Wind turbines vitalize, divide Texas town

SWEETWATER, Texas | Now, as more than a century ago, the wind that whips constantly through this stretch of West Texas leaves the local community divided.

In the late 1800s, Sweetwater’s founders wondered whether the wind, which blows away topsoil and makes it almost impossible to raise crops, would frustrate their hopes for building a community.

At the turn of the 21st century, town leaders are pinning their hopes on the wind, with expectations it will bring jobs to this area of a little more than 13,000 people and payouts to ranchers who lease their land to national energy companies for their 400-foot-high wind-powered turbines.

Sweetwater Mayor Greg Wortham embodies the hope of civic and business leaders looking to a national surge of support for wind power — through tax dollars, federal guarantees and billions of dollars in private investment — to bring new prosperity to the town.

Local resident Dale Rankin is leading the group of frustrated ranchers who have had little luck keeping the turbines from cropping up around their farms, discovering to their chagrin that the Lone Star State is proving a popular pick for companies looking to build in the renewable energy sector.

• Click here to view videos about the social and economic effects of wind-energy production.

Mr. Rankin said he bought the land he lives on 20 years ago as a quiet preserve to raise his family, only to discover the plans for a massive wind-turbine project in his hometown.

“We moved back here to be in an area that was peaceful and quiet, and everything was going well until we started hearing noise about wind turbines,” he said. “Then we found out they were planning on building the world’s largest wind farm right next to our property. I still believe that no one should have to live next to a wind farm.”

The battle of Sweetwater is being played out in towns across the country and around the world. Advocacy groups such as the Industrial Wind Action Group and National Wind Watch have formed to counter what the IWAG describes as “the misleading information promulgated by the wind-energy industry and various environmental groups” about the costs and benefits of wind power.

Among the critics’ complaints: The huge turbines, with blades rising as high as 400 feet and continuously blinking strobe lights, are ugly, noisy, a drag on property values, a blight on the landscape, a destroyer of natural habitats and an environmental danger to migrating birds and other wildlife.

Opponents also argue that the industry relies on an artificial market of federal tax subsidies and ultimately works as a redistribution tool giving taxpayer dollars to energy companies and favored property owners. Wind energy, they add, is not as consistent as other “baseload” fuel sources, including coal, which generate power all day, not only when the wind is blowing.

“With these and other adverse impacts, the construction of industrial wind-energy facilities in most places cannot be justified,” National Wind Watch argues on its Web site, www.wind-watch.org.

Residents and businesses on Massachusetts’ Cape Cod, including liberal Democratic Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, have fiercely opposed a proposed offshore wind farm in Nantucket Sound, in part because the whirling blades of the turbines spoil the seashore view. Another battle is simmering among residents of St. Lucie County in Florida over the construction of turbines.

With Texas the clear leader among states in wind-power-generating capacity, the Sweetwater battle has run along familiar lines.

Story Continues →