Wind power generates a new cash crop in state (WA)

[lindisfarne]

Wind power generates a new cash crop in state
Monday, June 19, 2006
By Hal Bernton
Seattle Times staff reporter
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/PrintStory.pl?document_id=2003070559&zsection_id=2002111777&slug=wind19m&date=20060619
<snip>
Once the Big Horn project comes online, the Grabners will receive more than $160,000 in annual royalties. Four neighboring landowners with turbines will collect payments as well. The project also is expected to generate more than $1.1 million in property taxes for Klickitat County.

The Big Horn is part of the dramatic expansion of wind power in rural Washington, as higher prices for natural-gas-generated power make this renewable alternative — boosted by federal tax credits — a hot commodity.
<snip>
Collectively, these wind-power projects will be able to produce enough electricity to supply more than 400,000 homes. Around the Pacific Northwest, wind-power projects now operating — or expected to come online — will be able to generate about 3 percent of the region's electrical energy. Some of the energy will be sold out of state. Some of the projects are bankrolled by developers, others by private and public utilities.
<snip>
To the Grabners, who are in their 70s, the project will fund a retirement that otherwise might have required them to sell their farm. The royalties also will help two of their sons stay on the land.
<snip>

[GreenPartyVoter]

1. Hmmm... There may be a future for those folks who can no

longer run the farm and who have kids who don't want it.

[murielm99]

2. We have a farm in an area where a company

is putting up wind farms.

My husband is very much against having them on his farm. He says there has been trouble getting payment, and trouble with subcontractors building the turbines.

I don't know if he is right, or if he is just reflecting his father's old fashioned ideas. Does anyone here have experience with them on their farm property?