Once operational, the farms will generate enough electricity in upstate New York to power about 315,000 homes.

They will cost a total of about $375 million to build.

Governor Pataki's support of environmental projects in New York is well known. These wind farms, for example, will likely help state-owned facilities comply with the governor's executive order to buy 10 percent of their power from renewable resources by 2005 and 20 percent by 2010.

The operation of the wind farms will avoid annual emissions of more than 650 tons of nitrogen oxides, 1,300 tons of sulfur dioxide and 400,000 tons of carbon dioxide - equivalent to removing 80,000 cars from the state's roadways.

In addition, the sites may be expanded by 100 MW of additional capacity in the future.

The five projects were selected through a competitive process that saw nine proposals submitted to NYSERDA by seven different companies seeking to develop more than 450 MW of new wind capacity.

The selected projects include:

- $5 million for Atlantic Renewable Energy Corp. for a 100 MW wind farm in Lewis County with up to 68 1.5 MW turbines;

- $4.5 million for Global Wind Harvest Inc. for a 75 MW farm in Steuben and Yates Counties with up to 50 1.5 MW turbines;

- $3.1 million for York WindPower Inc. for a 51 MW wind farm in Chautauqua County with up to 34 1.5 MW turbines;

- $2.5 million for Global Wind for a 40.5 MW wind farm in Otsego County with up to 27 1.5 MW turbines; and

- $2 million for Zilkha Renewable Energy for a 50 MW wind farm in Erie County with up to 34 1.5 MW turbines.

Previously, NYSERDA gave $5 million to Canastota Windpower and $2 million to PG&E National Energy Group, a subsidiary of the San Francisco-based energy firm PG&E Corp. , for wind farms in Madison County.