The latest bad news for the wind project proposed for Herrick Mountain in Ira came from an ecologist with the Fish and Wildlife Department who said in a letter to the developer that, as now designed, the wind farm would be damaging to the mountain's ecosystems.

Opponents in Ira have been outspoken about what they see as the damaging effects of the project proposed by Vermont Community Wind Farm. They have attacked it on every front, and among their concerns has been the effect on the fragile ecosystem of the ridgeline. They have also attacked the visual impact of the project and the noise it could make.

It is instructive to note that, as opposition to the project in Ira has solidified, voters in Lowell approved a measure on Town Meeting Day favoring a wind project planned there by Green Mountain Power. GMP has proposed building 20 to 24 turbines, which would produce 40 to 60 megawatts of power and would yield about $500,000 in property tax revenue for Lowell, a town in Orleans County. Voters in Lowell approved the project by a three-to-one margin.

Wind developers are finding that human impact is just as difficult to predict as environmental impact. Both are important and unique to each site. Wind is an important potential source of energy, but it is not so important that wind projects must be forced upon communities where residents find them to be repugnant for aesthetic or other reasons. That's why Vermont Community Wind Farm has been working to assuage the concerns of Ira residents, who from the outset thought the company had not been sensitive to local concerns.

It is a strength of Vermont’s civic life that each local community continues to have a say about its own destiny. Thus, towns are encouraged to develop town plans and zoning ordinances and to participate in regional planning efforts to assert their own vision of their futures.

History has bequeathed us a patchwork of separate towns, mostly chartered in the 18th century, which means developers in the 21st century are faced with the possibility that a project welcome in one community is anathema in the community next door.

Wind farms have a number of daunting requirements. They must be situated where there is suitable and adequate wind, which in Vermont means on mountains. They must not cause excessive damage to the sensitive ecology of the mountaintops or ridgelines. They must not impinge too closely on human settlements. They must not cause an outrage to the visual landscape.

Some of this is subjective, and some of it is not. Any development - a ski area, for example - has the potential for doing environmental harm to sensitive natural areas. Vermont Community Wind Farm says it will explore ways to mitigate harm, but the letter from the Fish and Wildlife Department made a strong case that Herrick Mountain was a significant unspoiled area.

The visual impact of wind turbines varies from site to site and from town to town. Each town has its own identity, and a town where the dominant voices are those of people for whom the unspoiled view is a primary concern will express itself differently than a town where $500,000 in revenue is a compelling reason to accept wind units on mountaintops.

Vermont is far from united on the topic of wind development because siting is an issue that is unique to each site. There are lots of sites. In southern Vermont, developers are moving ahead with plans to explore wind possibilities on Grandpa’s Knob. Residents of Pittsford, West Rutland and Castleton have not come close to the resentment and outrage felt by the residents of Ira, and if environmental and economic conditions allow, there is no reason to think that a wind farm on Grandpa’s Knob would not work.

There are probably more mountains around Vermont where wind development might work and where local townspeople might be happy about it.

There are probably more like Herrick Mountain as well, where environmental conditions and community opposition present daunting obstacles. A forward-thinking energy policy would help energy companies find the former without causing outrage among the latter.