Like Senator Edward Kennedy and the energy millionaire William Koch, both of Massachusetts, Wendy Brock, a New Zealand homemaker, is fighting windmills in her backyard.

"Our skyline is getting absolutely overwhelmed by them," said Brock, 42, who lives below two hilltop wind-power farms in rural Ashhurst on New Zealand's North Island. "You can't get away from that throb, throb, throb coming through your house."

Brock will testify as a witness this month before New Zealand's Environment Court. Residents of a valley near the capital, Wellington, are challenging Meridian Energy's $240 million plan to build the country's biggest wind development.

They are joining the people of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and Lewis, Scotland in opposing efforts by wind-energy firms to produce clean energy through large, efficient wind farms. The opponents say the turbines are noisy and that the towers disfigure landscapes.

Wind turbines planned for New Zealand, which may run short of gas for power stations by 2013, will increase the country's generating capacity by more than 10 percent, according to the New Zealand Wind Energy Association.

"The days of small-scale wind farms are pretty much numbered," said Richard Gordon, a spokesman for Genesis Power, New Zealand's biggest energy retailer.

Genesis spent more than 1 million New Zealand dollars, or $621,000, negotiating with citizen groups and modifying plans before starting an 18-windmill project near its base of Auckland, Gordon said.

State-owned Meridian plans to build about six dozen three- megawatt turbines in Makara, a rural community of 128 households about 20 minutes by car from Wellington.

The site is buffeted by winds of more than 50 kilometers an hour, or 32 miles per hour, for a quarter of the year, company data shows.

The 125-meter, or 410-foot, towers will power as many as 110,000 homes, meeting the electricity needs of the capital and neighboring areas, according to Meridian. The New Zealand chapter of Greenpeace backs the plan.

"The wind resource is excellent," said Alan Seay, a Meridian spokesman. "It's a world-beater."

Makara Guardians, a citizens group that is leading the court challenge, says the towers will spoil the coastal hills and a valley used for trekking, horse-riding and golf.

The group won't comment further because the environment court in Wellington has started a four-week hearing, a group spokeswoman, Jenny Jorgensen, said.

"We do not oppose the sensible development of wind," the group says on its Web site, claiming to represent 85 percent of residents. "What we are opposed to is siting these industrial complexes close to people's properties in an environment that is used recreationally."

In Massachusetts, William Koch, a son of the founder of oil-and- chemicals producer Koch Industries, the largest closely held U.S. company, is leading opponents of a $1 billion plan to put 130 windmills in waters between Cape Cod and Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard islands. The project, proposed in 2001, would be the first offshore wind farm in the United States.

"Bill was asked to be an investor and we looked long and hard, examined the numbers and believed it made no sense," said Brad Goldstein, a spokesman for Oxbow, which is based in Palm Beach, Florida. Koch, a Cape Cod homeowner, is Oxbow's chairman.

Kennedy, whose family keeps summer homes on the Cape, opposes the project because it was unfairly exempted from 2005 energy legislation that set standards for offshore wind farms, he said in a May 9 Senate speech.

His nephew, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental law professor at New York's Pace University, in a letter to the New York Times quoted the Massachusetts Historical Commission as saying that the project would damage views from 16 historic sites and lighthouses. British Energy Group, Britain's biggest power producer, and Amec, the world's third-largest engineering-services provider, last year scaled back a proposed windmill project on the Isle of Lewis, Scotland, to meet community concerns. They cut the number of turbines to 190 from 234.

New Zealand community groups now are disputing four of seven wind- farm proposals in the Environment Court. The country has three operating farms and three more under construction.

Meridian last month began public consultations on plans for as many as 176 turbines near the South Island city of Dunedin.

Brock, the homemaker, said she favors encouraging people to use less power. The mother of three is a member of Aokautere Guardians, a community group lobbying against more wind farms in her region.

She likens the noise turbines produce to having neighbors who play loud music: one can hear the throb of the beat without distinguishing the melody.

"People choose to live in rural areas because there's no noise," she said. "We're desecrating the one thing we should be saving for future generations our landscape."