An appendix marks these Utah areas in dark blue, meaning they have "high wind resource" potential: spots in the vicinity of Castle Valley, near Moab; a broken arc from Trout Creek to a region west of Kanosh; scattered sites around Milford; a stretch about 30 miles northwest of Mexican Hat; places north and west of Price; east of Salina, and west and south of Hanksville; a few sites in western Box Elder County, and a series of areas west of Ivans, Washington County.

These scattered localities amount to 12,700 acres in Utah where wind potential might be developed, she said. The calculations take into account factors such as wilderness areas or wilderness study areas where projects could not be built, as well as the availability of transmission lines.

"That's something you can't forget," Watson said. "There's a very important need for transmission lines to deliver wind energy to the customer."

Many sites with "good, strong winds" won't be useful because of the lack of power lines, she said.

The BLM manages more than 20 million acres of land with high potential for wind power generation, she said, "But because of the lack of transmission, it drops down to 200,000 acres."

That's why California has such a large proportion of the potential for development, she added. The transmission facilities are already there.

She said other areas of the country also have strong potential for wind energy developments.

"The northeast part of the United States has very high wind resources," Watson said.

Private companies have expressed interest in developing those resources. An energy bill pending before Congress seeks authority to permit alternative energy in other areas, including wind, wave and current power.

"Right now, there is no one federal agency that has authority to permit renewable energy in the Outer Continental Shelf," she said.

The programmatic statement will allow the BLM to amend 52 land-use plans covering areas throughout the West. With the agency, the assistant secretary said, "Nothing happens on public land unless the land-use plan permits it."

She said there are pros and cons about the development.

"There are wildlife impacts," such as avoiding harm to bird migration routes. "You have impacts from the construction activities that can raise dust and get into the water, you have the visual impacts from the turbines," she said.

On the plus side, she added, "Of course, this is a renewable resource. It's a clean resource and it's domestic."

Agency officials will have to look at the question of whether a proposed turbine is in an appropriate place, and will need to use the best management practices to reduce, eliminate or minimize impacts, she said.

Improved technology is reducing the number of turbines required to generate a given amount of power, Watson said.

"Wind power is growing rapidly," she added. "The Wind Energy Association is hoping to grow it to be about 6 percent of the nation's total energy supply by about 2020."

That is about three times the present proportion.

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E-mail: bau@desnews.com