Controversy Swirls Around Wind Farm Plan

LANCASTER, Calif. (AP) -- An energy company wants to build 130 wind turbines, each taller than the Statue of Liberty, near a nature reserve to provide power to tens of thousands of homes.

But locals complain the project would block views of the Antelope Valley California Poppy Preserve, and some environmentalists fear the 380-foot machines would chop up birds and disrupt wildlife migration.

Mark Butler, a Green Valley machinist, said he planned to build a retirement home across the road from the 1,800-acre reserve, which explodes into a spectacular gold bloom of flowers every spring. He's not so sure now after learning of the plan by Glasgow, Scotland-based PPM Energy.

"They're monster generators, the size of a 747,'' Butler said. "The last place I feel like living is in the middle of a wind farm.''

PPM Energy officials in Oregon declined to comment on their plans, saying details had not been finalized.

A state mandate requires that public utilities generate 20 percent of their power come from renewable technologies including wind, solar and geothermal by 2017. Most energy companies have expressed interest in developing wind, said Kevin Payne, a spokesman for Southern California Edison, which generated about 18.2 percent of its power last year from renewable sources.

Under the PPM Energy plan, each turbine could generate 1.5 megawatts of power on a windy day -- enough to power about 1,125 homes during summer months.

But critics say winds are not strong enough most of the time to generate that much power.

"Nothing has changed out there in hundreds of years,'' Butler said. "And we don't want anything to change in the next hundred years.''

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