Climate and energy

As of 7:00 p.m. Sunday night, the Kansas State Fair closed down again for the year. Thousands of people came by the booth, and hundreds stayed to talk. About wind power, yes, but also just about energy and life and Kansas in general.

And I learned something. Technically, the buildings and booths open at 9:00 a.m. However, how many farmers sleep that late…? Yeah. NONE.

So from 6:30 a.m. on, there are many quiet men happily wandering through the buildings and booths. If you were there, too, then it was possible to just sit and talk and have good conversations with people who probably wouldn’t open their mouth that much in the crowds that swarm the buildings later on.

Running the wind booth would NOT have been possible without the wonderful volunteers. They came from far and near, and they were all amazing.

It was still too busy to live blog (as I learned the hard way on Sunday). But I kept a list of the quotables and overheards (see below).

Some of you reading the following are going to wonder how I answered a few of these questions. Hint: several of my responses started out with “Er! Well! Hmm!” Tried to keep it as positive as possible, even when some questioners were determined not to let me. Anyway, did the best I could.

Here it goes:

- “When I’m outside and see the wind blowing, I think – money.”

- “I’m an oil and gas producer. I have protection under Kansas law for that. There’s minimum standards for my contracts. Why the hell don’t I have that for wind leases? Who at the KCC do I need to talk to?”

- The live feed from the Spearville wind farm was incredibly popular. I would look over at that side of the booth and barely be able to see Phil through the crowd of 20-40 people who always seemed to surround him. If he has a voice left today I’ll be shocked.

Afterwards, one guy came over to me and said: “I want that to be up on the web for every power source in Kansas! Nuclear! Coal! All of it! With real-time pricing! I just want to be able to SEE!!!!!” Safest answer: Just to agree that theoretically, that WOULD be really cool. About as likely as snowballs down below, but admittedly still cool.

- “I already DID talk to my representative about selling my power back to the grid. He told me that it’s a subsidy because only rich people buy wind turbines and solar panels. I said hang on, —–, you’ve known me for forty years. You know I ain’t rich. What in the heck are you talking about?”

- Educators were crazy to get their hands on wind maps, model turbines, etc. Answer: www.kidwind.org

- “I’m tired of trying to figure out these wind leases on my own. I have my crops, my wells, my family, my church, I have lots of other things to do.”

- Millions of kids came up to me and told me about how they drove by this wind farm here, or this one there, or how they saw the blades on the road, or the towers, or how they drove over one night to one going up by their house, etc. How they saw a trucker at a gas station with a blade on his truck, and he told them all about it. Etc.

- I found myself saying, “Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep.” over and over and over. Which means I probably did even more listening than I did talking.

- From an industrial electrician, on why he doesn’t install his own wind turbine for his shop, even though he wants to: “I have the backhoe to put in the line, I can do all the wiring into the box, I can put up the pole – but since I can’t get a decent price for my power, it just won’t pencil out. Even with me doing the installation myself. That’s messed up.”

- “So are you doing anything later on? I never dated a girl with a pink streak in her hair before. Sorta looks like cotton candy.” (Response.) “Oh, now I see the ring. Sorry ma’am!”

- Met lots of people with families working on or around wind farm constructions. I let them take handfuls of our buttons to give away back home (hopefully Eileen won’t read this part :) it was supposed to be limited to one per person). And I gave out handfuls of wind resource maps to educators.

- For tours of windfarms, try contacting the one nearest you. Google them – some have individual websites, some don’t. And no, there is not an official map of all the windfarms currently on the ground or under construction for Kansas – hello, tourism people! I think this might be popular.

- Me: “Okay, if you feel like X about Y, I encourage you to contact your legislator —” Really frustrated person breaking in: “I DID!!!” This happened a worrisome number of times.

- “I can’t afford one of those damn things (small wind turbine for personal use). Hell, I’ll just build my own, and I got a buddy who can wire it. I live out in the country, they’ll never find me.” There were actually many different versions of this reasoning. I did strongly mention that if DIY involved messing with lines, that could cause serious trouble during outages if there were any chance AT ALL that power could feed back out on a line that a utility worker was working on. So, like, don’t do it.

I got shrugs and nods in return. Frustration with energy prices was running quite high (and I am sure ongoing gas price uncertainty, hurricanes, etc. didn’t help).

If people feel backed enough into a corner by high prices, that generating their own electricity starts to look like an option, then it would obviously be preferable that they do it SAFELY.

- I got asked (more times than I can even guess) how to know if a wind developer was any good or not.  I had my standard spiel – get a good wind lawyer, you can find one through the KS Farm Bureau Legal Foundation, contact your county economic development officer if you have one, check into the developer’s track record, and by the way here’s a nifty little CD with some more information – etc.

One woman, though, was not comforted with anything I said. Until I came up with this line: “Honey, picking a good wind developer is like picking a man. Hold out for a good one. Don’t waste your time with any unknown quantities or sleazeballs. You’ve got great natural resources that are way too valuable for that.”

She and the other women with her – sister, mother (all of whom seemed to have a big deciding say in what the dad would be allowed to do with a wind lease) – totally cracked up. They GOT it. I even got the dad to chuckle.

But about then I also realized it had been a really long weekend.

thanks to everyone who made the wind booth such a success!!!

— Maril Hazlett, www.climateandenergy.org