LARAMIE - The Wyoming Industrial Siting Council has approved a siting permit for a wind farm that will straddle the Albany and Carbon counties border.

The conditional-use permit approved Thursday will allow Rocky Mountain Power, a division of PacifiCorp, to build its High Plains and McFadden Ridge wind projects.

The projects will produce 188 megawatts of power on land about 13 miles southwest of Rock River off Wyoming 13.

The first phase of development will consist of the 99-megawatt High Plains wind project, and is scheduled to have a peak construction time in the spring of 2009 and to be operational by the end of that year.

The High Plains wind project will consist of 66 wind turbines.

The McFadden Ridge project will be built next and will produce 88.5 megawatts. The project is scheduled to have a peak construction time in the spring of 2010 and to become operational at the end of the year.

The number of wind turbines for this project has yet to be determined.

There also is a third, undefined wind project that is planned for the site.

Chris Johnson, PacifiCorp's principal project manager for wind resource development and construction, said the total project area would encompass about 11,000 acres of land near McFadden.

He said the High Plains and McFadden wind projects would create more than 260 full-time jobs during the peak construction periods and 19 permanent, full-time jobs during the operational stages.

Housing the workers during the peak construction periods would be done in Laramie, Rawlins and Rock River, Johnson said.

Johnson said the wind towers would not negatively affect the sage grouse or raptors that live in the area.

Officials from the city of Laramie said they support the projects but were concerned about impacts to the city police, fire and public works because of other major energy construction projects going on at the same time in the area.

"With each new project comes additional obligations," Laramie interim Police Chief Dale Stalder said.