Clean-energy windmills a 'dirty business' for farmers in Mexico

The windmills stand in rows like an army of Goliaths, steel towers taller than the Statue of Liberty and topped with blades as long as a jetliner’s wing. The blades whoosh through the humid air, carving energy from a wind that rushes across Mexico’s Isthmus of Tehuantepec on its journey from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean. Nearly every day, another tower rises out of the countryside.

The isthmus

“This is one of the finest wind areas in the world, and they are being very ambitious about developing it,” said Martin Pasqualetti, an expert on renewable energy at Arizona State University who has studied the region. “They’re trying to do in five years what California took 35 years to do.”

But the energy gold rush has also brought discord, as building crews slice through irrigation canals, divide pastures and cover crops with dust. Some farmers complain they were tricked into renting their land for as little as $46 an acre annually.

USA Today