It is time for Ontario to work with citizens and environmental specialists to establish guidelines for the careful development of wind energy (Who Could Object To Wind Power? - Nov. 25). There are some places where wind turbines simply don't belong. ...Build wind developments in the wrong places and the environment will be collateral damage.

Next week, Bath County planners are likely to discuss and review what may be one of the most important new ordinances our county has considered in decades - one to guide them on how applications for industrializing their mountaintops with wind energy turbine towers will be handled. If officials here succeed in passing it, Bath will be the first locality in Virginia to have an ordinance in place addressing commercial wind utilities. And it won't come a minute too soon. ...

I had always favored building wind farms. The burden of coal mining-and particularly mountaintop removal coal mining-is so great that anything would be better. If wind farms diminish that then they are worth it. ...Now there is a new twist to the argument, something that makes thinking about wind power even more difficult. In the article that begins on page 14 of this issue, Ms. Collins argues that building more wind farms will not reduce the use of coal. She argues that because wind farms only make electricity when the wind blows, they are inefficient and unreliable. ...If it true that wind farms do not diminish the use of coal, then we do have some rethinking to do. If they do not replace any coal, then what is the point? Why should a single bat die, a single hiker be inconvenienced, a single tree be cut if wind power is not going to reduce the use of coal or some other source of electricity?

This afternoon, the Shasta County Board of Supervisors will have a hearing concerning the Hatchet Ridge Wind project. The board's decision will have a significant impact on birds living in and migrating through the West. The Board of Supervisors has not been given the knowledge to make a proper decision on the project. ...The wind power industry learned a lesson from the astounding number of bird kills at Altamont Pass. Instead of pursuing better wind turbine designs that would limit bird kills, it chose a path of cover-up and lies. Today many wind turbine sites have limited access and workers will lose their jobs if they disclose the truth.

That predatory wind operatives, who provide no meaningful product or service, would sacrifice these mountains for their narrow self-interest is outrageous. ...Synergics Wind LLC has clear-cut and bulldozed hundreds of acres around Roth Rock, without securing grading permits beforehand and in areas well-known for harboring state-endangered species. Synergics has not applied for or received any construction permit from the Maryland Public Service Commission, as required.

Wind power is one of the solutions to our energy needs both here in Oklahoma and beyond, as well as providing a new industry and the jobs that support it. ...Also noteworthy is the potential for wind energy to be not so green after all. Wind farms, like any type of development, built on the wrong site can have a negative impact on the environment. Strides toward solving one conservation problem should not inadvertently cause another.

The windmills Windforce LLC are proposing to put on Dan's Mountain are over 400 feet tall the blades are 150 feet long. You will be able to see the windmills from almost everywhere in Allegany County. There are currently only two buildings in Baltimore larger, one in Pittsburgh and one in Cleveland. Do you want our Western Maryland Mountain side destroyed only to bring a profit to an out of town company?

This is the first breeding success at this site in 11 years. The parent eagles must have been pampered with plenty of live rabbits to make sure this would happen. All in all, two million pounds have been spent to produce a "success story" at Beinn an Tuirc. So much money is at stake here: the approval of hundreds of wind farms where eagles fly, in Scotland and in the world, hinge upon this kind of favourable publicity.

Horns Reef [wind farm in Denmark] is emblematic of enormous subsidies to industries that would not exist in a free market. In the U.S., such industries are being supported by massive government subsidies and tax write-offs that shift the cost of resulting electricity to unsuspecting Americans' tax bills and monthly electricity bills.

For a company that hopes to start construction on Virginia's first wind energy plant in the next few months, Highland New Wind Development appears to be dragging its heels. Recently, the state Department of Conservation and Recreation said it had not heard from the developer after requesting more information in its initial review. Last week, Virginia's Department of Historic Resources said it still awaits a view shed study, among other things, before it can offer recommendations for softening the impact of 400-foottowers on Highland County's tallest summit. In the last three months, updates from the developer to Highland's supervisors haven't yielded much new information. HNWD says it's still seeking investors, has not finalized a power purchase agreement, and cannot complete a final site plan because securing turbine equipment has become harder to do.

Death, destruction and insomnia are marketed as "renewable electricity" to urban consumers. The federal production tax credit drives it all, with additional subsidies on national forest, where no property taxes are levied. ...We'd have to replace nearly every tree with a turbine to offset even a small amount of coal's impact, devastating the forest in the process. Without a national policy on energy conservation and efficiency, we're whistling in the wind anyway.

Wind power has been proposed in letters to the editor as a good option to LNG, but there is no silver bullet solution to our energy needs, as far as I can see. Because wind power depends on the wind, it is an unreliable source of electrical power. Wind power must be backed up by a more reliable conventional power source. That power source is LNG. As wind power develops out, more LNG power plants will be built to back up wind power. Wind power cannot replace LNG; it will, instead, make LNG more necessary.

I am extremely concerned at the detrimental impact the construction of wind turbines on the land adjacent to High Elms Lane, Benington could have on wildlife. It is well known locally that this site supports a large and varied wildlife and many of the species are of national and international importance. It has taken a long time and sympathetic farming to encourage so many species to thrive in this area. A total of 26 mammal species (not counting bats) and 75 bird species have been recorded around the proposed wind farm, along with various amphibians and reptiles.

There is a face-off brewing between two federal agencies over the fate of birds in Nantucket Sound, centering on the Cape Wind energy project. At issue is whether the U.S. Minerals Management Service defers to the cautionary advice of its expert peer, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, or will it ramrod the Cape Wind project forward, driven by political considerations? ...In the apparent hurry to permit the Cape Wind project this year, Minerals Management seems poised to ignore the Fish & Wildlife Service. Citizen action is needed to get the message across to Minerals Management: "Proceed with caution. Do not play 'wind turbine Russian Roulette' with endangered species. Move Cape Wind elsewhere, out of harm's way!"

A series of events on bats look set to be overshadowed by problems affecting the mammals' chances of survival, according to an expert. Anne Youngman, the Bat Conservation Trust's Scottish officer, said wet weather may have hit the breeding season for a second year running. ...On the agenda is a presentation on wind farms in mountain areas of Portugal. Ms Youngman said: "Wind farms were a hot topic at the last symposium. "In Germany, there are turbines above forests and the mortality rate of bats has been found to be high.

The "Birds, fish may like wind farm" article on Monday 11 was poorly researched. It has been well-documented that thousands of birds (from large raptors to small warblers) are killed by land-based wind turbines in the western U.S. each year. And many species of migrating birds using the Atlantic Flyway cross Delaware Bay between southern New Jersey and Delaware every fall and spring. Neither of these facts was mentioned in the article.

No matter how much good PR wind energy gets in the U.S., or in Virginia, from politicos eager to jump on the "green power" band wagon, officials and residents in both counties must retain their focus here at home. They should tune out the frenzied and exaggerated scare tactics used so often to shove wind power down our throats. They must keep their eyes squarely in their own back yards when it comes to siting issues. Everything from wildlife and environmental impacts to the majority voices of those who live here must take precedence over the misleading public relations machine that takes the spotlight off the millions of dollars we already spend to subsidize a source of power that cannot meet our needs if developed ...

Oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens is being disingenuous, telling one thing to the American people and another to Congress. He has repeatedly said that no government help is needed to pursue his plan to build the world's largest wind farm in the Texas Panhandle. Yet he is lobbying hard for extension of the Production Tax Credit and National Renewable Energy Zones -- essentially a huge tax shelter for wind industry investors and expedited eminent domain for transmission corridors. The real innovation here is the well-coordinated manipulation of public perception.

It is the very magnitude of this power that has begun to raise some questions about the weather-related implications of harnessing wind. The laws of thermodynamics tell us that if energy is produced by a turbine, the wind passing over it must be slowed. While the effect today is negligible, a crash program to harvest wind power might have serious climatic consequences. ...Evidence also suggests that turbines amplify desiccation in fragile desert areas, where American wind farms are typically located. A study of ground squirrels by the University of California at Davis found those living near wind turbines exhibited signs of increased stress.

Accompanying the myth that wind turbine energy will replace fossil fuel energy is denial of the ecological impacts and health effects of wind turbines by governments and promoters. The ugly reality is that wind turbines are a serious addition to the industrialization of quiet rural landscapes, places that people have long valued for quality of life, retirement and recreation. The environmental costs imposed on wildlife and people have been systematically ignored by a political and regulatory system that has corrupted individual and societal freedom and environmental integrity by relegating these values to some distant offshoot of economic growth.