A moratorium on Big Wind Farms in New Hampshire, makes absolute sense. I applaud Representative Harold "Skip" Reilly (R-Grafton) for his forward thinking on this matter. Reilly has proposed legislation calling for a moratorium on all wind power construction until the state updates its energy plan. (HB-580 and HB-484). Get back to basics and start asking important questions.

Two families whom I represent have moved out of their homes because of illnesses they felt after eight wind turbines were built nearby; others want to move but can't afford to. A Fond du Lac family abandoned their $300,000 remodeled farm house because their 16-year-old daughter developed intestinal lesions and was hospitalized for them. After they moved away, she recovered.

According to NZ Windfarms' consent application, many residents were supposed to experience "nil noise effects" from the two-bladed turbines. This did not reflect their actual experience. The residents have been vindicated, and NZ Windfarms has been found wanting.

An article in the Nikkei recently may well spell trouble for the fledgling alternative energy industry-and particularly for the wind power generation sector, where most energy investment has taken place in Japan. Apparently residents in the town of Toyohashi, Aichi Prefecture, have petitioned a wind turbine farm operator (Nikkei doesn't mention who) to close down their plant in the evening hours-on the basis that low frequency noise emanating from the wind farm is causing residents in the area serious health problems.

During a week filled with concerns about protecting the environment comes the alarming news that state officials are considering exploiting one resource to develop another. As reported by The Sun's Tom Pelton, the O'Malley administration is weighing a request from Pennsylvania developers to lease and clear-cut 400 mountaintop acres in two state forests in Western Maryland so they can erect 100 wind turbines, 40 stories tall, to supply clean power to just 55,000 homes. This counterproductive proposal should be rejected out of hand. Publicly owned land should be not be leased to private developers for any purpose, much less one that by definition will deny access to and enjoyment of that land to the public. ...Wind power is very attractive because it offers a renewable energy source that does not emit the pollutants that contribute to global warming and poison the Chesapeake Bay. But windmills don't come without their own costs to the environment and to the quality of life of those who live nearby. Whether densely populated Maryland is an appropriate place for wind farms is still an open question. The only windmill project to win state approval so far got it through a General Assembly mandate to overrule environmental conditions applied by the Public Service Commission.

This weekend it was revealed that a report commissioned by a government department into the noise made by wind turbines and the effect on those who live near them had been quietly doctored. In 2006, the acoustics firm Hayes Mackenzie was commissioned to measure noise on three wind farms. Its findings were most inconvenient. The noise made by the turbines was significantly higher than those foreseen in the Government's 1996 guidelines.

Setback requirements are a protection of the public health, safety and individual property rights - not a yardstick of a project's economic success. The people who have the most experience with commercial wind power today are the Europeans. They are saying that a minimum of one mile from residences and any turbine should be imposed to protect the public. But the bigger issue here is that our locally elected officials denied the project as designed and the governor believes she should override local land use authority based on how much more money Horizon can make.

Whether or not you agree with wind farms is not the argument surrounding the opening ceremonies of the West Cape Wind farm. ...The wind farm is here and it's not going anywhere. Those landowners that were never notified of the plan will never be given a voice. The turbines do make noise, they do generate flicker and they represent the biggest change to lifestyles that ever came to the west end of P.E.I.

The facts are the facts and the science is very clear - mountaintop industrial wind destroys forests, lays waste to fragile mountaintops, alters mountain hydrology, causes soil erosion and heavy metal leaching, eliminates important wildlife habitat, kills birds and bats, and does NOT reduce carbon emissions. In addition, it destroys the wild, scenic quality and silence of the mountains with flashing red lights and industrial high and low frequency sounds.

Imagine the brouhaha if an oil company built a series of 300-foot-high oil derricks along the foot of Mt. Timpanogas. Or if an advertising firm erected billboards as tall as the Statue of Liberty in front of Y Mountain. The fur would fly. But see how different it is with the Spanish Fork wind farm. State and local dignitaries line up to praise the turbines that are a visual blight at that end of Utah Valley.

The Green Energy Act seeks to do away with any need for proper environmental assessments for renewable energy projects, strip all planning decisions from municipalities, silence citizens and give more power to the energy companies with the help of a new Energy Czar. Rural Ontario will be wide open for exploitation and local government will be have absolutely no say. This is greenwashing with a gun to your head.

Ten of the 19 proposed turbines would violate Bureau County Zoning ordinances, mostly on being too close to homes, property lines and housing communities like Normandy. The developers have asked for variances to these ordinances. It is curious that developers could not find other spots for these 10 turbines in the thousands of surrounding acres.

Those of us who live close to power lines are concerned about the governor's and CMP's claims of the project's cleanness, greenness, price reliability and general value for Maine. We have met with the Lewiston City Council, our state legislators, attended hearings with the Maine Public Utilities Commission and tried to get CMP to listen to us. We are worried about our own backyards, but we are not interested in having the project simply moved to other people's neighborhoods. We want solution

The agencies proposing to install 600 miles of high-voltage power lines had better be ready for a fight, because residents along the route are ready to give it to them. Most importantly, they should be prepared to explain why it's even necessary that they cut through as much forest as currently envisioned. The 200 people who showed up last week at the Red Lion Hotel's ballroom in Redding were just a taste of what's to come.

Harnessing the wind and doing all we can to utilize all kinds of clean, renewable energy sources should be the goal of all of us. But this particular technology is so far proving to be expensive, inefficient, and unreliable. So, Governor O'Malley, before wrecking our ridges, how about first going ahead with the offshore plan at Ocean City and see how it goes in terms of production and efficiency? (After all, on hazy days, we won't be able to see them ...

Wellfleet residents would be making a big mistake if they backed the proposed 400-foot wind turbine in the White Crest Beach area. There are simply too many instances of towns regretting decisions to fast track plans to be in the forefront of the green energy movement.