Nortex Times

Roby Christie and Bryon Barton of the North Texas Heritage Association (NTHA) say local residents are uniting to oppose planned wind power developments. They don’t like what is in the air.

APEX Clean Energy Inc., based in Charlottesville, North Carolina, is planning a large-scale wind power facilities in Clay County. APEX has named its project Black Angus Wind.

“APEX, after being served a demand letter by NTHA, and after they consulted with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, wrote us that they have suspended their Black Angus project,” Barton told Nortex Times. “Recent reports suggest that they may have recently quietly reactivated it.”

EDF Renewables, based in France, operates a wind facility about 30 miles west of the proposed new site. It has 175 turbines as tall as 300 feet.

“EDF was also served with a demand letter by NTHA, however, even after consulting with the USF&WS, have decided to press ahead with their project [reportedly named Lasso Wind] in the face of environmental and strident community opposition,” Barton said. “The project is being carried out as quietly as possible to avoid public scrutiny, but is rumored to consist of more than 120 turbines, each 625 feet tall.”

The NTHA is rallying local residents who oppose the developments and are concerned about the impacts of wind power.

They say the wind developments will cause serious and enduring economic and environmental damage. The association, which represents about 650 residents and landowners with more than 450,000 acres of property in Clay, Jack and Montague counties, held a rally at the Twin Lakes Community Activity Center in Jacksboro on March 18.

“It was a success. We limited attendance by making it RSVP invitation-only so we could reach our target audience,” Barton told Nortex Times. "We had 128 attendees show up, plus some of our own members who participated in the evening's program. There were four speakers, each with a specific topic to address.”

Christie, a retired postmaster from Wichita Falls with a long record of community service, said they wanted to get people together to build a coalition of supporters “who want to protect their properties, their neighbors' properties and to protect the county from wasting our personal tax dollars on tax abatements in support of the wind industry.”

“The spirit and size of the meeting was absolutely awe-inspiring,” Christie told Nortex Times. “It appeared that the enthusiastic crowd of over 150 landowners were entertained and informed all at once." 

Christie said wind power relies on federal, state and local tax abatements and incentives while robbing landowners of “property rights, rights of free speech, property values and peace of mind.”

That’s why so many people in the area are concerned about proposed developments, he told Nortex Times. 

“My wife and I have owned our Jack County land for about 30 years,” he said. “We reside out there half the time, the best half.”

“I am a retired businessman, who, along with my wife, built their retirement home in the beautiful North Texas countryside to enjoy a restful and rewarding retirement,” Barton said.

Tommy Gitchell, of Jack County, and John Greer closed the meeting with a call to action, Barton said, adding that they told people they needed to nominate and vote for candidates at the local level who oppose wind generation and will vote for regulation of the industry.

“Make your views and voices heard,” Christie said attendees were told.

Barton said the association objects to the very terms in use.

“We no longer call them ‘wind farms,’” he said. “They are not farms, but rather huge industrial estates. We oppose them for many reasons. They are subsidized by federal tax credits, county tax abatements and school districts' tax concessions. We oppose the government selection of winners and losers on principle."

“Industrial wind estates destroy neighboring land values," he added. "Research has shown that non-participating properties suffer immediate value losses of from 25% to 70%. This is a permanent loss that is uncompensated. Some of our members have worked their whole lives with personal sacrifice to build a working ranch or build their dream home. Now, in the blink of an eye, they are wiped out financially.”

He said approximately 2% of a community benefits from wind developments, and 98% suffer economic losses. Communities are divided, pitting neighbor against neighbor.

“Forensic economic studies have proven that this EDF wind industrial estate that we are opposing will cost the local community $6.5 million in costs or losses, offset by only $2 million in community benefits, for a net community loss of $4.5 million per year, for 20 years,” Barton said.

It’s not all economic issues, he noted.

“Industrial wind estates have been proven to be deadly to migrating bird and local bat populations,” Barton said. “The American Bird Conservancy has adopted a new effort to bring focus to this tragedy, as well over a million birds per year are being killed by wind turbines. Bats, one of the most important plant pollinators and pest control sources, are being killed at an even greater rate. All these detrimental effects have been verified and documented by independent third party research, and are disastrous to local farmers and ranchers.”

Industrial wind estates cannot stand on their own economic feet, even after billions of taxpayer subsidies for over two decades, he said.

“They are uncompetitive, and so now the general public has to pay the price,” Barton said. “The almost hysterical headlong rush into renewable energy has had unintended consequences that have caused deep economic, environmental, and social damages.”

The North Texas group is leery of wind power, asking what role it played in the power outages that left 4 millions Texans shivering in the dark when a powerful winter storm slammed through the state in mid-February.

The state is betting on renewable fuels, and the misery felt by millions in February reveals how that gamble paid out.

“The market structure in our state does many things to encourage the investments and the deployment of renewables — both wind and solar,” Charles McConnell, the executive director of the Center for Carbon Management in Energy and Sustainability at the University of Houston, told the Houston Republic in October, a foreshadowing of the problems to arise in the winter.

“To get the tax credits, producers using renewables may offer their electricity at a loss — even paying for their electricity to be used — during high-production times to ensure they receive their tax credits,” McConnell said. “By virtue of that, those that do not have participation in investment tax credits and production tax credits, those operators are not in a position to be able to compete with those suppliers.”

It meant the reserve margin in the Texas system has become smaller and smaller.

Is Texas growing too dependent on wind and solar power? Are those energy sources unfairly subsidized by states and the federal government?

Energy Alliance Policy Director Bill Peacock thinks so, as does Robert Michaels, a retired Cal State University, Fullerton economics professor who has studied energy issues for four decades.

“Beyond the weather, environmental policies that have been pushing renewable energy across the country and in Texas for a long time are largely keeping the Texas grid from providing reliable power,” Peacock told Lone Star Standard.

Despite lofty promises made to local governments, renewable energy facilities do not always produce the number of jobs required by Texas law. To get around this, local entities provide waivers.

Barton said the North Texas Heritage Association is the amalgamation of two predecessors, one from Clay County, and one from Montague County. The groups realized they needed to team up to be more effective.

“In 2019 we decided to combine our two efforts as we were both fighting the same wind developers [APEX and EDF], and we felt we would have better economies and clout if we joined forces,” he said. “Fighting the deep pockets of a foreign government utility such as EDF or RWE is an expensive and time-consuming business — all our work is performed by volunteers, so we have to work efficiently and smarter than our opponents.”

Barton, a rural Bowie resident and Flip Side Ministries board member, said the association knows it has a lot of work to do to prevent these industrial wind developments from being built.

“We will continue to vigorously press our case,” he said. “Research released by the USGS this month has documented that turbines harass whooping cranes during their migration through our specific part of Texas. We will draw this to the attention of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and seek their action to protect them."