Lamar vs. Lamar.
The southeastern Colorado town, that is, is squaring off against U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander in a tiff over wind.
Tennessee Republican Alexander, a foe of wind power, plans to introduce an amendment to the Senate energy bill that would limit wind-energy incentives.
The town, home to the nation’s fifth-largest wind farm, is fighting back with a letter-writing campaign extolling the benefits of wind power.
“We don’t really understand any of Sen. Alexander’s logic or where he’s coming from,” Prowers County Commissioner Gene Millbrand said.
Lamar is the seat of the county, where 108 towering wind turbines at the Colorado Green wind farm provide electricity for Colorado’s Front Range. A group of local ranchers plans to build a second nearby wind facility this year.
County residents like the wind farm not only for the hundreds of construction jobs it brought and its $700,000 annual boost in property-tax revenue, but also because they see the beauty in spinning blades that produce clean energy, Millbrand said.
“I take offense to Sen. Alexander’s comments that they’re an eyesore, they make a lot of noise and they ruin the landscape,” he said. “The farmers down here actually are standing in line waiting to get some turbines on their property.”
Alexander seeks to ban tax credits for wind farms near coastlines, national parks and other scenic areas. He also proposes to delay federal permitting of wind projects to give local governments a chance to intervene.
“At a time when America needs large amounts of low-cost reliable power, wind produces puny amounts of high-cost unreliable power,” Alexander said last week on the Senate floor.
In a letter to Alexander, Lamar Mayor Elwood Gillis said Lamar citizens are expressing “disapproval and outrage” over the senator’s proposal.
“Lamar is firmly behind wind energy,” Gillis wrote, “and we welcome the addition of these (turbines) on our landscape as they gently turn in the winds that very rarely stop blowing across these plains.”
Staff writer Steve Raabe can be reached at 303-820-1948 or sraabe@denverpost.com.
