A wind farm is to be built near a nature preserve despite Osage Indian protests
Guest post by Dale R. McIntyre
A big-city corporation rams through industrial development on a pristine landscape against the wishes of the local Native Americans, who fear their burial grounds and traditional use of the land will be impaired. Sound familiar?
There are twists, however, and irony enough to make it a “three-pipe problem”.
The corporation is Wind Capital Group LLC, of St. Louis, building a wind farm west of Pawhuska, Oklahoma.
The Native Americans are the Osage Nation of Oklahoma, and the traditional land use they see threatened is oil and gas drilling.
On Thursday, Dec. 15th, 2011, Wind Capital Group won a ruling from US district judge Gregory Frizzel that the wind farm could proceed despite the protests of the Osages.
Wind Capital wants to rush construction of the wind farm to qualify for a 2.2 cent/kW-hr federal tax subsidy, loss of which would “jeopardize the very existence of the wind facility.” (Tulsa World, Dec. 16th, 2011, p. 1)
Osage Nation Principal Chief John Red Eagle has stated that”…the target area for wind development would intrude upon sacred Osage burial sites, posing a major threat to the tribe’s culture.”(Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise, Dec. 16th, 2011,, p.1)
The eastern edge of the proposed wind farm site is about 3 miles from the boundary of the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, home to 2500 bison on one of the last remnants of pristine tallgrass prairie left on the continent. To the east, Bluestem Lake hosts Canadian geese, pelicans, red-tailed hawks and peregrine falcons. Bald eagles winter over at Kaw Lake to the west.
I own land, fish, hunt and[ ramble] in the area so I know it as a majestic rolling grassland. In spring the Indian Paint Brushes, the red clover, bluebonnets and a dozen varieties of sunflower paint the landscape in a riot of color bold enough to delight Chagall. Deer and puma, wild turkey and coyotes play deadly games of hide and seek in the thick groves of cottonwood, cedar and blackjack oak along the creek beds.
The sight and sound of large wind turbines grates the nerves in such a place, as does their grisly record of killing birds. But the Osage Nation has another very pragmatic objection; they fear the wind farm will interfere with their oil and gas drilling.
In 1906, the Osage Nation took control of all mineral rights in the 1.5 million acre Osage Indian Reservation, now Oklahoma’s Osage County. Since then, surface rights pass by sale from owner to owner, but the mineral rights stay with the Osage tribe.
Thus for over 100 years, oil and gas have been critical to the economy of Osage County. The royalties are shared out among tribal members every year, and make a welcome addition to hardscrabble incomes from ranching and farming. “Big Oil” has no presence in Osage County. Small local companies produce the wells and many very welcome local jobs. Osage County wells are small “stripper wells”, pumped by nodding “pump jacks”. They typically make 2 to 10 barrels of crude per day.
(Larger firms may join in future as more complicated horizontal wells are drilled to exploit the “shale gas revolution.”)
Chief Red Eagle insisted in court that the wind farm would impair this vital tribal revenue stream by intefering with access to key drilling sites.
Wind Capital Croup brought experts to court who testified that the inconvenience to oil and gas drillers would be small. The judge agreed.
Wind Capital Group spokesmen say they are eager to work with the Osage Nation. They point out that the wind farm will create jobs (Construction will require 150-200 workers, but the construction contractor, RMT Inc., is from out of state. Permanent jobs are estimated as “12-15”. The believe property taxes on the wind farm will be a windfall to the tiny nearby rural school district of Shidler.
Tales with devilish villains and saintly heroes are for movies. Wind Capital Group is playing by the rules, and building on private land, whose owners have the right to exploit their property for lawful gain. The Osage Nation is not a collection of beggarly blanket Indians. They are well-represented, well-connected politically, with a shrewd sense of their rights and a determination to assert them. On January 24th, 2012, Chief Red Eagle announced a formal appeal of Judge Frizzell’s ruling (Lucinda Bray, Pawhuska Journal-Capital, Jan 25th, 2012)
As for those burial grounds, well, they are not so sensitive that oil and gas drilling disturbs them.
But all who dream of low-carbon energy should recognize that wind farms will intrude on huge areas considering the small amount of intermittent power they produce. The areas thus intruded upon are not sterile desert or blighted brownfield urban sites. The Osage County Wind Project is cheek-by-jowl with one of the most idyllic nature preserves in mid-continental America. Another wind farm, near Woodward, Oklahoma, is a prime suspect in the disappearance of the bats from neary Alabaster Caverns.
Since these wind farms do not proceed at all in the absence of whacking great federal subsidies, wind farm projects seem to be creating a new special interest group, with its own lobbyists, its own pet legislators, and its own corporate sponsors determined to preserve a very high rate of return on capital.
Call it “Big Wind”.
Meanwhile, the bison in the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve will just have to learn to graze, fight, breed and give birth to the high-pitched whine and stroboscopic “swish” of the turbines.
As for the birds, the geese, the pelicans, the eagles and those graceful, soaring hawks making their “lazy circles in the sky”, well, they’ll just have to watch where they’re going. Inattention will get them chopped into coyote sashimi by the turbine blades.
Regardless of birds killed, this (most) wind farms would never be constructed without government subsidies. Wind power is expensive and unreliable, therefore, not viable on it’s own. Considering the relatively short life of many of these farms, it would be wise to make the owners post a bond for the removal of their rusted carcasses. If there is no bond, then the taxpayer will just get screwed again when the subsidies run out.
The pompousgit
Horses for courses, in the uk situation not solar-not enough sun–and not wind-too inefficient and unsightly in our small scale landscape. So I go for wave and tidal as we are an island with no where further than seventy miles from the coast and known energy cycles as regards tides.
Tonyb
Uh; Tom:
From the Erickson study…
Thirty six percent (Red-tailed Hawk) of 182 dead birds is 65 and a half red-tailed hawks; eleven percent (Golden Eagles) of 182 is twenty Golden Eagles.
There is nowhere in America where we (everyone) can afford to lose such substantial portions of our large raptors nor even a smaller portion (bird population wise) of our smaller raptors (kestrel). These kind of losses will make DDT seem like a mild problem in comparison.
Oh, sure; when they do brief counts or surveys and then estimate total kills, tally the results into large tables where the estimates are divided by turbine or megawatt (no offense intended Anthony), the numbers sound trivial. When it comes down to stone dead birds that are very slow breeders, it is no joke.
That phrase “documented” sounds like a decisive data point. Only that term documented leaves me wondering and that followup phrase “scavenging and searcher efficiency biases” makes me cringe even more. Just how do they determine that bias? As a country boy, I can assure you that every hurt wild bird is a master at hiding, even in mown areas. So the bald fact is, we don’t know how many birds are injured nor how many of those birds perish later by the wind farms nor do we truly know true bird mortality.
All in all, the studies leave a lot to be desired. The Erickson one in particular seems focused on couching things both as bad as possible, (e.g. Pesticide poisonings in Argentina… estimate 67 million birds die from pesticide poisonings… or the 100 million bird deaths estimate, which just happens to be based on estimates which are also based on estimates.) and as good as possible, like making the wind farms look like they’re only responsible for an incidental percentage of bird deaths.
I don’t buy that half a billion dead birds from windows line either, more trumped up estimates based on flimsy data.
Thanks for the post Dale. I wish the Osage Nation great hunting, good fortune, and eventually peace of mind, body and soul.
I wish we could stop calling these installations “wind farms”. There are industrial installations for the production of electricity. There is nothing even approaching what could be called farming going on there.
This will make ceremonial eagle feathers easier to acquire for rain dances. Just pick ’em up off the ground near the windmills.
— in the middle of . . .
Dr. Dave says:
February 2, 2012 at 12:08 pm
“I’m sure I’m paraphrasing but it was essentially a “follow the money” statement.”
Connect that to this: “You can’t do just one thing.” Example:
Gasoline engines knock or ping.
Add tetraethyl lead (TEL).
Lead is bad.
Remove lead.
Add methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE).
MTBE is bad.
Remove MTBE.
Add ethyl alcohol (ethanol).
Not a good idea after all.
Next. . .
Along with this has been two conceptual changes. The use of ethanol has gained the attribution of making a contribution to National Security (less reliance on unsavory foreign types). And, even though it is not “advanced” in any meaningful sense, it was supposed to be made (real soon) by “advanced” green and clean methods. That hasn’t happened. The label just morphed to include ethanol – as in “advanced ethanol.” [On Bing, that 2-word search phrase gets 7,360 results.]
Just as an aside on the “kill” topic. Birds, mammals, and reptiles of many sorts are killed when a field of corn is harvested. Likewise for other crops such as hay and grapes. Bales of hay (switch grass, anyone?) frequently include birds, small snakes, mice, rabbits . . . Hand harvesting of wine grapes can be deadly for rattlesnakes as pickers move through the rows. Our government selectively prosecutes oil providers when a bird is killed. That returns us to your “follow the money” concept because the litigation and/or fine “causes the price of electricity to increase.”
PVE said @ur momisugly February 2, 2012 at 12:50 pm
Here’s an entertaining comparison of bird kills between oil sands tailings ponds and wind turbines in terms of the energy produced:
Oil sands kill 2.5 birds per year per petajoule.
Wind turbines provide coyote sashimi at the rate of 1114 birds per petajoule!
@Political Junkie says: That video: The death of the American Eagle by Clean Energy!
There seem to be a lot of different tricks being used by the green hippie parties fundamentalists and preferred lobbyists.
One trick is to study wind mills in the far north, where there ain’t too many birds to begin with and a prevalence of predators/carnivores in the wild keeping the ground clear of anything edible, then extrapolate that to the whole country.
One is to study wind mills at sea to see not much laying about the foot of the great bird choppers and then extrapolate that.
Another trick, done recently in Sweden, is to take an old number of dead birds and divide it amongst all of todays wind mills and of course not disclosing that there is a difference of where the windmills are located neither. It went something like this: So what if there has been 10 000 birds killed by those windmills over there, that’s just ten birds per mill if you divide by all the mills…
I prefer the honesty trick though, but of course that has never, as far as I’m aware, been applied by any sort of environmental-socialist: Well, it’s the tax money or the birds and bats? :p
Courtesy of http://www.ieso.ca — Ontario’s electricity supply capacity vs. current (Feb 2 16h00-17h00) generation:
Nuclear: 11,446 MW / 8692 MW
Gas: 9,549 MW / 4560 MW
Coal: 3,504 MW / 988 MW
Hydro: 7,947 MW / 4756 MW
Wind: 1,512 MW / 121 MW
This is with our nice heavy cold winter air (-5C at my house). In all fairness, wind has gotten up into the 1200MW actual generation range but only in the winter. It only reached 700MW during last year’s hurricane and I have seen it below 30MW (total for the province) in the summer.
Ironically Ontario is almost self-sufficient in no-C02 non-Wind generation since our peak demand is around 20 GW (Nuclear + Hydro). One or two more Canadian made nuclear reactors would do the trick. But “Big Wind” (aka “Fools Power”) rules in this province so that isn’t happening in my lifetime.
P.S. the output of all the solar panels in this province don’t even count in the wholesale supply/demand picture.
The $64 question is: What is the Energy Returned On Energy Invested (EROEI) for this project?
Answer: No one will submit the EROEI spreadsheet, because they do not want you to find out it is way less than unity!
Wind power is unsustainable.
thepompousgit says: “Instinctual behaviour of raptors, ravens and crows seems to be to eat dead birds rather than avoid them; but that’s in Tasmania.”
Yup, thank you. Raptors and scavengers will descend and feed on what’s on the ground. Not all of the carrion will be directly under the turbine, but possibly raptors will have increased risk, prey lower risk. Send me a grant for a few million and I’ll write a computer program that will tell us the answer.
Uh, whatever for? Why would my thinking about this be any better than those overzealous silly eco-urgent-must-do-it-now people?
Subsidizing an unproved technology before it is commercially viable means taking a stance that is really a personal decision because it certainly isn’t a wise business decision. I’ve heard for years that reciprocating engines are horribly inefficient. Wouldn’t it be a good idea for government to sink a billion dollars into making them more efficient? Think of the CO2 reductions? Of course it isn’t a good idea, deciding ahead of time that anyone knows the right answer is silly.
Throwing money at a problem has never been a good decision no matter how tempting anyone’s favorite solution may sound. And one should never trust anybody’s word that an unproved technology works until it is fully proved and reproducible. Once proved, any claims by the makers that the technology then fails to accomplish can be considered fraud.
James Sexton….
“JimBob, I had no idea you were a homeboy! I drive 400 often. And yes, it is a horrible blight to the some of the most breathtaking scenery imaginable. For those who haven’t seen it, just look at what they’ve done ….. http://www.geospectra.net/kite/beaumont/beaumont03.jpg”
Nothing like a drive down K99 through Sedan on a warm spring day, although apparently I should be paying for the privilege of using someone else’s scenery. The Elk River facility is interesting at night with the strobe lights randomly flashing on all those towers. I used to fly over that area all the time but I haven’t done it at night…maybe I’ll see what it looks like from overhead sometime.
Just for the record, I’m not ignorant about farm and ranch economics. I went through school surrounded by cowboys and farmers. The real kind, who busted their humps on the farm/ranch during weekends, breaks, and summer vacations. Like any other business there are some who do really well, and some who couldn’t manage a paper bag. I don’t know any of my former buddies who would even consider leasing their multi-generation family land to a wind farm facility.
We need to stop posting about the scenery, though. The more people believe it’s flat and ugly around here, the better off we all are :-).
Forget the birds, what about all the documented human deaths from wind power? I seem to recall seeing a site on the Internet not too long ago that documented wind turbine deaths & serious (limb loss, etc.) injuries going all the way back to the 70’s
I may have seen the link to that site here at WUWT (Best damn blog in the ‘Net)
The documented carnage was stunning.
Well, I don’t know about the Osage, but if Indian reservations in Western Washington are any indications of “traditional use” of lands, a wind farm would be a HUGE improvement. The places are usually pig styes.
Dr. Dave says . . .
“My friend told me the avian carnage around the turbines was unbelievable. The rancher explained that the coyotes and other scavengers will have it all cleared out by morning.”
This may be ok with avian carnage, but if you’re talking about bats, it poses a huge potential health problem for animals and humans. Bats are the #1 carriers of rabies in the world, including the United States (an estimated 1 in 10 bats is infected), and consuming, or even contacting, the remains of a rabid bat can potentially transmit the disease to any mammal. One does not have to be bitten to contract it. Humans cleaning up the remains of dead bats are at extreme risk (the virus can live for days in an exposed carcass, and years in a frozen one), and rabies vaccinations do not prevent its development in humans; they simply reduce the number of post-exposure treatments required to prevent its development. If a human gets the saliva and brain-borne virus into his system (through invisible scratches, cuts, mucus membranes, eyes, etc.), he must still be treated to avoid the disease, regardless of any previous rabies vaccinations . Incubation in humans can take years. As long as treatments are correctly administered and received before any symptoms appear, they’re 100% effective. They’re also very expensive.
Raccoons are the second highest carriers of rabies in the Eastern United States, possibly because they’re scavengers. Animals eating rabid dead raccoons (such as roadkill) have subsequently developed rabies.
In Thailand, bats are captured and cooked and eaten. Thailand has tens of thousands of reported cases of human rabies every year. Most are blamed on dog bites, but capturing and handling live bats, then killing and eating them, may account for a great many.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture used to put out vaccine baits for raccoons on the East Coast, but has since stopped doing so, claiming a lack of funds. Incidentally, some vaccine baits are made with a live virus, and at least one human is known to have recently contracted rabies simply from handling baits.
“I do not want to pay twice for the same electricity.”
In Canada, our wind projects are paid by a feed in tarrif system. Where the regular power companies are forced by law to pay 50 cents a kwh for wind generated power and then sell it for 12 cents (That is, if people are actually buying power at the time the wind is blowing). How’s that for a great business plan.
Only governments can come up with a plan like that and think its good.
Jeff Alberts says:
February 2, 2012 at 8:48 pm
A big-city corporation rams through industrial development on a pristine landscape against the wishes of the local Native Americans, who fear their burial grounds and traditional use of the land will be impaired.
Well, I don’t know about the Osage, but if Indian reservations in Western Washington are any indications of “traditional use” of lands, a wind farm would be a HUGE improvement. The places are usually pig styes.
________________________
You might want to read some of the information posted in this thread about the Osage people (and about wind generation,) before making prejudicial and scurrilous statements like that.
Your statement makes you look stupid.
My statement is based on observational experience almost every day.
Anton mentioned the health hazards associated with bat corpses and rabies.
Let me add another – flying foxes, aka fruit bats, of which we have large populations in Australia, are carriers of the deadly Hendra virus. Hendra jumps species, and usually affects horses (fatally). However, there have been about 20 cases of transmission to humans from horses and now one from a dog. The first known case was in 2004, and the most recent outbreak occurred in the last few weeks.
The fatality rate in humans is over 50% and those that survive are very sick for years afterwards. Injured and dead fruit bats on farmland are a real hazard to livestock, especially horses. The last big Hendra outbreak virtually closed down the racing industry for a couple of months, at a cost of millions of dollars. For humans, it is a nightmarish disease which almost nothing is known about and for which there is little in the way of treatment.
In terms of bird deaths from wind ‘farms’, the comparisons with other causes like buildings, cats etc ignore the fact that windmill blades kill birds that are at no risk from these causes, especially raptors. Raptors typically have small localised populations and low breeding rates. It doesn’t matter in the least if 10 million pigeons fly into office blocks each year, but the loss of 100 raptors a year from a local population can have significant effects on reproduction rates over time.
Why wind turbines are a bad investment.
I have always had an off the cuff feeling that wind turbines were a bad business investment but never really took the time to put real numbers to the equation until now. Since I do numbers and not words let’s do the math.
First – The cost. http://www.windustry.org/how-much-do-wind-turbines-cost – Since the actual cost of a specific unit can vary due to local situation, we will pick a value slightly less than the mean value given in the link above. With the range of $1.2 mil and $2.6 mil per MW capacity, we will pick $1.7 mil per MW as our cost per unit. The word capacity is very important.
Second – The price of electricity. This is a kind of a moving target. It goes up, it goes down. So we will just pick a point and then add 25% for good measure. The price that we will assign will be $25/MWh. That may sound low but I only pay $100/MWh for the electricity at my house. http://www.ieso.ca/imoweb/marketdata/markettoday.asp
Third – Actual production. Again I will assign an estimated value. 30% of installed capacity. This may be high but if you look at the Texas wind turbines I don’t think it is out of line. http://www.ercot.com/gridinfo/generation/windintegration/2012/01/index
We will purposefully neglect operation and maintenance and distribution. Why? The three numbers above tell us all that we need to know.
Cost per MW Installed
$1,700,000.00
Electricity Produced per day
24 MWh * 30% = 7.2 MWh
Value of Electricity
$25/MWh
Value of Production $180.00 per day – $65,700.00 per year
Annual return 4%
It’s a break even situation before you add in O&M. The only way for wind turbines to pay for themselves is with tax breaks and subsidies. If you take those away, the numbers just won’t work.
Thanks Johanna for the info. I was complely unaware of this disease.
Flying foxes are adorable.
Anton
Jeff Alberts
Dear Mr. Alberts,
Osage County, Oklahoma, has not been an Indian reservation for over 100 years.
Back when Oklahoma was Indian Territory, the Osage Indian Reservation was dissolved and all members of the Osage Indian tribe were given allotments of 160 acres per each head of household. Mineral rights were retained by the tribe as a whole. Some surface rights were retained by the tribe as pasturage. Some tracts of land were leased to large ranches; other plots of land were sold outright to the highest bidder.
Upon statehood in 1907, the former Osage Reservation became Osage County, Oklahoma. Both Indians and those of European descent own land there. I myself have no Indian blood at all, as far as I know, yet I own some 94 acres east of Pawhuska. Without false modesty I can tell you that my property is a beautiful mixture of park-like forest and meadow. No pig sty in sight.
The condition of property in Osage County varies no more and no less than anywhere else in north eastern Oklahoma. Some hillbillies fill their yards with old cars and broken down farm machinery. Some landowners have created little Edens of park-like tranquillity with yards like putting greens.
Thus whatever squalid sights you may see in Western Washington have nothing whatsoever to do with the discussion in hand.