The Coastal Habitat Alliance, which is fighting a massive wind farm proposed for the Kenedy Ranch in South Texas, has raised some troubling, not terribly well-studied problems with wind power - namely it may take a toll on wildlife. As it happens, the Kenedy Ranch is smack dab in the middle of one of the most important corridors for migratory birds in the U.S., a sort of feathery superhighway. ...the Alliance's demands are pretty simple - before the PUC grants a permit to build the 21-mile, high-voltage power line, they want a study commissioned on the impact to the birds, bats and bees.

Impact on Wildlife Impact on Landscape Texas

A failed attempt by one alternative energy company has not stopped efforts to bring wind farms to the Hill Country. A West Texas-based company has approached landowners in Llano and Gillespie counties, and yet another wind power company has approached a landowner in Mason County.

Impact on People Impact on Landscape Texas

FREDERICKSBURG - Residents of this scenic Hill Country community are split over a California company's interest in building a field of wind turbines north of town to generate electricity.

General Impact on Landscape Zoning/Planning Texas

Ladd said the purpose of tonight's meeting is to get concerned taxpayers who don't like the idea of "wasting our tax dollars, increasing our electric bills and diminishing our property values 30 to 40 percent" involved. "If it were not for the tax credits involved, we would not have wind turbines being constructed in the state of Texas," Ladd said. "... It's the biggest waste of tax dollars I have ever seen."

Impact on People General Impact on Landscape Impact on Economy Texas

JACKSBORO — The wind rustling the oak trees on the Squaw Mountain Ranch soon may be its undoing as a starkly empty, unspoiled corner of North Texas. Riding the boom that last year pushed Texas past California as the nation’s leading wind energy producer, a wind power company wants to scatter 100 turbines across an area roughly nine miles long and two miles wide, with at least a dozen of the 250-foot towers on the ranch. “I’m not interested in having blinking red lights causing the Milky Way not to be as bright or to hear them when now I hear nothing up here except the sounds of nature,” said ranch manager Dan Stephenson, explaining why the ranch declined to lease land for the project and objects to its neighbors leasing as well. “Wind farm, that’s a spin term,” Stephenson said as he took in a vista of tree-covered ridgelines. “I call them wind turbine industrial zones.”

General Impact on Landscape Texas

Elsewhere, the General Land Office has gotten into real estate speculation, destroying rare habitats for profit. For instance, in discussions regarding coastal wind farms, Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson dismisses grave neo-tropical bird migration concerns with "This is Texas. We don't have Walter Cronkite and Ted Kennedy whining about their back yards."

Impact on Wildlife Impact on Landscape Texas