(Image: Peter Ferrell)
In 2006, the Elk River Wind Power project, then the largest wind power development in Kansas, was switched on across the Flint Hills. Nearly two decades later, according to Good News Network, the royalties from the 50 turbines on rancher Peter Ferrell’s land have made up half his income, helping insulate his family from the volatile economics of ranching and allowing him to pass the property down to his children. Ferrell, a fourth-generation rancher whose family has worked the same 7,000-acre tallgrass prairie property since 1888, needed convincing before agreeing to let turbines be built on his land. Marking the project’s 20th anniversary, his decision was shaped by a desire to engage in practices that could be sustained generation after generation without depleting the land’s resources, according to a statement Ferrell gave to Avangrid in 2006.
Here’s how Ferrell went from sceptic to advocate for wind power on ranch land. He recalled concerns that the turbines would ruin the landscape, harm the local prairie chicken population, which is vulnerable to habitat loss, and that the royalty payments amounted to little more than an honourless handout.
