Commercial wind farm nears completion

MONTEZUMA, Kan.

igh above the Kansas prairie, a huge crane slowly lifts a tubular section of the last windmill going up at the Gray County wind farm, then gingerly lowers the 70-foot-long piece on the tower as workers inside the base bolt it down.

It's relatively still on this usually windy stretch of land 30 miles west of Dodge City, a perfect day for assembling the tower sections.

Nearby the propeller-like head -- roughly half the size of a football field -- lays on the ground, awaiting its own trip up to the top where it will soon tower 289 feet above green fields of emerging winter wheat.

Three months after the first of 170 turbines went up, the Gray County wind project is nearly complete -- weeks ahead of the Dec. 15 dedication.

Perched from farm fields for four miles around, the 170 turbines that make up the Gray County Wind Energy farm will generate 112 megawatts, enough to power 40,000 households in Kansas and Missouri. UtiliCorp United has already purchased the wind-generated power to supply its customers.

These sleek wind generators dwarf traditional pinwheel windmills that once pumped water for early farmsteads -- now mostly relics perhaps best known for its quintessential image of Kansas farm country.

Perhaps it is fitting that these modern wind behemoths are breathing new life into a rural community battered by years of low crop prices.

Few residents can appreciate it more than Debbie Wehkamp, the construction and operations administrator for FPL Energy. The company is a subsidiary of the FPL Group, the nation's leading developer of wind energy and the owner of the Gray County wind energy project.

Just a year ago, Wehkamp and her brother, Brian, made the heart-wrenching decision to close the farm machinery dealership that their father, Lee Schmidt, had founded 35 years ago in Montezuma.

"We were tired of fighting the farm economy," she said. Within a month, their International Harvester dealership was closed, and the small community would lose another business and employer.

She was skeptical when Tom Factor, a wind consultant for FPL, walked into her office and talked about the company's plans to build a multimillion-dollar wind energy project in Montezuma.

Wehkamp listened politely, but knew deep down that nobody was going to invest that kind of money in a little Kansas town. She had no idea what she and her brother would do once the family business was finished.

It was not until December 2000 -- when four company representatives came to ask her about buying her building -- that she and her brother realized it was actually going to happen, she said.

Today, Wehkamp and her brother are both employed with FPL, they are among the 10 permanent employees the company has hired. Another 150 construction workers toiling on the project have generated an economic boom for local businesses these past few months.

Local farmers are getting additional income by leasing easements for the wind generators, while still farming the land around the towers.

"Landowners are thrilled -- the only people that complained are those that didn't get turbines," Wehkamp said.

The project is valued at more than $100 million, said Rusty Hurt, the project's chief engineer for FPL Energy.

Kansas is known for its winds. According to a 1991 study by the Pacific Northwest Laboratory in Colorado, only North Dakota and Texas have the potential to generate more wind energy than Kansas.

But the Gray County energy project is the first large wind farm in Kansas, outside of Western Resources' two commercial-size wind turbines operating northwest of Topeka.

FPL owns wind farms in Iowa, Texas, Minnesota, Oregon and California generating about 800 megawatts of capacity. It plans to add another 650 megawatts by the end of this year.

"In California, FPL is a household word," Hurt said. "In Kansas, nobody knows us from Adam. We had to prove ourselves to the community."

When the company first began looking at doing a project in Kansas, it was looking for a place with good consistent winds, a welcoming community and electric transmission lines and substations with the capacity to carry the power.

They found it all around Montezuma, where the size of the project was bound only by the capacity of the local power transmission system.

"We have had such a good experience in this area, we would love to do another project," Hurt said.

Southwest Kansas -- with its flat land and steady winds -- is especially promising for another wind farm, although the company is looking at the whole state before making deciding on a site, he said.

Federal production tax credits for wind energy have dropped the cost of generating a kilowatt from 18 cents to less than 4 cents in the last seven years, Hurt said.

In addition, Kansas has also exempted wind energy from taxes, he said. But FPL has decided to give a yearly $100,000 donation to Gray County to make up what it doesn't pay in taxes, Hurt said.

"It doesn't seem right to us to come to a community and not give something back," he said.

The first row of windmills went up three months ago. The sight was so striking that construction workers had a hard time getting around the motorists who had stopped to watch them, he said. People would even bring picnic lunches to the site and watch the windmills turn.

"Instead of farming crops," Wehkamp said, "now we are farming the wind."