TODAY THE STATE committee overseeing the permitting of the wind energy project in Lempster will hold an informational public meeting in our town on the wind farm that has been proposed to be built by Community Energy here. This wind farm will have 12 windmills and will produce enough electricity to power 10,000 homes.

My wife and I are the owners of the ridgeline property on which it would be located, and we would like to give you a short history of us ridge people.

In May of 1978 we bought 400 acres, including the summit of Bean Mountain. As years went by, whenever a piece of property abutting ours went up for sale we would buy it (the ultimate zoning).

Today we have close to 1,500 acres in the parcel. We have kept this property open for others to use for hunting, hiking, four-wheeling and snowmobiling. You might say we have tried to preserve a large part of Lempster, but at the same time, we have created a monster tax bill for ourselves.

For many years we operated a sawmill in Lempster -- until our largest customer started buying a finished product from Russia for less than the cost of the lumber we were selling to them. My wife and I have been trying to figure out a way to keep this land as wilderness land and be able to afford to pay the taxes. We thought we had the solution when Sullivan County Economic Development Committee brought Community Energy to us in 2003.

We discussed this for several weeks before we would allow Community Energy to erect a test tower on our property. We felt that we were doing something good for our town. The town would have a new large taxpayer that wouldn't put more children in the schools.

What has happened in the three years since then has us shaking our heads. A small handful of wealthy summer residents and out-of-towners have deluged local select boards with letters trying to stop a project that would benefit us all.

Among these are a summer resident, who spends most of the year in Florida, who has decided that he doesn't want to see a wind farm on "his ridge line" that my wife and I pay taxes on. Another is a person who lives 100 miles away whose sole purpose in life seems to be to stop wind farms in their tracks.

We expect them, and people like them, to be very vocal tonight when the state's Site Evaluation Committee comes to Lempster for its meeting.

Those who won't be vocal are the regular residents who live in our town, the ones who want this project to happen. If you've been to meetings like this you know that's how it works. They'll mostly be listening and not talking.

These people who have come out against the wind farm say that the state has to be involved because we don't have any zoning in Lempster and therefore don't know what we are doing or can't "protect" ourselves.

The fact is, our town has voted against zoning laws time and time again, even when last year the proposed windmills were the reason for taking the vote on zoning.

When you drive into our town you are welcomed by a sign that says, "Welcome to Lempster, New Hampshire, Live Free or Die." We hope the Site Evaluation Committee understands that we are not stupid or defenseless, but that we still believe in our freedom more than they do in some other places.

My wife and I have taken the time to visit four wind farms in the last two years. We found no dead birds at the base of the towers. You can stand at the base of these wind turbines and talk in normal tones. They make little noise. If this project is built, we will have a windmill within 400 feet of our house and we don't have a problem with this. For three years now we have been dealing with the company that will build and operate them and they have done everything they said they would.

The amount of permitting a project like this has to go through is mind boggling. Community Energy has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars on studies and engineering and shared the information with the town.

We have had a soils scientist working at our house for close to a year putting out little red flags around wetlands. He has even put them around the footprints our cows left because they filled with water.

We have had bird scientists on the mountain for weeks on end lying on their backs seeing birds so far up that we can't see them.

We have had bat experts hanging around checking the bat population, which we didn't think we had.

We feel that the I's have been dotted and the T's crossed on this project. Community Energy has applied for its permits and done everything by the book. They've treated us, our land and our town with respect.

We'd like to think that the state Site Evaluation Committee will understand this when it comes to Lempster tonight, but the way things appear to be going, the "Not in My Seasonal Backyard" people will probably talk the loudest and the longest.

We feel that this project will benefit not only Lempster, but the entire state of New Hampshire. We all use electricity, don't we?

Kevin Onnela lives in Lempster.

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