Nortex Times

Earlier this month, Jack County commissioners announced a vote July 12 on the application from French company Lasso Wind LLC to rezone a portion of the north central Texas county for wind-farm tax abatements. 

Following a 90-minute public hearing weeks later, commissioners noticed a shift in the public opinions on just how welcome Lasso Wind is in Jack County. Ultimately, the vote was delayed after a commissioner left the public hearing but public opposition remains. 

“Tax abatements for American startup businesses that desire to start, expand or move to an area are great,” Roby Christie of the North Texas Heritage Association (NTHA) told Nortex Times. “This wind industrial park does not fit that parameter. It belongs to a foreign nation's energy company that will not create a significant number of jobs that stay in the Jack County economy.”

According to Christie, the average number of long-term jobs that actually remain in a local economy from a new wind-farm installation is only two or three. This amount, he says, “is not a suitable exchange for $7.7 million in taxes over 10 years.”

While there was little information to be found in corroboration with Christie’s hyper-local statistics, a study by Molecular Diversity Preservation International (MDPI) of Switzerland concluded after an analysis of 27 different sources across 18 years that “job creation seems to be limited” in the wind industry. 

Alleging that the tax-abatement dollars and portions of the wind-energy utility payments will be exported to Europe and cost revenue that could be better invested in the local economy, Christie says that the wind industrial complex is “getting a free ride” without addressing the appropriate concerns such as safety and environmental standards. 

Christie added that the environmental impacts of wind turbines are multitudinous. In some areas, the turbines’ massive concrete bases have damaged water-retaining layers of rock and soil, potentially also damaging well-water supplies, he said. 

“In some areas, ground erosion becomes a serious problem due to heavy equipment on roads, loss of vegetation and changes of normal drainage systems,” Christie said. “[Turbines] kill millions of birds and bats per year, thus changing the balance between mosquitos and other insects compared to the bird and bat population.”

Although no sources could be found to confirm bird and bat deaths in the millions each year, multiple sources do estimate the annual bird and bat deaths from wind turbines to be in the hundreds of thousands. EV Wind reported up to 500,000 deaths per year as of October 2020, and a Jan. 26 article from ABC Birds estimates the number of aviary deaths due to wind turbines is closer to 700,000 annually. 

Christie added that turbines interfere with the migration paths of many bird species that migrate north to south, including the highly endangered whooping cranes, which he says are particularly at risk if the Lasso Wind installation occurs. 

Environmental impacts are only one facet of the potential wind-farm consequences. Texas land rights organization TLOW reports that, based on independent studies, property values decrease 25% to 40% or more in areas within view of wind or solar farms.

“Unless the local tax authority makes a serious review of the property values, the tax values do not appear to change,” Christie said. He noted that Bob Mattox, a Jack County realtor, has been vocal to the county commissioners about properties next to wind industrial parks diminishing in value by up to 50%. 

“Even wind-farm contracts hedge against being sued for diminishing values and views," Christie said. "They also skirt issues surrounding safety, sounds, flickers, tremors, enlargement of the facilities and the environmental hazards.”

According to TLOW, Texas brokers have reported that within the last six months clients have decided not to buy land because of the potential of wind turbines being built in proximity to the property. Several brokers who sell property in Brown County and the surrounding area, including Comanche and Mills counties, said eight of ten buyers will not even look at a property if there are wind turbines in view.

Christie said if the county were solely dependent on wind and solar energy, a modern economy or modern lifestyles will be impossible to maintain. 

“Wind production, like solar, is intermittent,” he said. “The wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine all the time. Even Tesla reminds us that you cannot store enough electricity produced by wind turbines to keep our nation out of the dark ages. Tesla went on to suggest that there could never be enough battery storage built to prevent brownouts and total shutdown of the grid. In addition, batteries would become a huge environmental problem.”

All in all, Christie believes the best alternative for the foreseeable future is natural gas. He calls on Jack County residents to observe what has happened in other counties that have welcomed subsidized wind farms and remember that wind developers produce little in local economic revenue streams.

Traditional energy sources such as natural gas have received government subsidies for decades.

“Other areas and individual lease holders have found that tax abatements for wind industrial parks do not produce ongoing jobs for their economies," Christie said. "Yes one can hear that the wind farm built a school or a medical facility, but the county, school district or hospital district could have done the same if they had said no to tax abatement and used their own unabated tax revenue. They would have maintained control of their own destiny. 

“An even worse result in Jack County is the creation of conflicts of interest among county leadership," he added. "Even after some county commissioners and a county executive were found to have financial conflicts of interest, the discussion about the economic sense of doing so has eroded to a nasty argument and screams of private property rights.”

According to the NTHA, “Our purpose is to promote, encourage and pass down to our children the traditional values of a rural lifestyle, to protect our economy, our environment, our health and our beautiful land. ... To this end, we choose to oppose the construction of industrial wind farm complexes in Clay, Jack and Montague counties.”