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Constellation Celebrates Md.'s First Wind Farm

SWANTON, Md. (AP) -- Constellation Energy Group is celebrating the startup of Maryland's first commercial wind farm.

The Baltimore-based company held a ceremonial ribbon-cutting Tuesday for the 28-turbine project atop Backbone Mountain in Garrett County. The Cumberland Times-News reports that the project has been generating electricity since December.

A company spokesman says the project is designed to meet the electricity needs of 23,000 households in Maryland, Delaware and Virginia.

Protesters at the event complained that the wind farm is a tax dodge that mars the landscape and threatens the federally endangered Indiana bat.

Project opponents say they have agreed to delay until 2012 a trial on their endangered-species claim to give Constellation time to obtain necessary permits.

(Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

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