Should homeowner suit stymie Virginias first wind farm?
If Highland New Wind gets its way, a wind farm similar to this one near San Jacinto Peak in California, will soon hug the Blue Ridge near Monterey. PHOTO BY WAYFINDER_73 VIA FLICKR In 2006, when a company called Highland New Wind announced it had the design plan and the money to proceed with an unprecedented project of putting an 18-24 turbine, 39-megawatt complex of electricity-producing windmills along a former mountaintop cattle pasture near Monterey, the proposal deeply divided Highland County citizens. Some said it was high time Virginia began embracing what looked like an eco-friendly form of energy, not to mention the $200,000 the project would bring in for Highland County in annual tax revenue. Others saw the project as an eyesore amid otherwise pristine wilderness, a potential threat to the extinction of two endangered species, and an inefficient sacrifice of natural resources in exchange for not very much renewable energy. Now with the first groundbreaking on the project stil
