Blowin’ in the wind In sun-seared West Texas, oil and gas producers have driven the regional economy since the mid-1920s. Now there’s a new player in town—electricity-generating wind turbines. The turbines are sprouting by the hundreds on the low mesas that dot the desert landscape. Wind turbines came to the small West Texas town of McCamey with the millennium. Construction began in 2000, and the first machines came on line in 2001. Florida Power and Light (FPL) now runs 688 area turbines. “There are three things you’re going to have to find,” says Neil James, production manager for the FPL wind operations around McCamey. “That’s the wind, the transmission lines and the land. The McCamey area is very abundant in those three things.” McCamey, population 1,600, has always been blessed with petroleum resources, but the oil business boom-and-bust cycles have taken their toll. Oil production in Upton County dropped almost 25 percent from 1972 (when it was 12.5 million barrels) to 1999 (9.4 million barrels). Wind power has restored McCamey’s economy. It now bills itself as the “Wind Energy Capital of Texas.” “It was dying there for a little bit,” admits Alicia Sanchez, who heads McCamey’s economic development office. “Now taxes have increased 30 percent from 2004 to 2007. All we can see is positive.” Texans apparently agree. An FPL-commissioned study released earlier this year said 93 percent support further development of wind energy in the state. Texas’ other historic industry, ranching, loves the turbines. Rancher Ernest Woodward said he can’t imagine any harm coming to his livestock from nearby turbines. For some ranchers, wind turbines bring with them an economic incentive that oil and gas does not. “Wind power is a surface activity,” Doehn says. “With oil and gas the minerals are underneath, and a lot of ranchers don’t own the mineral rights. Many of them sold off the minerals in order to get enough money to retain the surface rights when times were tough.”....