Trees, not turbines: No Coos County wind farm

When thinking of alternative energy sources, windmills sound so appealing. The reality is different from the romance, however. Wind turbines are an inefficient and periodic source of electric power that are most useful only in limited locations. Atop a mountain ridge in Coos County is not one of those places.

A company called Granite Reliable Power wants to put 33 wind towers, each 410 feet high, on 6.5 miles of ridgeline in what is known as the Philips Brook tract in Coos County. The state cannot allow this project without losing more than would be gained.

New Hampshire's northern vistas are critical to the state's tourist-based economy. Keeping them free of gigantic mechanical obstructions does more than preserve forests. It protects the bait, if you will, that lures so many flatlanders here.

If these windmills are put up, we all will lose. Only that small portion of Coos County will be directly spoiled. But what about the business owners there who spend their money all around the North Country? And what about the next hilltop wind farm? What pristine spot will that violate? Turning our mountaintops into power plants is a recipe for ecological and esthetic, and hence economic, damage.

All of us rely on hikers, skiers, campers, hunters and leaf-peepers. The people who rent them rooms or sell them gas and soda take that money and spread it throughout the economy from Pittsburg to Salem. We need trees on those mountains much more than we need windmills on them.

Professors and students at the University of New Hampshire are testing wind turbines on islands offshore and water turbines underwater.

If we must have turbine-generated power (and that is a big if), that is a more sensible place to do it.