Bob Hendricks, Oxford resident, and the Sumner County Economic Development Commission have announced their efforts to acquire a wind farm in Sumner County have reached a successful milestone. Alternity Wind Power will erect three windmill towers west of Oxford to complete a year-long evaluation requirement. Aternity Wind Power is a wind farm development affiliate of the Conti Group, an engineering firm that offers construction services, engineering, environmental remediation, homeland security, building, industrial, power and renewable energy services to both the public and private sectors.
 

The three test towers will be erected over the next week or two to gather data on the wind velocity and directions of the proposed site for the next year. “The wind will determine if there’s going to be a wind farm,” said Hendricks.
 

In March of 2007, Hendricks read an article about renewable energy and learned of a conference on renewable energy in Kingman. It was something he was interested in, so he went. “I’m sitting there looking around and about two or three seats over, two rows back, my neighbor from three miles away was there too. He was interested. So we came back and determined we had four things you need for a wind farm. You need rolling terrain, like we got. You need quite a bit of wind, which we have. And transmission lines to be able to move the electricity which we have two miles down the road. The fourth one we found we needed was support from the community.”
 

The two men decided they’d take up the project and contacted Janis Hellard, Director, Sumner County Economic Development Commission. “We were a resource for them,” said Hellard. They held public meetings and took bus tours to existing wind farms. Hendricks said the response was almost entirely positive. “Everybody we talked to said they’d support it, that they thought it’s good, that we ought to move forward.” They surveyed Sumner County, gained resolutions of endorsements from the Cities of Wellington and Oxford and Sumner County.
 

The S.C.E.D.C. compiled a promotional package for the land owners to help sell Sumner County as a destination for a wind farm when they attend renewable energy conferences. Alternity Wind Power was interested and the erection of three evaluation towers is only further evidence of their interest in a 20-square-mile section of land between Oxford and the turnpike. In acquiring space on Westar’s grid, leasing land and erecting three towers, Hendricks believes Alternity has spent several hundred thousands of dollars already. If there isn’t enough wind, there won’t be a wind farm. But if there is, the collected data from the evaluation towers will determine the dispersal and arrangement of the towers.
 

Not all the land in the 20-mile section west of Oxford will be covered in wind farms. Hendricks acknowledges that not everyone is a fan of the wind farm proposal for Sumner County. He said most complaints have to do with appearances, “Again, in the eye of the beholder, some people think they’re ugly and don’t want to see them. Some people have argued with us and said, ‘Well, I don’t want to look at those da... things.’” But Hendricks disagrees, “They’re not unsightly but I think they’re pretty majestic. They don’t take up a lot of land, they’re not noisy and they’re very productive.”
 

Hendricks feels the wind farm will bring progress to the area, “This will create a cash flow to the county through taxes and to the county through royalties, to the county through costs of construction. Just a tip of the iceberg, the cement that will be purchased to build a wind farm will be in the $3 million.” They get that sales tax, that revenue goes into the county and of course that will go through the county economy. They’re going to get, what they call ‘pilot,’ payment in lieu of taxes, because, right now, wind stuff is tax exempt, but the private company will pay the county ‘x’ amount of dollars per windmill or so many thousands per year, however they work that out. That will go into the county coffers. And the majority of the landowners live in the county so they’re going to be spending a portion of that [money] in Sumner County. So it’s really a win-win for everybody.”
 

Henricks says he’s been a pilot all of his life, studied the weather and the wind. He says he believes in green energy and thinks it’s the way of the future. “Until somebody develops a storage system, so we can go out and capture lightening, this is going to be one of the waves of the future for the next 100 years.”
 

If the wind farm is built, Hendrix says the landowners have decided it will be called, “Wheat Capital Wind Farm.”

 

Click on attachments below to see pictures of the Met Towers being erected.