Wind energy jobs and tax revenue sound great, but longtime residents say the turbines are changing the wide-open look of the land forever. Is the economic trade-off worth it, or are we selling the Panhandle's soul?
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Add your commentPeople in Guymon complaining about turbines changing the landscape need to remember this panhandle was strip-mined of its native grass a century ago to grow wheat, center-pivot irrigators drew down the Ogallala aquifer for decades, and we had the worst dust storms in American history here. The land has been 'changed forever' like five times already. Wind turbines are just the latest chapter.
Born and raised in Guymon, third generation wheat farmer. Those turbines don't bother me one bit. You know what bothers me? Watching my neighbors lose their farms because commodity prices tanked. If a wind lease payment keeps a family on their land, I'll take a hundred more turbines tomorrow. Progress isn't always pretty.
Selling the panhandle's soul lol. Friend, the soul of the panhandle is dust storms, no trees, and people leaving for Amarillo. A little economic development isn't gonna hurt anything.
To the person above me — that statistic is wildly misleading. Buildings kill roughly 600 million birds annually in the US, cats kill over a billion. Wind turbines account for somewhere around 300,000-500,000, which is significant and worth addressing, but calling them worse than any other structure is just factually incorrect. Bird-safe designs and proper siting are improving the numbers. Wanted to correct that before it spread.
Can someone explain to me why we're even debating this? Wind turbines create ZERO emissions, provide lease income to local landowners, and contribute to the county tax base that funds our schools. Texas County gets millions in ad valorem taxes from these projects. Millions. What exactly is the counterargument here — that the view was nicer?
I lived in Guymon from birth until I left for college in 2003 and came back to visit my folks last summer for the first time in a while. The drive in from Liberal just felt different. I dont know how to describe it exactly — not worse necessarily, just different. Like the landscape has a new personality now. I stood at my parents fence line at sunset and watched the blades turn and felt something i couldnt name. nostalgia for something that's still technically there but also isn't.
What I want to know is where all the jobs actually went. I keep hearing 'wind energy jobs' but most of the construction crews came from out of state and the permanent maintenance positions went to people with specialized certifications nobody around here has. Guymon didn't suddenly get a big influx of well-paying careers. So who exactly is benefiting besides the landowners who already had the most acreage?
Honest question for locals who hate them: would you rather have nothing out there? Because the alternative isn't 'unspoiled plains preserved forever.' The alternative is continued population decline, school consolidations, and the slow death of every small town between Boise City and Guymon. I'll take the turbines.
My uncle leased two sections to one of those wind companies back around 2018 and he told me last Thanksgiving it was the best financial decision he ever made. He's still farming the same land underneath them. The turbines sit on like a quarter acre each and the rest is still wheat. People act like the turbines replace the land use entirely and they just don't.
I moved here from Dallas about four years ago for work and honestly the turbines were one of the first things I noticed — not in a bad way. They're kind of majestic when you're driving down 270 at dusk and they all have those blinking red lights. My coworkers from Guymon think I'm nuts for saying that but I genuinely find them beautiful. Different eyes, I guess.
Anyone else notice the roads getting torn up by the construction equipment during those builds? Somebody needs to talk about road damage compensation because Texas County infrastructure took a beating and I'm not sure we were made whole.
I'll tell you what nobody mentions: the shadow flicker. I got a turbine lease offer on my property years ago and turned it down after I talked to folks in Kansas who already had them. The blade shadows spinning across your windows and yard all morning long will drive you absolutely crazy. My neighbor took the lease and I think about that every single day.
eyesore. full stop. i grew up staring at the flattest, emptiest horizon you've ever seen and that was the whole POINT. now it looks like a robot graveyard out there. no thanks
Actually wind turbines kill millions of birds every year, more than any other human structure, so environmentally they're a disaster. Look it up before you call this "green" energy.
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