The preserve itself has grown to 39,100 acres. But that's only a fraction of the 3.8-million-acre region known as the Flint Hills, straddling the Oklahoma-Kansas state line with the largest remaining patch of tallgrass prairie on the continent. ...While wind power generates clean energy, the vast networks of turbines, roads and power grids can disturb a natural ecosystem just as much as any other industrialization, Hamilton says.

Unlocking the potential of Kansas wind power will require federal legislation and more transmission lines, officials said Wednesday. Speaking to the Kansas Wind Working Group, Gov. Mark Parkinson said the state has succeeded in reaching approximately 1,000 megawatts of wind energy. But, he said, 2009 "has obviously been a much slower year."

How about this for a new state slogan: Kansas, not as windy as you think? A study of long-term wind speed trends suggests just that - winds across the United States, in Kansas and a few other states in particular, have been steadily decreasing since 1973. The study, to be published in August in the Journal of Geophysical Research, is the first of its kind in the U.S. Using data from wind monitors, the study found that winds had slowed across the U.S. by about 10 percent over 30 years.

The topic of wind turbines came to the commissioners after the Leavenworth County Planning Commission decided that the Obergs needed a special use permit in order to install the turbine. Along with the special use permit were proposed amendments in planning regulations that would establish rules for wind turbines.

Details about how much local government money could flow to the proposed Siemens Wind Power plant in Hutchinson have not fully emerged. And that could amount to a violation of the Kansas Open Meetings Act. ...However, the contract between Siemens and the participating parties - to include Reno County and the cities of Hutchinson and South Hutchinson - continues to be finalized in secret.

Just three months after starting electrical production, the blades on the wind turbines at the Flat Ridge Wind Farm in Barber County are developing small surface cracks. Clipper Windpower of Carpinteria, Calif. provides the wind turbines that are produced by another manufacturer. The problem was discovered at another Clipper project site, said Mary Gates, director of global communications for Clipper Windpower. ..."It was a quality control deficiency with the suppliers process," Gates said.

Wind power is booming -- at the moment. Companies are flocking to build turbine and blade plants in the United States, such as the one Siemens will build in Hutchinson. The amount of energy harvested from wind rose 50 percent last year to 25,300 megawatts. For the people in the ethanol industry, it must sound sadly like deja vu.

There's been a major shift in the direction of Hutchinson's Sunflower Wind, but company officials say production at the wind turbine manufacturing plant is still on the horizon. Rather than the planned 2.5-megawatt turbines with 180-foot-long blades, the company is working to produce 100-kilowatt wind turbines that require only low wind speeds to power small commercial buildings, schools, hospitals or industrial plants.

Two of the primary issues that have held back development of home or community-based turbines, industry experts say, are cost and regulation. Recent legislation has addressed each in part, but barriers remain. ..."We like the thoughts of wind turbines, but are opposed to law," said Bob Hall, manager of Ark Valley Electric Cooperative, saying it's unfair to the majority of its member customers and unreliable as an energy source.

The message Thursday evening was loud and clear: Adjustments need to be made to the location of a proposed power line stretching from Spearville to Hays. The reasons for moving the lines varied, however, from aesthetics to interfering with a proposed wind farm in central Rush County. It was just as clear that landowners don't consider a one-time, up-front lump payment for easements as fair.

Plaintiffs contacted by The Hays Daily News, however, say they have not signed the document, with at least one implying their intent is to do so. While some question has been posed as to whether the county commission should have made the document public before the other signatures were obtained, Davidson said it was within the county's rights to take action.

In a unanimous decision at Monday's meeting, Ellis County Commissioners endorsed terms of settlement in a lawsuit regarding a wind farm southwest of Hays. While commissioners said the settlement could bring closure to the hotly disputed wind farm controversy, lawsuit plaintiffs might not be so sure.

After years of discussion and a lengthy legal battle, it appears Ellis County soon could be home to a 200-megawatt wind farm. In a unanimous decision, the Ellis County Commission today approved a settlement in the case of Davis v. Ellis County regarding a proposed project southwest of Hays. The agreement holds that the conditional-use permit commissioners granted for the project is lawful and enforceable, meaning the wind farm could proceed.

A high-voltage power line unlike any seen this side of the Mississippi River soon could be striding across southwestern Kansas. Cable bundles as thick as pickup tires and bearing 765,000 volts would bind the ever-more-productive wind fields of Kansas to outside markets. The project, estimated to be worth up to $800 million, is still up for grabs between two competing groups that could get the lines up and humming by 2013. ...Nearly 1,012 megawatts from wind turbines will be available by the end of 2009, but 7,000 megawatts are proposed for western Kansas by 2030.

An energy company hoping to establish a wind farm in Pratt County will have to keep its 400-foot towers about three and a half miles from approaches to the Pratt Industrial Airport, but that news should come as no surprise to Indeck Energy Services.

A blown transformer that has idled scores of wind turbines at the Smoky Hills Wind Farm for about four months is expected to be replaced soon. "If all goes well, it should be online in the next couple weeks," said Cinthia Hertel, a spokeswoman for Sunflower Electric Power Corporation, one of the utilities with contracts to receive power from the wind farm, which is located along Interstate Highway 70 at the Ellsworth/Lincoln county line.

Much of the discussion at a wind energy forum Tuesday night at Fort Hays State University revolved around the same arguments both proponents and opponents of the alternative energy in Ellis County have maintained all along. The one thing the forum's three panelists could agree on was that reducing energy consumption is needed.

Nikki Schwerdfeger won't believe it until she sees the blades spinning. The Hamilton County landowner remains cautiously optimistic about the proposed 135-megawatt wind farm about to be developed near her rural Coolidge home. One of the landowners who signed a lease for erecting wind turbines on their property, she has yet to learn if any of the around 90, 262-foot-tall turbines will spin on her land.

The SunZia transmission line that would link sun and wind power from central New Mexico with cities in Arizona is just the sort of energy project an environmentalist could love -- or hate. And it is just the sort of line the Interior Department has been tasked with promoting -- or guarding against. If built, the 460-mile line would carry about 3,000 megawatts of power, enough to avoid the need for a handful of coal-fired plants and to help utilities meet mandated targets for use of renewable fuel.

The greater prairie chicken of eastern Kansas has been declining with the encroachment of man. Roads have broken up vast rangeland, as well as oil wells, wind farms and cell phone towers. Cedars and other trees and shrubs have invaded their territory. Suburban development also is a factor as a growing number of residents buy small parcels of land to build a home.