The Freedom Planning Board should revisit its decision to close the hearing and ask CES to address lingering questions about project. A few weeks’ delay is less important than ensuring the board meets its responsibility to abutting landowners and other residents of Freedom.

The Federal Communications Commission recently began the process of considering new rules to reduce the number of birds killed in collisions with communications towers. The best way to reduce collisions is to have fewer towers by collocating equipment on one structure. The FCC rulemaking furthers the national discussion of collocation, which can benefit more than birds.

Let’s be honest and admit that wind power plants on mountains will amount to an industrialization of the fragile high landscape of Maine. These plants cannot fail to change forever the character–including the ecosystems–of some of the most beautiful parts of our state.

Chandler Woodcock, Republican candidate for governor, has done Maine citizens a great service by calling attention to the fact that wind power is an inefficient and expensive way to generate electricity (”Blaine House hopefuls square off,” BDN, Sept. 15).

The land above 2700 feet in Maine's mountains has been protected from development since 1972. According to state regulations, a rezoning like the one Maine Mountain Power is requesting in order to build the project must meet stringent criteria. The proposed development must fit "harmoniously into the existing natural environment," and it must satisfy "a demonstrated need in the community and area." It must provide a "public benefit." This project does not meet these criteria.

Can't anyone see the hypocrisy of acknowledging the crisis of global warming while at the same time advocating removal of functioning hydroelectric facilities, which quietly produce totally renewable electricity with zero greenhouse gas emissions and, unlike wind turbines, with very little visual impact?

Something stinks. If it’s isn’t air pollution, it may have something to do with the word “wind” being a synonym not only for babble and balderdash, but also for flatulence.

At what price do we give the nod to wind towers on mountaintops in sight of the Appalachian Trail?

The question is not whether to build wind farms, but where to build them. For the most part developers have done a good job in siting projects in areas where the environmental and scenic impacts are not of great concern. (The Mars Hill project is a good example.) The Maine Mountain Power proposal is an extreme exception to this rule. Mainers should oppose this project and ask their public officials to protect one of the state's most spectacular wild landscapes.

Energy efficiency is by no means a permanent solution, but it should be a permanent part of the solution. Sensible energy use, combined with new power resources, is the only workable answer for New England.

From the south, the mountains begin with the magnificent Bigelow Range and extend into Quebec. Few people are aware of this area, but it is now the target of corporate juggernauts sensing the profit to be made from production tax credits, accelerated deprecation and other taxpayer financial schemes.

It is not enough to simply talk in symbolism. You must state facts. May I suggest you start with these crucial questions. ....

That kind of sacrifice is surely admirable and we here in Massachusetts would gladly pass the Cape Wind project along to you.

....we believe there are places where this type of development is inappropriate, and the proposed location of the Redington Mountain project is one such place. We are concerned about the detrimental effects the project would have on one of the region's wildest mountain environments.

Upon extensive research on the wind farm industry on the Internet, talking with the Cape Cod and Vermont citizens dealing with wind farms, I have reached this conclusion. They are masters of giving the public a half-truth then guiding us to an assumption that is not true, but one they want us to believe.

Missing from that harsh logic, however, is any evidence that industrial wind power can indeed "stem global warming's progress." With 20 percent of its electricity supposedly coming from wind, Denmark's greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise. That country has not reduced its use of other fuels despite a landscape saturated with wind turbines.

It is nice to be able to use a newspaper to push one's own viewpoints on the environment, social issues or whatever the editors of the newspaper feel is their liberal duty. But you should at least have a clue to what you're talking about.

Wind turbines generate much more cash than they do electricity.

At the sound of the ruckus, I looked out a window to see a tractor-trailer rig hauling two of those preposterously huge 125-foot wind turbine blades north from Searsport to the site of a controversial wind farm project at Mars Hill, an endeavor commonly known by more than a few disgruntled County residents as the Great Mars Hill Mountain Defacement Boondoggle.

All renewable energies have a common fault: They are very dilute. Massive areas are needed to produce small amounts of energy. Solar and wind have strong periodicity and do not match actual electricity use.