Windfarms, Buffalo & Blue Highways

A remarkable change in the landscape is occurring in the American heartland: wind farms are springing up on a substantial scale. And it is a very good thing.

Over the weekend my wife and I took a driving holiday within Oklahoma because we had a couple of extra days available and after living in the Tulsa metro for years we've begun to realize that there is much of the state we have not bothered to explore. Our vacations generally have taken us out of state via interstate highways and toll roads, these designed to make us safer drivers by giving us very little interesting to look at, I suppose. For this trip we determined to use "blue highways," the lesser known roads of America (the term made popular by an autobiographical travelogue published in 1982 and written by William Least Heat Moon who navigated 13,000 miles of American back roads in 1978). On "blue highways" one finds the towns, communities and countrysides that the rest of modern America ignores or has forgotten.

Our goal for this trip: The Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge outside of Lawton and Fort Sill in southwest Oklahoma. A friend recommended the visit. He and his wife periodically take their large camper to the refuge and park for days at a time, hiking some of its trails and waking up to the appearance of protected wildlife right outside their camper door. My friend is not a photographer so we had no concept of what this place would look like. In my mind's eye I pictured low, barren rocky hills and maybe some grassland valleys. The reality was much different, and better.

From a distance outside of Lawton (which I had never visited) one could see the silhouettes of large mountains rising perhaps 1,500 to 2,000 feet above the prairie, and from this vantage they appeared quite rocky and barren. But as we drew hit State Highway 49 westward and drew closer, I could tell that looks from a distance were deceiving. The mountains were covered with oak and pine, the valleys of trees, flowers and grasses, and there were large lakes (Lawtonka and Elmer Thomas) on either side of the eastern entrance to the Reserve. We learned, in fact, that there are thirteen lakes - all man-made - in the 60,000 acre conservation park! The place is a vast oasis, a spiritual feast for the eyes and spirit.

Naturally the first thing we decided to do was to drive to the top of Mount Scott on a well-built asphalt road that winds around its 2,464 ft. frame at a continual but not excessively steep grade. For those accustomed to driving ascensions of larger mountains as we are, however, the tight and ever-present turns and gradient was a bit disorienting in that there was never a respite from the climb, save a few scenic turnouts which are themselves not level. But it was merely a matter of expectations; once you decide that "it is what it is," you find that you like it. At the summit is a large parking area and there were many vehicles coming and going. There are viewing areas and many rock ledges on which to climb, and there were many clambering about, including a good number of young children, which was wonderful to behold. I heartily approve of parents taking their kids to the great outdoors. We did our own explorations of the summit, me with my digital camera with its 10x optical zoom, my wife with her powerful binoculars. Such vistas on every side. It was a wonderful place to begin our explorations of the Reserve.

But what quickly caught my attention to the northeast of our mountaintop was the appearance of many wind-turbine generators, visibly in motion though the day's winds, at least in our position, were very light indeed! How far distant this wind farm was I could not tell but I have since learned that there are 129 turbines in the Blue Canyon Wind Power Project producing 225 megawatts of electricity, and that it is just one of five big wind farms in western Oklahoma. I was aware of the one near Weatherford, Okla., as it is visible off of I-40. I had no idea that wind farms in the Sooner state account for 687 megawatts of electrical production (enough to provide power to nearly 200,000 homes, or over 20 percent of the residents of Oklahoma)!

Also visible from the summit were small herds of buffalo and Texas Longhorn cattle, both thriving. The Wichita Mountains buffalo herd is considered the "seed stock" from which other public and private herds occasionally replenish themselves through the Reserve's annual auction. (The buffalo are very prolific and the herd must be thinned each year in order to maintain ecological balance so as not to outstrip the food supply!)

What a sight for eyes longing to see both the past and the future! Buffalo and Longhorns, once on their way to extinction, reclaiming their rightful place in America's future, and a giant wind farm quietly, effectively and cleanly producing power for Oklahoma, today and tomorrow.

Anyone who knows me understands that I am both a big believer in petroleum and in clean, renewable energy, and what my wife and I observed on our trip validates my confidence that America's best days are not behind us but ahead of us if the nay-sayers and ignorant will educate themselves about the real problems and conditions that confront us.

Point of fact: it was very heart-warming to see that drilling and pumping activity in Oklahoma is active, much stronger than I've seen it in years. Again, the advantage of driving the backroads is that you see the actual work being done. Drilling is not near the level it was in that brief period of the early '80s of our last big oil boom (before OPEC dramatically increased supply, killed prices and eliminated the incentive to drill, followed later by congressional and executive disincentives and an environmental strangle-lock of regulations designed to eliminate many older oil wells from existence). But there is drilling. I worry that there is still the refining bottleneck that comes from the closure of several old refineries and the fact that not a single new refinery has been constructed in the U.S. in over 30 years. Add to that fact the dozens of government mandated fuel blends requires refineries to re-tool several times a year to produce different types of fuel (botique blends) for different areas of the country - Caution! Some guesswork is required! - that creates downtime and artificially creates an inefficient environment for the production of fuel.

I wish that the same people who decry oil production could spend some time actually visiting the "oil patch" and see how modern drilling and conservation techniques preserve the land and water resources. My wife and I have a running joke as we pass by drilling sites and pumps, such as "Oh, look at those poor cattle who are risking their lives grazing as they do!" or "See how those evil oil companies have created that pristine pond (or lake) to fool us into thinking that they are not killing the environment with their toxins! How diabolical can you get!"

Truth: Once upon a time the oil and gas industry wasn't nearly as careful as it is today and often left a mess behind. But I know dozens of men and women in the industry today and not a one wants to be a bad actor in that way, let alone poison the Earth. They appreciate clean air and water as much as the next person, but they know that you can protect the environment while getting at the energy resources we still depend upon to maintain our way of life.

That's why I for one am not surprised at a billionaire oilman like T. Boone Pickens suddenly taking to heart the issue of wind and solar generation. His current public relations campaign seems to puzzle many Americans, particularly those on the coasts, because they suspect that he has some nefarious motive. Even the normally reliable conservative Michelle Malkin had a fearful posting about Pickens' newfound love of clean energy. Relax, Michelle! T. Boone is already rich, he's just decided that foreign oil is Public Enemy No.1 for America and in typical T. Boone fashion, he's doing something about it.

(By the way, he's right. We are spending $700 billion a year, by Pickens' estimation, on foreign oil, and to people in Saudi Arabia and Venezuela who would love nothing better than to see America bled dry and conquered by ideologies that would definitely change life as we know it. Why should we be funding both sides of the so-called War on Terror?)

Pickens actually has money invested in wind farm projects. He is putting his money where his mouth is. He is merely trying to educate the American people so that they do not allow Congress or our unelected bureaucracy to stop his effort to make us less dependent on foreign oil. If he makes a dollar or two in the process, why should we care? Better T. Boone than Hugo Chavez, I say!

And make no mistake about it. America's Left, while assuming the guise of environmentalists, have now taken to denouncing wind farms as dangerous to birds, and there are reports that enviromentalists are opposing new solar generating farms by declaring that we should "study" the impact on desert areas before we allow such operations to be built. Bottom line: if government doesn't control the new technologies, they want nothing to do with them. The goal is collectivism and "intelligentsia" control of our lives.

My suggestion: if you still have an open mind and want the facts, take your vacation in Texas or Oklahoma this summer. Spend a few dollars on gasoline and drive (not fly, that's far too energy intensive) through the wind farms, the oil fields, and the beautiful natural beauty of America, like the Wichita Mountain Wildlife Refuge, and ponder all these things in your mind and hearts.