RAWLINS, Wyo.—An energy company has applied to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management for a permit to construct 1,000 wind turbines south of Rawlins.
Bruce Collins, spokesman with the Rawlins office of the BLM, said Power Co. of Wyoming has applied for a right of way permit for two wind farms. He says the notice of the proposal hasn’t been issued to the public yet.
Collins said these are the largest wind projects ever proposed in the Rawlins district, and may be the largest the BLM has ever handled.
“If there’s one resource Rawlins has lots of, it’s wind,” Collins said.
The two wind farms are proposed on an area of intermixed land managed by the BLM and private land owned by the Denver billionaire Phil Anschutz south of Rawlins. Corporate records on file with the Wyoming Secretary of State’s Office say Power Co. of Wyoming’s mailing address is with the Anschutz Corporation in Denver.
The BLM manages every other one-square-mile section of land in the checkerboard area, while private owners control every other section.
The project is in the preliminary stages and environmental studies have not yet begun, Collins said. He said the exact locations of the two wind farms hasn’t yet been chosen but a broad area along the Continental Divide in the Miller Hill area has been preliminarily identified for site investigations.
“There’s a lot of areas to be looked at, and not all of them will prove economical” or environmentally suitable, Collins said. “No doubt we’ll find areas of significant impact because of the size of the project.”
A single environmental impact statement will be prepared to cover the two farms because they’re being proposed by the same entity and are adjacent to each other. Collins said timelines for the EIS and construction are not set yet.
The BLM has hired Jerry Crockford, a retired BLM employee, to manage the project, Collins said. Crockford, who has 30 years of experience in BLM offices in Buffalo, Washington, D.C., and Farmington, N.M., will be paid by the power company.
Power Co. of Wyoming has hired contractor ENSR Corp. to do the environmental impact statement on the proposed wind farms, an ENSR official said.
Initial scoping meetings to inform the public about the proposed wind farms are not yet scheduled, but Collins expects them to be held late this summer in Rawlins, Saratoga and probably Baggs.
The American Wind Energy Association states that Wyoming currently ranks 13th in the nation with 349 megawatts of installed wind generation capacity. If both of these proposed projects are built, the added capacity would boost Wyoming to the third-highest wind capacity in the nation, behind Texas and California.
The proposed wind farms near Rawlins would be capable of generating about 2,000 megawatts of electricity, Collins said.
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Information from: Rawlins Daily Times
