McGinty’s claim that the huge bat kill resulting from the Mountaineer industrial windfarm in West Virginia was an “aberration” is false. The kill rate for bats due to collision with the blades of industrial wind turbines on forested ridgetops east of the Mississippi River is 50-100 bats per turbine per year.

Juniata Valley Audubon asks concerned residents to contact Gov. Ed Rendell, their senators and representatives and the Department of Environmental Protection to voice their displeasure over the gross waste of almost $400,000 to study a proposal that would cause so much harm to both outdoor recreation and wildlife, and provide only minuscule amounts of expensive, unreliable electricity.