Shasta County's decisions regarding the Hatchet Ridge Wind Turbine Project will have a dramatic and permanent effect on the quality of life here in the Intermountain area. The overriding problem is the proposed location. It's hard to imagine a project site that would have greater visual impact. It is difficult to visualize how enormous these monster turbines would be. Their height of 428 feet is equivalent to a 40-story building. Think of up to 68 Transamerica Pyramids, complete with flashing red lights, sitting on Hatchet Ridge! ...

Thanks to Supervisor Ashley, instead of the beautiful mountain view I used to see, I now look onto huge, white windmills, that rarely turn, with bright lights that flash off and on all night. These are the same windmills his planning commission, the county planning department and the developer assured us repeatedly wouldn't even be seen from Desert Hot Springs. ...I deeply resent The Desert Sun editorializing about Ashley while failing to report how little power the windmills he keeps approving generate.

From what we have been able to ascertain, many residential properties in the Victor Valley will be adversely affected by the Granite Mountain Wind Energy Project. Residents of Apple Valley, Lucerne Valley, and perhaps even some from Hesperia need to pay attention to what the Bureau of Land Management and Granite Wind LLC is building approximately six miles east of the Apple Valley town limits in our Granite Mountains (on a combination of BLM and privately owned land). ...we believe this area is asked to carry too much of the burden for the creation of alternative energy sources. We believe that the creation of this wind farm will be our "third strike" and that will cause a significant negative impact on the value of our property.

Hatchet Ridge Wind is both a vital clean-energy project for California and a dramatic alteration of eastern Shasta County's beautiful landscape. It is a feel-good environmental project that will help push California toward its goal of producing electricity with fewer fossil fuels. It is also a massive industrial project that will forever alter one of the prettiest landscapes in the north state. With several dozen towers and turbines reaching up to 418 feet tall, the network would dramatically change the views from the Intermountain area and Highway 299. It would also, according to the recently released environmental studies, take an unavoidable toll on migrating birds including eagles (yep, them again) and sandhill cranes.