As giant wind turbines start generating power atop the highest ridge in western Maryland, they raise questions anew about what price we're paying, environmentally, for our energy choices.

The towering windmills, visible for miles around, represent "green," renewable energy of the future to many.  But they've become lightning rods for debate about their impact on wildlife and on scenic mountain vistas.

Increasingly visible, too, is the extraction of coal, one of Appalachia's oldest energy sources. We get half or more of our electricity from coal-burning power plants, but the fossil fuel is a major contributor to climate change, and the ash left over from burning it poses disposal challenges.  Though mining is down from historic levels in western Maryland, surface mines have grown in the past decade and crept closer to towns such as Frostburg.   A new underground mine near Grantsville also prepares to tunnel under the Casselman River, home to such remarkable but rare species as the hellbender salamander.  Many of the region's streams still suffer from acidic water draining from old abandoned mines.

The biggest buzz these days, though, is coming over prospects for tapping previously unexploited natural gas reserves locked in Marcellus shale deposits underlying Garrett and western Allegany counties.  Hoping to cash in on a boom that's already under way in neighboring Pennsylvania and West Virginia, landowners in Garrett have leased or sold rights to drill beneath 124,000 acres, more than a quarter of the county.

But the extraction method, called hydraulic fracturing or "fracking," has proven controversial, with critics saying it's responsible for gas leaking into nearby residents' wells and for contaminating streams and ground water. Industry officials say problems have been overblown but they've tightened up operations anyway.

Regulators say they're seeing to it that current mining operations aren't adding to the region's water quality woes, and they vow to require "state of the art" environmental controls on drilling for for gas in Maryland's Marcellus shale - if any at all is permitted. 

That's not enough for some, who want legislation to ban any shale gas drilling until the state overhauls its regulations to impose safeguards.  Some also want to put a hold on any more utility-scale wind projects in Garrett - a third is in planning - until the county establishes some requirements there for buffering them from homes and decommissioning them when they're shut down. 

Read more about the state's conflicted energy frontier in The Baltimore Sun.  And check out the video of the wind turbines, some of them already spinning.

(Constellation Energy's Criterion wind project in Garrett County, Baltimore Sun photo by Kim Hairston; aerial photo western Maryland surface mine by Jim Dougherty for Chesapeake Climate Action Network)