GREEN RIVER — Like it or not, wind energy is booming in Wyoming, in part because it’s the windiest state in the nation without a shoreline.
To tap into that resource, wind energy developers have been constructing on average 200 or more wind turbines in Wyoming each year for several years.

By Jeff Gearino

The industry is looking at adding at least another 3,000 wind turbines over the next decade, many of them slated for the Cowboy State’s southern tier, including Anschutz Corp.’s massive Chokecherry and Sierra Madre wind farms planned for Carbon County.

Some of the planned wind farms — and their accompanying connector and transmission line projects that enable the electricity to be moved out of state — could affect the state’s scenic values, federal officials expect.

But just exactly what do residents believe those scenic values are?

To prepare for a planning review of the resource management plans that guide wind energy and other development on public lands, the Bureau of Land Management’s Rock Springs and Rawlins field offices are hosting a series of open houses to collect information for a “visual inventory” of southern Wyoming.

BLM state office spokeswoman Cindy Wertz said the agency is responsible for ensuring that the scenic values of the public lands are considered before allowing uses that may have negative visual impacts.

“Mainly what we want to do with this … is to take a big inventory of just what we’ve got there” in terms of visual resources and scenic values, Wertz said in a phone interview.

“So it’s really important for the public to let the BLM know what they’re interested in and what values they see out there … We want to find out what’s out there and how to best balance the use of public lands,” she said.

“What we want to do is get everyone’s opinion … because we don’t want to miss anything,” Wertz said. “Some folks may say, ‘Oh, I know this spot right here, and have you considered that?’ … That’s the sort of thing they need to bring to our attention.”

The open houses will take place in Baggs, Rawlins, Rock Springs, Laramie and Saratoga in mid-July.

The study area includes about 7 million acres of BLM-administered public lands and about 9 million acres of federal mineral estate in Carbon, Albany, Laramie, Sweetwater, Uinta, Lincoln, Fremont and Sublette counties.

The inventory is being conducted with the assistance of OTAK Inc., a third-party contractor, Wertz said.

The inventory of visual resources will be conducted using the BLM’s Visual Resource Management System, which was developed to ensure that scenic values are considered before resource management decisions are made.

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