The Disappeared by C.J. Box

Author:C.J. Box [Box, C.J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781784973162
Publisher: Head of Zeus Ltd.

16

FOR NATE ROMANOWSKI, THE TEUBNER FISH HATCHERY WAS THE SECOND strange sight he’d taken in after leaving Saratoga that morning. And as odd and incongruous as it was—a fish hatchery located in the middle of nowhere—it didn’t even compare to the first.

After driving north from Saratoga that morning after breakfast with Joe, he’d left the ice-covered state highway for the more familiar feel of an improved gravel road that ran straight and true east through a vast sagebrush-covered plain directly toward the Snowy Range in the distance.

Although Nate drove his four-wheel-drive GMC Yukon XL, he found that the drifts across the road had been plowed that morning and it was clean and clear. Someone—not the county, for sure—had spent a lot of money constructing such a wide and heavy-duty road, he thought.

But it wasn’t the mountains that dominated the horizon. It was hundreds of white wind turbines, their blades rotating against the deep blue sky as if propelling the scudding clouds along and out of their way.

The turbines were so high and massive that it took twice as long as he thought it would to arrive at the Buckbrush Wind Energy Project. As he got closer, Nate was stunned by the scale of it. Towers in different stages of construction stretched as far as he could see, with improved roads connecting each concrete base. He was reminded of an epic prairie dog town, but upside down.

Many of the turbines were already operational and he’d never seen so many in one place. But it wasn’t the number of functional turbines that stunned him. It was the fact that the project looked only about ten percent complete.

Vehicles and machinery moved over the network of roads taking parts of the wind turbines from one place to another for assembly. A single blade on the trailer of a flatbed tractor trailer dwarfed the vehicle itself.

He’d read about the project, but it had been hard to comprehend without seeing it with his own eyes:

—The largest wind energy facility in the world.

—One thousand 250- foot turbines placed within the largest footprint of land —two thousand acres —ever designated for a wind farm.

—Situated on land with consistent Class 6 and 7 winds.

—Each turbine is designed to produce three megawatts of electricity.

—The electricity produced is a result not of market forces but a combination of federal tax incentives and mandates imposed by state and local governments; the mandates were that a significant portion of their power come from renewable sources including solar and wind even though it is more expensive than traditional methods of electricity generation.

—Once complete, the project will power one million homes in California via transmission lines.

—Also on the plus side are the hundreds of high- paying construction jobs the facility produced in a county where the coal mines have been shuttered.

NATE STAYED ON THE ROAD and saw that a half mile ahead it was blocked by a high chain-link gate. He noticed how the air pressure within the Yukon changed the closer he got to the working turbines.

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