Kansas Wind Project Blown Away because of Concerns Over Land Value
Wind farms face all sorts of challenges before the first turbine starts spinning. A recent article in the Wichita Eagle highlights one hurdle wind farm developers encounter when they attempt to acquire the necessary land – land owners can sometimes get more for their land from homebuilders with plans for future housing developments than they can from wind advocates.
The Wichita Eagle said Horizon Wind Energy's plans for a 100MW wind farm 30 miles west of Wichita hit a major snag when several farmers who owned land in the area said their land might be worth more as sites for five-acre rural housing lots or suburban housing lots. The Eagle report also said the farmers didn't want to commit to a 30-year lease that would require company approval for some property changes.Wichita Eagle article
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Jim Lucy Blog
Chief Editor
Jim Lucy has been wandering through the electrical market for more than 30 years, most of the time as an editor for Electrical Wholesaling, Electrical Marketing newsletter and CEE News. During that time he and the editorial team for the publications have won numerous national awards for their coverage of the electrical business. He showed an early interest in electricity, when as a youth he had an idea for a hot dog cooker. Unfortunately, the first crude prototype malfunctioned and the arc nearly blew him out of his parents' basement. Before becoming an editor for Electrical Wholesaling magazine and Electrical Marketing, he earned a BA degree in journalism and a MA in communications from Glassboro State College, Glassboro, NJ., which is formerly best known as the site of the 1967 summit meeting between President Lyndon Johnson and Russian Premier Aleksei Nikolayevich Kosygin, and now best known as the New Jersey state college that changed its name in 1992 to Rowan University because of a generous $100 million donation by N.J. zillionaire industrialist Henry Rowan. Jim is a Brooklyn-born Jersey Guy happily transplanted in the fertile plains of Kansas for the past 20 years.