For a guide to the Programmatic EIS, go to http://windeis.anl.gov/eis/guide/ index.cfm. The site includes maps of each area in the West that will amend land-use plans to include areas where wind farms could be built.

- The U.S. Bureau of Land Management will amend 52 land-use plans in nine western states, including eight in Utah, to streamline permits for developing wind energy, Interior Secretary Gale Norton announced Thursday.

The agency has finished an overarching environmental study begun two years ago that shows wind farms on public lands could generate more than 3,200 megawatts of electricity, enough for nearly 1 million homes.

The so-called Programmatic Environmental Impact Study of wind power on public lands will allow the BLM to issue wind energy permits in less than a year, instead of the two years the process has been taking. Specific sites will be evaluated further, but applicants won't have to replicate work already done for the environmental study.

During a telephonic news conference, Norton said the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has reviewed the environmental study to ensure wind energy development wouldn't harm threatened or endangered species, migratory birds, raptors or bats.

"We know the best locations . . . and those places we ought to avoid," Norton said.

The document addresses wind energy development on BLM-administered lands in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.

Wind energy is a clean energy source that requires capital outlay to build and site turbines that catch and convert the kinetic energy of wind to electricity. The fuel is free and inexhaustible. But wind power does have some environmental problems, including visual impacts, noise pollution and wildlife impacts, especially on birds.

After reviewing the maps showing Utah's wind potential, Steve Bloch, staff attorney for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, called tower siting "the devil in the details." While the environmental study indicates numerous areas of Utah with medium or high wind energy potential, some don't make sense.

For example, the report identifies some redrock cliffs near Castle Valley, just outside of Moab, as good places for wind turbines.

"These are some of the most scenic and picturesque places in the country," Bloch said. But even if there is potential, "most reasonable people would think that is not the best location."

And not just because it's so pretty.

"You need to be siting these wind turbines relatively close to transmission. That is going to limit some of the potential," he said.

To help with that problem, the Interior Department has undertaken another broad environmental study of potential Western energy corridors where transmission lines could be built.

The BLM currently has 22 wind energy development sites that produce 500 megawatt hours of power, but wind energy accounts for only 6 percent of the nation's renewable electricity generation and 0.1 percent of the total electricity supply.

Norton said that during the past five years, the BLM has issued 86 wind farm permits, compared to four during the previous five years. Even so, Norton said, the potential construction of 2,000 to 3,000 wind turbines on public land will produce only a fraction of the energy the nation could expect if petroleum drilling were allowed in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

But the comparison of energy yield doesn't make sense - and Norton knows it, said Tim Wagner, director of the Sierra Club's Utah chapter Smart Energy Campaign. Her comments could indicate an attempt to convince Congress that the federal agency has carried out its duty to develop renewables, so now it's time to permit the drilling.

"I fully support developing wind energy in the West. But let's not confuse the issue," Wagner said. "This is what always gripes me about this administration. [They say] energy is energy is energy, it doesn't matter if it comes from the West Desert or the Arctic. That's just bogus."