Pictorial

The entrance to Red Oak Knob is getting a serious upgrade to accommodate the enormous towers Highland New Wind Development intends to erect on one of the area's highest ridgelines. The company has not made it easy for county officials, state officials, or citizens to support its project. Time and again, HNWD resists most efforts to provide information on its plans — plans which are now still under fire. Now that West Virginia has called the latest site plan arrangement into question, there ought to be some government agency willing to call a halt to construction until the site plan is approved by all West Virginia agencies that deserve an opportunity to review them. Highland County and the State Corporation Commission both tell West Virginia no part of the project was approved outside Virginia. That's true. But the site plan showing some or all of one tower in West Virginia wasn't provided until recently. Officials here are the only ones with the power to suspend the construction, yet they simply ignore those across the state line and force West Virginia officials to fend for themselves when it comes to the question of the state boundary, the tower's foundation, the drainage into the Monongahela National Forest, and other issues. That's no way to be neighborly. Highland, or the SCC, should consider the site plan disapproved until these matters are settled. And HNWD should be held responsible for getting its plans in order.