"We said, 'Bring it on. We can do it,'" Brian Thomas, a vice president with Barnhart Crane & Rigging Co., said Wednesday.

That firm is now tackling "one of the most difficult, challenging projects today in the wind energy business," said Thomas.

Later this month, the firm is going to start delivering several million pounds of high-tech wind turbine parts from storage sites in Anderson and Knox counties to their final destination atop remote Buffalo Mountain overlooking Oliver Springs.

There, along a two-mile-long swath of that 3,300-foot-high mountain and adjoining Patterson Mountain, the parts will be pieced together to create the biggest wind farm in the southeastern United States.

With similar projects on hold because a federal tax credit for windmills remains in limbo, the Anderson County project has captured the wind industry's full attention, Thomas said.

The 15 new windmills, each standing more than 360 feet tall, will dwarf three TVA-owned wind turbines that have been spinning atop Buffalo Mountain for several years.

Invenergy LLC, a Chicago-based company, will own and operate the new windmills and sell the electricity they produce to TVA as part of TVA's Green Power Switch program to support nonpolluting energy sources.

Invenergy hired Barnhart Crane & Rigging to oversee getting the foreign-made wind turbines from ports in Mobile, Ala., and Longview, Wash., to Buffalo Mountain.

Twelve of the windmill blades, each 135 feet long and weighing 14,000 pounds, are now stored on special flatcars on a railroad spur in Oak Ridge. The rest of those blades will be delivered in early August, Thomas said.

The 95,000-pound bases for each windmill are en route from Longview by train, Thomas said. They can't fit through the railroad tunnel in Knox County's Solway community and will be unloaded in Karns, Thomas said.

Tennessee Valley Infrastructure Group of Chattanooga designed changes to the 5-mile-long road up Windrock Mountain to the wind farm site. Curves were widened, switchbacks were eliminated and portions were repaved.

TVIG also has a crew atop the mountain, preparing 30-foot-deep foundations for each windmill, Thomas said.

Two specially made trailers to haul the windmill blades are now being built at Barnhart Crane & Rigging's Memphis headquarters, he said. Hydraulic platform trailers, each with 96 tires, will be used to carry the pre-assembled turbines, he said.

The entire route -- down Oak Ridge Turnpike, out Highway 62 to Oliver Springs and then up Windrock Road, has been subjected to a computer-modeling program, he said. "There's been a tremendous amount of measuring and plotting," he said.

TVA is planning to publicize the wind turbine project by showing off windmill parts in a display tentatively scheduled for July 20 in the Oak Ridge Mall parking lot.

The 5- to 6-week process of hauling those parts to the mountaintop is then targeted to begin July 26.

During that time, the main road up Windrock Mountain, a popular Mecca for all-terrain vehicles because it's crisscrossed with off- road trails, will likely be closed to ATV riders, Thomas said.

"We don't want any ATV guys coming around the corner and getting killed," he said.