EarthFirst troubles

EarthFirst Canada Ltd, owner of the Nuttby Mountain wind farm project, is in financial difficulties with share prices plummeting from $2.10 in May to a recent low of 22 cents. As of today, this has rallied to 40 cents.

EarthFirst, a subsidiary company of CrestStreet (the original primary investor of Pubnico Wind Farm), bought the Nuttby project from AWPC in March for $75,000 and $374,00 in shares. At today's share price, those same shares are now worth around $76,700.

Although both EarthFirst, NSPI and AWPC claim that the Nuttby project is going as planned, this project has to be in some jeopardy.

EarthFirst also invested in the 180MW Dokie 1 wind farm in development in BC, which is reported to have already overrun costs by as much as $230 million.

EarthFirst has retained independent financial advisors and legal counsel. Robert Toole has been replaced as president and CEO.

Last year NSPI put out an RFP for 130MW power and accepted projects this year with the potential for about 240MW. Nuttby is rated at 45MW. If Nuttby were to be cancelled, NSPI would still have at least 70MW wiggle room to comply with the required 130MW for end of 2009.

Democracy from the ground up

Fighting city hall is always an uphill battle, but grassroots movements are still possible

By SARA JEWELL
24 August 2008

SOMETHING HAPPENS — a company wants to extract aggregate next to an asparagus farm, a mother of two is killed on a section of highway known for deer crossing, a community realizes it needs a new fire hall — and there is reaction. "I should write a letter," someone might say. "I should call the newspaper," says someone else. "This needs to be addressed for the sake of our community," neighbours decide. "What can we do?"

Most of us barely muster up the conviction to follow through on writing a letter, let alone join a group. Interest diminishes and people move on to something else. But what happens when something is too important to let go? All it takes is one person who says "This is what I think we should do" and a grassroots movement — the banding together of ordinary citizens to deal with an issue affecting their community — is born.

When a wind metering tower suddenly appeared behind her house on Nova Scotia’s northwest coast, Lisa Betts began asking questions. "I had a couple of friends involved in putting that tower up and they knew it was the wind farm people seeing if it was a good spot. Everyone else thought it was a cellphone tower."

That prompted Betts to begin researching wind turbines. In the beginning, her interest was entirely personal because she didn’t want a wind turbine so close to her home but soon she realized it was going to have an impact on the entire Gulf Shore community where she lives. "The more I found out about them, the more I believed them not to be good for this community. My vision of this whole thing got broader and broader."

To get information out to her neighbours, Betts posted notices around the community announcing her new blog. "My point of view was to get the information out there, not to try and persuade anybody to change their mind. Another part of my policy was if I’m the lone voice in the wilderness, if no one else agrees with me, I’m not going to be the crazy person running around by myself. But I never had to worry about that. I had nothing but support."

As interest in — and opposition to — the proposed wind farm grew, Betts began to seriously consider an idea she’d had for years: that the Gulf Shore Road, which stretches between Pugwash and Wallace, needed a residents’ association. As with many grassroots movement, this one began at the dining room table. "I called some friends who were actively interested in this. Three of us sat down and kicked around some ideas." The first official meeting of the Gulf Shore Preservation Association drew almost 80 people; there are now 450 members.

"I was a little disappointed at how complacent people were at first," Betts says, but adds she was more surprised by the degree of enthusiasm once people got involved. "This place has great meaning for those people who have been coming here for 40, 50 years. There was no way they were going to take this lying down."

Change to a community is unavoidable but when that change threatens a special way of life, it brings out the passion in people. For a year, some residents of Mahone Bay have been battling a development they say will "change the character of this Nova Scotian treasure forever" as it’s put on the website for the Friends of the Mahone Woods and Field. When a developer announced plans to turn a soccer field and a 16-acre wood into a high-density housing project, Valerie Hearder felt that the whole underpinning of her life and commitment to the community would be eroded.

"When I realized this was happening, I thought, ‘It’s development, you have to live with it,’ " Hearder recalls. Then she said to herself, ‘No, I don’t. I’m actually going to lose something so profound here that I felt compelled — even if I was the only one to speak up — to go on record as saying I protest this.’ I also had somewhat of a romantic notion: Who speaks for the woods?" There came a moment for Hearder when she realized she had to put herself out there publicly and make her opinion heard. And like Betts, she didn’t want to be the only person out there fighting this.

"I sat down and wrote an open e-mail. I really agonized (over it) because I felt quite exposed — I was going to put my opinion down and send it out to as many people as I could. I very carefully said, ‘To my neighbours and fellow citizens, I’m very concerned . . . I feel I must reach out and find out if anyone thinks like me.’ I felt as if I had no option, that I had to do this."

On the other side of town, a woman who would be unaffected personally by the development found herself outraged by the process.

"What got my attention was the first public meeting," says Sue Bookchin. "The mayor said that whoever would like to speak could stand and then he called on people. At nine o’clock, the mayor ended the meeting while people were still standing — and I was one of those people."

Bookchin calls that the trigger for her involvement. "The idea that there are people at the front of room who have the power and decision making control and they’re not listening. I felt frustrated. I had things to say that others had not contributed. The idea that this would go through without any say by the public made my sense of justice rage."

That’s how a grassroots movement gets started: there is a trigger.

"Citizens want to be involved," explains Dr. Christine Saulnier, the director of the Nova Scotia office for the Ottawa-based Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. "They don’t just want to vote, they want to do something else. They want to feel like they can take part in the way our society is being shaped."

For Bookchin, her involvement was an issue of democracy.

"It’s public land. As far as I’m concerned, the councillors do not own that land. The citizens of this town own that public land. Just because we elected these people doesn’t mean they can do what they want. I believe that once you are elected, you must continue to listen to your constituents and represent their desires, not your own."

That, according to Dr. Saulnier, is the basic impetus for any grassroots movement in our society: the limitations of representative democracy. "We have to think about the limitations of our current system of democracy. You’re looking for ways outside the system to influence the system and one way to do that is to come together with others who have similar concerns in a specific area. As an individual, you can call your MLA, your MP, and make those concerns heard but numbers — we’re talking about having a critical mass of people coming to consensus, ideally, on an issue and making those voices heard or making changes themselves."

Hearder and Bookchin worked with others to create Friends of Mahone Woods and Field, which is not a formal association but a website that, like Betts’ blog, is meant to provide information.

"This community is a pretty quiet, community-minded, lovely tourist spot and I think we were all asleep. We got complacent," says Bookchin. "This public meeting woke a lot of people up."

Grassroots movements can also focus on creating something. Elaine Cook is the chairperson of the Friends of the Pugwash Library (FOPL), a group formed officially over a year ago to raise funds to build a new library to serve the eastern part of Cumberland County.

"I’ve got a desire for a new library here because I’m a library user," Cook explains of her decision to get involved. "I noticed we needed a new library when I went into the children’s section and saw books piled in boxes because there is no shelf space."

Since it draws on the ordinary person, passion for a cause often transcends skill. Cook admits she is hampered by her lack of fundraising experience.

"I’m just playing it by ear," she says. "I read, I network, I pick people’s brains."

One of those brains belongs to editor and children’s author Norene Smiley, a new resident to Pugwash and the co-owner of a local café. She chose to volunteer with the FOPL because she too sees the "dire need" for a new facility.

"I think (the FOPL) is a good example of what can be done with a bit of effort and will," says Smiley. "They don’t have the decision-making power to make this happen alone but they do represent concerned citizens. They are a good example of how a small group can make a difference."

Or is that just the sustaining myth of grassroots movements? When ordinary citizens get together to battle government and corporations, to try to make their voices heard above the din of development and expansion, does it really make a difference?

Despite the obvious need for a new library, Cook finds the greatest frustration with the various levels of administration involved. Cook says "getting the interested parties together to form a plan to get funding" is the big roadblock the FOPL faces.

According to Lisa Betts, the wind farm plan on the Gulf Shore seems to have fizzled, the companies searching for more welcoming, or at least less obstructive, communities. "We’re not going to have the satisfaction of an ‘Aha! Gotcha!’ moment," Betts says with a hint of regret in her voice.

In Mahone Bay, debate over the high-density housing project remains active. "We’re still waiting for the other shoe to drop," Valerie Hearder admits.

"Council has asked the developer to go back and draw up another proposal for the woods and fields."

When asked if there has been a backlash against those opposing the development, Hearder replies with an emphatic Yes.

"Suddenly you have a neighbour upset with you because they don’t agree with what you’re doing," she says. "No one sets out to divide a community but that’s the way it unfolded."

Sue Bookchin adds, "I’m not against change and that’s how it’s been interpreted. But that’s not what it is for me. Change just for change’s sake — without thinking about what you’re sacrificing — is foolish."

Bookchin’s motivation for being involved illustrates the importance of grassroots movements: "I feel like I need to contribute to being part of how change happens."

Editor's Note: One of a series of stories marking the 250th anniversary of the province’s legislative assembly. Freelance writer Sara Jewell lives in Port Howe.

http://thechronicleherald.ca/NovaScotian/1074928.html

Wind turbines blamed in deaths of migratory bats

BY BILL GRAVELAND The Canadian Press

CALGARY — New research is blaming tall wind turbines for the deaths of hun­dreds of migratory bats in the foothills of southwestern Alberta’s Rocky Mountains.

Robert Barclay, a University of Cal­gary biology professor and interna­tional bat expert, began a study in 2006 after large numbers of the flying mam­mals were found dead on wind farms near Pincher Creek.

More and more giant windmills tow­er over the landscape in southern Al­berta and across the country as Cana­dians look for greener sources of elec­tricity. But the swooping wind-catch­ing blades are proving fatal to bats.

The study says roughly 90 per cent of the animals that were found dead had severe respiratory injuries consistent with a sudden drop in air pressure that occurs when they get close to turbine blades.

“A large number of the bat carcasses we found had no (visible) injuries. It didn’t look like anything had happened to them," said project leader Erin Baer­wald.

“They were lying on the ground — no broken wings or injuries you would ex­pect to see if they were struck by these large blades."

The blades are 40 metres long and their tips can move at a speed of 250 kilometres an hour.

“We started looking inside and what we found was a large proportion of these bats internally had severe hem­orrhaging, so they were full of blood."

A veterinary pathologist found blood vessels in the bats had burst and the lungs were filling with blood.

“What happens when you fly through an area when the pressure drops dra­matically . . . is the lungs overexpand and it causes breakages in all the small vessels around the lungs," explained Baerwald.

The results of the study were to be published in the Aug. 26 online edition of Current Biology.

There are nine species of bats found in Alberta, three of which migrate through the province each year. The majority of bats killed by wind tur­bines are migratory and roost in trees. They include hoary bats, eastern red bats and silver-haired bats and have been known to migrate from as far away as Mexico and the southern Unit­ed States.

Bats typically reach ages of 30 or more and produce only one or two off­spring at a time, so researchers fear the deaths could have far-reaching conse­quences.

“Slow reproductive rates can limit a population’s ability to recover from crashes and thereby increase the risk of endangerment or extinction," said Barclay in a news release.

He said all three species of migratory bats eat thousands of insects, including crop pests, and large-scale losses of the nocturnal animals could have an im­pact on ecosystems along their routes. Prior to 2005 there were few bat deaths near the turbines, but the older units were about 20 metres lower than the towers now being erected.

Baerwald said there is no obvious way to reduce the pressure drop at wind turbines without severely limit­ing their use. But since bats are more active when wind speeds are low, one strategy she suggested might be to in­crease the rate at which turbine blades rotate during the fall migration.

Wind project not dead yet

Controversial Gulf Shore project may return
DARRELL COLE
The Amherst Daily News
21 August 2008

AMHERST - Despite failing to secure a contract with Nova Scotia Power, a controversial wind farm project proposed for the Pugwash area is not dead.

"We have not abandoned our plans to pursue that project," Atlantic Wind Power Corporation president Charles Demond said Monday. "We're still interested in building a wind farm there. It may be scaled back a bit from what we were proposing, but it will still be a very good wind farm."

Atlantic Wind Farms originally planned to develop a wind farm with between 20 and 27 100-metre tall turbines in the Gulf Shore area. The proposal was opposed by a group of neighbours and Gulf Shore area residents including Anne Murray, who felt the turbines would be too close to homes and cottages and would spoil the natural scenery of the shoreline along the Northumberland Strait.

Demond said the project still has support in the community and the company remains convinced that the Gulf Shore area is ideal for a wind farm. However, it's unlikely the project will be as big as the one submitted to Nova Scotia Power for consideration last year.

"We're no different than a lot of other developers that are moving ahead with things but don't have a contract at this point," he said. "We're continuing on with things like assessment work in the background. When the time is appropriate we'll announce specifically what we're going to do."

When Nova Scotia Power awarded wind power contracts late last year and earlier this year, it opted for another project near Amherst that will include 20 turbines. Construction is expected to begin next April and be operational as soon as five months later.

Enormous solar power plants planned in Calif.

Covering 12.5 square miles, facilities will generate about 12 times as much electricity as the largest such plants in existence today

By MATTHEW L. WALD The New York Times

Companies will build two solar power plants in California that together will put out more than 12 times as much electricity as the largest such plant today, a fresh indication that solar energy is starting to achieve significant scale.

The plants will cover 12.5 square miles of central California with solar panels, and in the middle of a sunny day will generate about 800 megawatts of power, roughly equal to the size of a large coal-burning power plant or a small nuclear plant.

A megawatt is enough power to run a large Wal-Mart store.

The power will be sold to Pacific Gas & Electric, which is under a state mandate to get 20 per cent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2010.

The utility said that it expected the new plants, which will use photovoltaic technology to turn sunlight directly into electricity, to be competitive with other renewable energy sources, including wind turbines and solar thermal plants, which use the sun’s heat to boil water.

"These market-leading projects we have in California are something that can be extrapolated around the world," Jennifer Zerwer, a spokeswoman for the utility, said.

"It’s a milestone."

Though the California installations will produce 800 megawatts at times when the sun is shining brightly, they will operate for fewer hours of the year than a coal or nuclear plant would and so will produce a third or less as much total electricity. OptiSolar, a company that has just begun making a type of solar panel with a thin film of active material, will install a 550-megawatt plant in San Luis Obispo County.

SunPower Corp., which uses silicon-crystal technology, will build a facility producing about 250 megawatts at a different location in the same county.

The scale is a leap forward. Thomas H. Werner, the chairman of Sunpower, said that the 250-megawatt facility his company would build was as much solar photovoltaic capacity as was installed worldwide last year.

"If you’re going to make a difference, you’ve got to do it big," said Randy Goldstein, the chief executive of OptiSolar.

The scale of the two plants will "bring a new paradigm to bear" for the industry, he said.

At 800 megawatts total, the new plants will greatly exceed the scale of previous solar installations.

The largest photovoltaic installation in the United States, 14 megawatts, is at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, using SunPower panels.

Spain has a 23-megawatt plant, and Germany is building one of 40 megawatts. A recently constructed plant that uses mirrors to concentrate sunlight, called Nevada Solar One, can produce 64 megawatts of power.

Solar power remains expensive compared to generating electricity from coal or natural gas, but it is bounding ahead, driven by quotas set by the states.

California’s 20 per cent renewable standard is one of the toughest, and companies there are afraid they will miss a 2010 deadline.

Pacific Gas & Electric expects that when the new plants are completed its total will rise to 24 per cent, but that will not be until 2013.

Both plants require numerous permits, and plans could still go awry. The companies involved said they expected that building gargantuan plants would achieve economies of scale in the cost of design, installation and connection to the electric grid.

The companies said they were forbidden by contract terms to talk about price, and a spokeswoman for Pacific Gas & Electric said her company was trying to obtain the best possible deal for ratepayers by not telling other suppliers of renewable energy what it was willing to pay.

But all three companies said the costs would be much lower than photovoltaic installations of the past.

SunPower’s panels are mounted at a 20-degree angle and pivot over the course of the day to keep facing the sun. OptiSolar’s are installed at a fixed angle.

They are larger and less efficient, but also much less costly, so the cost per watt of energy is similar, company executives said.

Both are good at producing power at a time of day when the prices tend to be high, in the afternoon.

Neither approaches the economy of fossil-fuel burning plants, said Zerwer, the spokeswoman for Pacific Gas & Electric.

But they will be competitive with wind power and with power from solar thermal plants, which are equipped with mirrors that use the sun’s heat to boil water into steam.

And prices will fall, she predicted.

Her company, she said, was "going to contribute to the virtuous cycle of technology innovation and lower unit manufacturing cost, by purchasing on such a scale."

Windmills split town and families

By HELEN O'NEILL, AP Special Correspondent

Sat Aug 16, 7:58 PM

"Listen," John Yancey says, leaning against his truck in a field outside his home.

The rhythmic whoosh, whoosh, whoosh of wind turbines echoes through the air. Sleek and white, their long propeller blades rotate in formation, like some otherworldly dance of spindly-armed aliens swaying across the land.

Yancey stares at them, his face contorted in anger and pain.

He knows the futuristic towers are pumping clean electricity into the grid, knows they have been largely embraced by his community.

But Yancey hates them.

He hates the sight and he hates the sound. He says they disrupt his sleep, invade his house, his consciousness. He can't stand the gigantic flickering shadows the blades cast at certain points in the day.

But what this brawny 48-year-old farmer's son hates most about the windmills is that his father, who owns much of the property, signed a deal with the wind company to allow seven turbines on Yancey land.

"I was sold out by my own father," he sputters.

Yancey lives in a pine-studded home on Yancey Road, which he shares with his wife, Marilyn, and three children. The house is perched on the edge of the Tug Hill plateau, half a mile from the old white farmhouse in which Yancey and his seven siblings were raised.

Signs for fresh raspberries are propped against a fence. Horses graze in a lower field. Amish buggies clatter down a nearby road. From the back porch are sweeping views of the distant Adirondacks.

But the view changed dramatically in 2006. Now Yancey Road is surrounded by windmills.

Yancey and some of his brothers begged Ed Yancey to leave the family land untouched. But the elder Yancey pointed to the money — a minimum of $6,600 a year for every turbine. This is your legacy, he told them.

Yancey doesn't want the money or the legacy or the view.

"I just want to be able to get a good night's sleep and to live in my home without these monstrosities hovering over me," he says.

For a long time he didn't speak to his father. The rift took a toll on his marriage. He thought about leaving Yancey Road for good.

___

The Tug Hill plateau sits high above this village of about 4,000, a remote North Country wilderness of several thousand acres, where steady winds whip down from Lake Ontario and winter snowfalls are the heaviest in the state.

For decades dairy farmers, Irish and German and Polish immigrants, and lately the Amish, have wrested a living from the Tug — accepting lives of wind-swept hardship with little prospect of much change.

Then, a few years ago, change came to Tug Hill, and it arrived with such breathtaking speed that locals still marvel at the way their land and lives were utterly transformed.

Overnight, it seemed, caravans of trucks trundled onto the plateau, laden with giant white towers. Concrete foundations were poured. Roads were built and for a couple of years the village was ablaze with activity.

Today, 195 turbines soar above Tug Hill, 400 feet high, their 130-foot long blades spinning at 14 revolutions per minute.

The $400 million Maple Ridge wind project, the largest in New York state, brought money and jobs and a wondrous sense of prosperity to a place that had long given up on any. Lately, it has also brought a sense of importance. Lowville and the neighboring hamlets of Martinsburg and Harrisburg, which also host turbines, are at the forefront of a wind energy boom that T. Boone Pickens and Al Gore have hailed as the wave of the future.

But for all the benefits of clean, renewable energy, the windmills come with a price — and not just the visual impact.

"Is it worth destroying families, pitting neighbor against neighbor, father against son?" asks John Yancey, whose family have farmed Tug Hill for generations. "Is it worth destroying a whole way of life?"

Similar questions are being asked across the state and the country as more and more small towns grapple with big money and big wind. For many, the changes are worth it. With rising oil and gas prices and growing concerns about global warming, wind is becoming an attractive alternative. The U.S Department of Energy recently released a report that examines the feasibility of harnessing wind power to provide up to 20 percent of the nation's total electricity by 2030. U.S. wind power plants now produce less than 1 percent.

The Maple Ridge project produces enough electricity to power about 100,000 homes. Other wind projects are going up all over the state. Pickens is talking about building a $10 billion wind project — the world's largest — in the Texas panhandle. Everyone, it seems, is talking about wind.

Yancey understands its seduction. An electrician, he knows as much about the turbines as anyone. He helped build and install the ones on Tug Hill. He can rattle off statistics about the bus-sized nacelle at the top of the tower which houses the generator and the sophisticated computer system that allows the blades to yaw into the wind. He talks about the 1.65 mw Vestas with authority and respect.

Turbines have their place, Yancey says, just not where people live.

And he accuses the wind company of preying on vulnerable old-timers like his father.

___

Ed Yancey sits in the front room of the little house on Trinity Avenue where he moved after retiring from farming. His eyes are bright and his handshake is strong and the only concession to his 92 years seems to be his poor hearing.

He says doesn't feel preyed upon. He feels lucky. He feels proud to be part of a change he thinks is inevitable.

"It's better than a nuclear plant," Ed Yancey says. "And it brings in good money."

Next to him, daughter Virginia Yancey Lyndaker, a real estate agent who infuriated her brothers by siding with her father, nods in agreement. You can't stop progress, she says.

Ben Byer, a 75-year-old retired dairy farmer, feels the same way. Like Ed Yancey, Byer felt lucky when the wind salesmen knocked at his door. He was one of the first to sign up.

Now he can count 22 windmills from his Rector Road home. Seven are on his land.

"The sound don't bother me," he says. "And it sure beats milking cows."

But Byer, who is John Yancey's uncle, understands the lingering resentments the windmills fuel. The wind company signed lease agreements with just 74 landowners over a 12-mile stretch and "good neighbor" agreements with several dozen more, offering $500 to $1,000 for the inconvenience of living close to the turbines. In a small community, that kind of money can cause tensions between those who profit and those who don't.

Byer also understands the strain windmills can place on a family. His 47-year-old son, Rick, lives higher up on the plateau in a small white ranch house with a two-seat glider parked in a shed. The glider is Rick Byer's passion. He flies on weekends when he's not working at the pallet-making company.

In order to launch, the glider has to be towed by truck down a long rolling meadow across the road. When the wind company began negotiating with his father to put turbines on his "runway," Rick Byer delivered a furious ultimatum.

"I told him if he allowed turbines in that field he would lose a son."

The son's rage won out over the father's desire for easy cash, but Rick Byer still seethes at the forest of turbines that sprouted across from his home. Now he speaks out in other area towns where windmills are proposed.

"I tell people it's not a wind farm, it's an industrial development," he says as he mends wooden pallets in a barn one warm summer night. Rock music crackles from a radio propped crookedly on a pile of wood. Every now and then, Byer adjusts the set for a better reception. The windmills interfere with the signal, he says. They interfere with television too.

And they transform the night. As dusk falls, red strobe lights appear on every third windmill, glowing eerily atop the blades spinning ghostlike in the moonlight.

___

Like most of their neighbors, the Yanceys and Byers had a hard time believing the wind salesman when he first rolled into town in 1999. Years earlier there had been talk of natural gas on Tug Hill, but nothing ever came of it. People assumed the wind project would go the same way.

"No one thought it would happen," John Yancey says.

But Bill Moore, a Maryland-based energy consultant and investor who worked on Wall Street before going out on his own, was persistent. And persuasive. For several years he drove all over Tug Hill in his Land Rover, knocking on doors, talking to farmers in fields, hosting meetings at the Elks Lodge, preaching the gospel of wind.

At first local officials were skeptical, too. But they listened, and learned, and they started hammering out agreements with Moore's company, Atlantic Renewable Corp., and its partner company, Zilka Renewable Engergy. (The companies have changed names and ownership several times and the Maple Ridge Wind project is now jointly owned by PPM Energy of Portland, Ore., which is part of the Spanish company Iberdrola SA, and Houston-based Horizon Wind Energy LLC, which is owned by the Portuguese conglomerate Energias de Portugal.)

Eventually officials from Lowville, Martinsburg and Harrisburg, along with Lewis County legislators, negotiated a 15-year payment-in-lieu-of-taxes agreement that gave the three jurisdictions $8.1 million in the first year.

"We knew we were going to change the landscape, maybe forever," says Martinsburg supervisor Terry Thiesse. "We knew some people would be unhappy. But the benefits far outweighed the objections of a few."

Martinsburg, with a population of 1,249, got the biggest municipal cut because it hosts the largest number of windmills — a total of 102. Thiesse, who receives payments for a windmill on his own land, says Martinsburg's budget went from just under $400,000 to more than $1.2 million with the first wind payment in 2006. The municipality is currently negotiating a deal with another wind company for an additional 39 turbines.

In Lowville, school Superintendent Ken McAuliffe is thrilled to be buying new computers, expanding school buildings and planning new athletic fields. The school district, which serves all jurisdictions, received $2.8 million in 2006 and $3.5 million in 2007.

Still, McAuliffe said, negotiating the deal was the most demanding experience of his professional life.

"I'm an educator, not a wind expert or an investor," McAuliffe said. The hardest part, he said, was understanding the amounts of money involved, trusting that the community would get it, and "the great unknown, which is how much the wind company is making."

Wind finances are a source of great confusion for many locals, who assumed they would get free electricity once the turbines were installed. In fact, the energy is sold to utility companies and then piped into the grid.

Though the wind itself is free, companies have enormous startup costs: a single industrial wind turbine costs about $3 million. In New York, companies benefit from the fact that the state requires 25 percent of all electricity to be supplied from renewable sources by 2013. They also get federal production tax credits in addition to "green" renewable energy credits, which can be sold in the energy market.

In this context, the annual payments of about $6,600 per turbine are relatively small. But for some cash-strapped farmers, they amount to a retirement supplement.

"It's the best cash cow we ever had," booms retired dairy farmer Bill Burke, who has six turbines on his land. "This cow doesn't need to be fed, doesn't need a vet, doesn't need a place to lie down."

Burke, a blustery 60-year-old, is proud of his credentials as the wind company's biggest local cheerleader. A school board member and county legislator, he also works part-time for the company, giving lectures and tours. His son, Bobby, works for it full-time.

Burke sold the last of his herd in 2004. Without the income from the turbines, he says, he might have had to sell his 100-year-old farm too. He has no regrets about grabbing his "once in a lifetime chance at prosperity."

"This project was happening, like it or not, and you would have to be a fool not to participate, to be excited and take advantage of it," Burke says.

____

Not everyone agrees.

For many, the realities of living with windmills are more complicated than clean energy and easy money. People have mixed feelings about the enormous scale of the project and the speed at which it went up. They question what will happen when the 15-year agreements expire. There are concerns about the impact of turbines on bird and bat populations. Some accuse lawmakers of getting too cozy with wind developers in order to profit from turbines on their land — allegations that prompted New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to launch an investigation into two wind companies and their dealings with upstate municipalities. (The investigation does not involve Maple Ridge.)

Such concerns have ignited furious debates in upstate towns where more than a dozen wind power projects are being considered — in Cape Vincent, Clayton, Prattsburgh. Some towns passed moratoria on industrial turbines in order to learn more. Malone and Brandon recently banned them completely.

"It seemed like the cost, in terms of how it changed the community, was too high," Malone supervisor Howard Maneely, said after visiting Lowville.

Pat Leviker, 60, who grew up on Tug Hill, thinks so too. Leviker cried the day the first turbine went up, "like a giant praying mantis peering at my home." Now she and her husband Richard, who both work for the state Department of Environmental Conservation, plan to sell their home and move off the plateau when they retire.

"We want clean energy as much as anyone," says Leviker, who rejected a $1,500 payment from the wind company for the disruption of her view. "But we also want quality of life."

Over on Nefsey Road, which runs parallel to Yancey Road, Dawn Sweredoski, a sixth-grade teacher, finds a certain beauty in the windmills.

But she is sympathetic to her neighbors' concerns. The Amish farmer across the road, who bought her husband's farm seven years ago, rejected the wind company's offer of two turbines. He hates how the towers have changed the scenery and disrupted the sense of tradition and tranquility that lured his family from Maryland in the first place.

Sweredoski, whose house has magnificent views of the valley, sees the windmills only in the distance. She understands John Yancey's annoyance at living with them up close.

"It's hard when change is for the common good but some people suffer more than others," she says.

No one understands that better than the Yanceys, struggling to patch fractured family relationships, even as they struggle to come to terms with the turbines.

High on Tug Hill sits the Flat Rock Inn, a popular gathering point for snowmobilers and all-terrain vehicle riders. Twenty years ago, Gordon Yancey carved out this chunk of land with the help of his father, creating miles of forest trails and camping areas, set around a six-acre, man-made pond.

"People come for the scenery, the serenity," says Yancey, 49, proudly driving through his property, describing the "jungle" that he and his father cleared. He rolls to a halt in front of the inn, a rustic wooden structure with a bar, restaurant, a few rooms and a large wraparound porch.

All around stretch windmills, miles and miles of them. Yancey chokes up just looking at them. They have hurt his business, he says. And, like his brother, he hates the view and the noise.

"Dad taught us such respect for the land. For my father to be part of this..." His voice trails off and he shakes his head and walks away, too angry to continue.

This particular weekend is a busy one for Yancey's inn, which is hosting a huge watercross event — in which snowmobiles roar across the pond, their speed keeping them from sinking. Campers roll in to watch. There are campfires and barbecues and squealing children darting about. The atmosphere is festive and carefree and very noisy as racers' engines scream and a helicopter whirs overhead giving 10-minute joyrides for $25.

In the distance, Rick Byer's glider floats above the turbines. On the ground John Yancey works an enormous homemade gas grill turning 50 sizzling chickens on spits. Gordon Yancey is down by the pond, bellowing race results through a loudspeaker. Another brother, Tim Yancey, wanders by with his girlfriend, anti-wind activist Anne Britton. Patriarch Ed Yancey is there too, cooling off in a storage shed near the grill, talking about the old days — before snowmobiles and turbines.

All around the windmills spin. John Yancey looks up from the grill occasionally and grimaces at them. Right now, no one else seems to care.