"I appeal to the governor to make a fair and balanced decision that does not favor one industry that has obvious harmful impacts versus a new industry that brings clear benefits to the state, while being admittedly imperfect," Tidwell said.
About 25,000 wind turbines across the country generate about 1 percent of America's electricity, with more than 3,000 built in the past year. Boosted by federal subsidies, scores of turbines are being built in the Midwest, Texas, California, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. But none has been built in Maryland.
Maryland has given full or preliminary approval to three companies to create wind farms on private land in the western part of the state, but the projects have been slowed by a lack of agreements with power distribution companies and other problems.
U.S. Wind Force is looking at the Savage River and Potomac state forests. The American Wind Energy Association says it does not know of any wind turbines built in state or federal forests anywhere in the United States.
U.S. Wind Force officials rode in a state helicopter with O'Malley this fall to look at Western Maryland, McAnally said. They showed the governor the 400 acres they're interested in along Backbone Mountain and Meadow Mountain.
Casper R. Taylor Jr., the former speaker of the House of Delegates from Western Maryland, has been lobbying state officials on the company's behalf. The terms of the leases would have to be negotiated, but they could include payments to the state of roughly $1 million a year for 20 years, according to state and company officials.
But before the O'Malley administration considers the company's proposal, the Maryland Department of Natural Resources must set a general policy on whether to allow wind turbines on state land, said Deputy Secretary Eric Schwaab.
"We are focused on the public policy question of whether it's appropriate to use state forests to satisfy our goal of increasing the production of sustainable energy," Schwaab said.
Electricity transmission towers in state forests can be 100 feet tall, about a quarter the height of the proposed turbines. Part of the Savage River forest is used by natural gas companies for the underground storage of methane, a use inherited when the state received the land from the federal government in the 1950s, Schwaab said. Over the past two decades, the state has turned down all requests for natural gas wells in state forests.
