Terry Hood, Tulsa’s Channel 6 anchor, threw a wide loop last October, and caught the wind. Hood, on a fact-finding report on wind energy, travelled as far south as Nolan County Texas and Sweetwater to look at the change wind energy had brought that small community. What she learned is mind-boggling. To see and hear first hand Google Cimarron County and look for Hood’s “Blowing in the Wind: Youtube video, and go from there.By talking to Nolan County rancher John Ussery and Sweetwater Mayor Greg Wortham,
Hood learned that wind energy and it’s towers have revitalized an ag community that was dying. Hood quotes Ussery as telling her that he couldn’t tell what his income off of more than 100 towers was… “It’s as good as oil honey.”Wortham told Hood that five years ago, the county’s tax base was 500 million, in 2008 it was $2.5 billion and is expected to rise to $3.5 billion this year and be $6 billion plus in ten years.In talking to Oklahoma Corporation Commissioner Jeff Cloud, Hood learned that Oklahoma is expected to lead the nation in energy produced with the wind by 2018.Cloud continued that this mailbox money would bring better schools and roads to Oklahoma.Wortham made the point that already in areas that have yet to see a tower, or perhaps never would, there had been and would be a financial gain through transportation, construction, etc.Wortham added that in just five years, wind energy now brings 20 percent of the county’s jobs, having caught up with oil and gas production.”Those are jobs that didn’t exist seven years ago,” Wortham said.He added that eventually wind energy is expected to bring four million jobs to the Midwest.Hood admits that she took her tour in the fall of 2008 when gasoline was more than $4 a gallon and before the credit crunch and that falling oil prices and tight credit make things different.However, Wortham points out that we spend $700 billion a year for oil with people that for the most part don’t like us. He thinks that what wind energy can do to help us meld with coal, and gas to produce our energy can only be a good thing and bring much needed dollars to job hungry rural communities.
