CHEYENNE—Decked out in Wranglers cinched with a horseshoe belt buckle, a paisley button-up shirt and black cowboy hat, Niobrara County rancher Bobby Giesse addressed a crowd of about 50 on a blistering hot afternoon in front of the State Capitol Building.
Central and southeast portions of the state are seeing an expanding crop of wind turbines, he noted, underscoring what other speakers had described as an industrial “Wind Wall” that threatens Wyoming’s vistas, ranching heritage, wildlife and tourism.
“Wyoming is what America was,” Giesse told the crowd of people holding placards emblazoned with phrases like Save Our Golden Eagles Before It’s Too Late and Renewables Moratorium Now. “The problem is, once it’s gone, it’s gone. And it never comes back.”
Other speakers at the “Wyoming Wind Wall” rally on Thursday warned wind turbines threaten birds — particularly golden eagles — stress cattle, displace wildlife and potentially pose risks to people via vibrations. To date, there are about 1,927 wind turbines spinning in the state, according to federal data, and at least another 1,000 wind turbines are either being erected or in various stages of permitting and financing.
Rather than take aim at any one particular wind energy project, rally organizers called on decisionmakers to consider the bigger picture: the cumulative impact of converting mostly undeveloped, agricultural landscapes into semi-industrialized zones with wind towers that are regarded by many as a blight on Wyoming’s open spaces.
“Across the Laramie and Snowy Range mountains, industrial wind projects are being approved across hundreds of thousands of acres in the middle of the central flyway, in critical migratory wildlife corridors — without a clear, consistent evaluation of their combined impact,” Albany County Conservancy Executive Director Anne Brande wrote in an email blast ahead of the event. “What is taking shape is NOT a series of individual projects. It is a solid wind wall threatening migratory wildlife and communities.”
Each existing and proposed wind energy project hopscotches through a federal, state and local permitting process where local authorities operate within their own silo of mission-and-authority, critics say. The disjointed regulatory landscape fails to acknowledge that each new wind farm builds upon the other, extending the electrical vine to enable more and more outward industrial growth.
Cheyenne area resident Wendy Volk, who organized the event, has implored state officials to consider individual wind energy projects as part of a larger industrial infrastructure that’s morphing into a corridor of towers, power lines and electrical substations from Medicine Bow to Cheyenne to Douglas.
Absent from the rally, however, were Wyoming ranchers and farmers who say, even if they’re not crazy about wind turbines or renewable energy in general, the industry provides an opportunity to earn surface lease rentals. That extra income, several ranchers have told WyoFile, could mean the difference between keeping pastures in production or selling off sections for rural housing and other non-agricultural uses.
Giesse scoffed at the notion when WyoFile asked whether he’d consider such an opportunity.
“They sat at my dining room table and they offered me $47 million over the next 55 years,” Giesse said. “I’m supposed to be blown away.
“I told them,” he continued, “‘What you’re going to do is, you’re going to come in here, you’re going to do the same damn things that some of the oil companies tried pulling. Get paid your subsidies, and you’re going to sell the damn company to a shell LLC who’s going to file bankruptcy and nobody’s going to get anything.'”
