Developing a wind turbine manufacturing and servicing industry in Natrona County is hampered by a lack of buildings large enough to house the massive equipment, a local economic development expert says. Robert Barnes, president and CEO of the Casper Area Economic Development Alliance, pointed out that it takes a large structure to contain a bay area that can accommodate a 75-foot wind turbine blade.

A company plans to build a $420 million wind farm with 133 turbines in southwest Campbell County. San Ramon, Calif.-based Third Planet Windpower is eyeing 14,000 acres for the project on both sides of Wyoming Highway 50 near the Johnson County line. The company has begun talking to local landowners about leasing land.

Campbell County has been the epicenter of energy development in Wyoming since the county's first coal mine opened. Then came the oil, followed by natural gas. But many thought Campbell County would not buy into the wind energy industry. ..."The wind is not quite as good (as it is in southeast Wyoming), but it is still economically developable," Clark said. "It is just so far from transmission."

Regulation of wind energy is a step that ranchers and landowners can agree needs to happen before it becomes a thriving industry in Wyoming. They've seen what has happened before with coal, oil and coal-bed methane when those industries popped up in the last century, and they want to forego the same troubles as before.

Neighbors of the proposed wind farm northeast of Evansville reasserted their claim this week that they did not receive adequate notice of the county's final vote to approve conditional use permits for the project, according to court documents. They still want 7th District Court to review and declare invalid the Natrona County Board of County Commissioners' approval of the permits because the county violated the terms of its own Wind Energy Conversion System Emergency Regulations approved last fall.

Power Company of Wyoming, an affiliate of Denver-based Anschutz Corp., wants to build 1,000 wind turbines ...The influx of wind developers has raised hopes for jobs and economic development, but has also prompted concerns about erecting hundreds of 230-foot-tall turbines on largely undeveloped land. Locals and land managers, many of them veterans of the decade-long gas boom that brought a frenzy of development to Wyoming, point to the wind boom's potential downsides for wildlife, landscape vistas and local infrastructure.

A task force began a study Wednesday of what Gov. Dave Freudenthal described as the "gold rush" of wind energy development. Representatives of the governor's office, all affected state and federal agencies, industry and various conservation and landowner groups over-filled the large meeting room on the third floor of the Capitol Building for the organizational meeting. Sen. Jim Anderson, R-Glenrock, was chosen chairman of the task force and Rep. Rodney Anderson, R-Pine Bluffs, was named vice chairman.

Chevron Global Power Co. will begin construction on its 11-turbine wind farm project northeast of Evansville despite the litigation from its neighbors, a spokeswoman said Friday. "Our plan is to proceed with the project unless instructed not to," Jennifer Silva said Wednesday. ...The neighbors filed a petition on April 24 asking 7th District Court to review and invalidate the county commission's approval of two conditional use permits and for a variance. They claimed the county violated its own Wind Energy Conversion System Emergency Regulations approved last fall, according to the petitioners' attorney Michael McGrady.

About 200 concerned citizens flocked to Douglas May 7 for the first meeting of the Northern Laramie Range Alliance, an organization of landowners and citizens bent on stopping the development of wind turbines and the construction of a segment of Rocky Mountain Power's proposed Gateway West Transmission Line in the northern Laramie Mountains. "The main objective of the (Northern Laramie Range Alliance) is that we want to successfully oppose both of these things," Kenneth Lay, one of the alliance's founding members, explained.

Dozens of rural landowners want to "curb enthusiasm for" and ultimately kill plans to plant wind turbines and string a green-field power line segment across the northern Laramie Range in Converse and Albany counties. The areas in question are mostly private lands described as pristine mountain wilderness and home to some of the best elk herds in the state. "It's finally dawned on us what the scale of wind development plans is in the state," said Kenneth C. Lay, a Laramie Range landowner and organizer of the new landowners group, Northern Laramie Range Alliance.

Brent Lathrop, Southeast Wyoming program director for The Nature Conservancy, said that while conservation groups are excited about an alternative to traditional energy development in the state, turbines could be just as damaging to a landscape as oil and gas development. "We could be facing a bigger impact on our wildlife than oil and gas ever thought about doing," he said.

Last week, the Bureau of Land Management authorized the establishment of special offices in Wyoming and other Western states to expedite that renewable energy development on federal public lands. BLM officials said Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne issued a Secretarial Order on Friday that will allow the agency to establish coordination offices in Wyoming, Arizona, California and Nevada.

Natrona County's time has come for a commercial wind power farm of its own. Representatives of Chevron Global Power Co. will plead their case tonight to the county's Planning and Zoning Commission to erect 11 wind turbines on the former Texaco property north of the North Platte River near Evansville. "This will be our first wind project, and the first (commercial) one in Natrona County," said Jennifer Silva of Chevron Global Power Co.

Rocky Mountain Power is asking landowners for their input on the route of a major transmission line proposed to run across southern Wyoming from the Casper area to the Idaho border. Representatives of the Salt Lake City-based utility told the Carbon County Commission last week that it has identified a 2-mile-wide corridor for its proposed Gateway West transmission line, which would carry 500 kilovolts of electricity.

Teton Wind recently filed an application with the BLM for a second-phase expansion of its county-permitted, 36-turbine White Mountain Wind Energy Project. White Mountain is a popular scenic recreation area that lies northwest of Rock Springs and north and east of the city of Green River, just north of Interstate 80. The project would be located on approximately 13,140 acres of federal, state and private lands on White Mountain.

A quiet land rush is under way among the buttes of southeastern Wyoming, and it is changing the local rancher culture. The whipping winds cursed by descendants of the original homesteaders now have real value for out-of-state developers who dream of wind farms or of selling the rights to bigger companies. But as developers descend upon the area, drawing comparisons to the oil patch "land men" in the movie "There Will Be Blood," the ranchers of Albany, Converse and Platte Counties are rewriting the old script.

Representatives from White Mountain Wind LLC came before the county commissioners yesterday to seek adjustments for the placement of 36 wind turbines on White Mountain. After much discussion, White Mountain Wind withdrew the resolution, in order to bring it back at another time. ...White Mountain Wind asked to untable the resolution to discuss moving the proposed placement of the turbines to locations near the approved locations to make better use of the wind on White Mountain.

The agency will conduct an environmental impact statement, which will analyze the potential impacts of the 1,000-turbine wind farm spanning about 98,500 acres, according to the BLM. Federal land managers will consider concerns regarding rights-of-way as well as the environmental and socioeconomic impacts of installing and maintaining the facilities, which would include access roads, electric power gathering cables, an electric transmission line, and electric substations.

The $3 billion, 900-mile-long, high-voltage line would provide for 3,000 megawatts of wind energy generation in Wyoming for delivery to emerging renewable energy markets in the Desert Southwest, according to Anschutz affiliate TransWest Express LLC. The announcement comes just weeks after another affiliate of Anschutz, Power Company of Wyoming LLC, filed notice to the Bureau of Land Management of its intention to install some 2,000 megawatts of wind generation in Carbon County. The permitting process for both projects could exceed two years.

The Anschutz Corporation, through an affiliate Transwest Express LLC, has acquired the rights to develop a proposed $3 billion, 900-mile, 3,000 megawatt high-voltage transmission line to bring electricity from wind farms in southern Wyoming to growing markets of southern California, Las Vegas and Phoenix. ...Another Anschutz affiliate, Power Company of Wyoming, LCC, already has started work developing a 2,000 megawatt wind farm project in Carbon County Wyoming.