Reaping the wind in a brand new age: to some New Englanders, wind turbines are graceful and intriguing additions to the landscape that produce much-needed energy with no cost to the beleaguered natural environment. To others, they're a visual blight, one that threatens wildlife, fisheries, air and boat traffic, and the very sanctity of our public lands and waters.

• Author: Grady, Mary

Eleven 132-foot-high wind turbines range across Mount Waldo, a remote ridgeline in south-central Vermont about 15 miles east of Bennington. The sturdy white towers of the Searsburg Wind Power Facility--the largest wind installation in New England--emanate a calm majesty, their 63-foot blades extending out gracefully against a deep blue winter sky. On the ground, the bright air is still and quiet, but high above, one windmill finds breeze enough to crank lazily around, flinging a shower of ice shards against the crusty snow. The chime of the brittle ice shattering is the loudest sound to be heard in the cold, dense air.

"When they're spinning, the swooshing sound they make is pretty much drowned out by the wind," says Art Miller, who maintains the facility for the energy company enXco--a subcontractor to Colchester, Vermont's Green Mountain Power Corp., (GMPC), which owns it. Not that anybody is around to listen. From the ridge, the wide valley spread below appears nearly empty of civilized life.

During a year working at the site, Miller has seen three moose and one red fox, but he has never found a dead bird that might have been killed by colliding with a tower. As far as he can tell, the windmills have no impact on wildlife. Large, mature stands of beech trees to the east and west are important sources of food for the region's black bears. Searsburg is in a bear "corridor," and there was concern that the swooshing of the turbine blades would disturb the bears. The land is off-limits to hunters, and last year tours were allowed on just eight days, scheduled during times when bears are least likely to be moving across the site. "Machines don't really seem to bother animals," Miller says, "but people do."

The public has accepted the Searsburg project with little fuss. Of course there isn't much "public" in the region, and the turbines are barely visible from the nearest main road. Since 1997, the 11 windmills at Mount Waldo have spun calmly, without attracting too much attention, and provided six megawatts of power, enough for about 2,000 Vermont homes. Searsburg is the biggest wind installation in all of New England

But it won't be the biggest for long. Over the last five years, wind power production worldwide has nearly quadrupled, making wind the world's fastest-growing energy source. No longer reserved for hippies and techno-geeks, the big, efficient new turbines are attracting serious attention from mainstream companies with an eye on the bottom line. The technology can compete with oil- and gas-fired plants on its own merits, and tax incentives for green power sweeten the pot even more. Proposals for wind developments in New England dot the map this spring. Ridgetops in Maine, Vermont, and the Berkshires are drawing interest, as are offshore sites, mainly around Cape Cod. Some of the proposals now in play would dwarf the Searsburg project.

"We need wind power in New England," says Mark Sinclair, director of the Conservation Law Foundation's Vermont Advocacy Center. "It's the most promising and most economically viable renewable-energy source. Wind turbines produce no greenhouse-gas emission, and they have to be one of the tools to fight climate change. But the issue of siting is key to the future of wind development in New England. We have to make some hard choices."

Winds of Change Assail Cape Cod

Just how hard those choices can be is evident on Cape Cod, where a proposal to plant 130 giant wind turbines in the middle of Nantucket Sound has set off a nor'easter of a debate. The...