The homesteaders were incredibly hard-working and resourceful, building a blacksmith shop, water tank, windmill, multiple cabins, and digging a well without the assistance of heavy machinery. Today, in addition to Boatman Ranch, you’ll find the Fredson, Meyer, Lampson and Coppola Winery properties within the boundaries of the original 240-acre homestead. They eventually settled on a 240-acre homestead north of Litton Springs (the historic resort property which sits next to our current day winery) in Alexander Valley. Prompted by the gold rush, the Long Family moved to California from Ohio in 1853 with a covered wagon and a team of oxen in search of a better life. The graveyard, known as the Long Ranch Family Cemetery, dates back to 1883 and is the resting place for fourteen of Alexander Valley’s early settlers. "The idea is to develop the next technology, otherwise, I wouldn't be doing this.The Graveyard Block at Boatman Ranch sits at the top of the property, overlooking the ranch, Alexander Valley, and the Mayacamas mountain range. "Out on the prairie, there's not very much scrap," he said. And for rural areas looking for an economic boost, Van Vleet thinks his risk of recycling just might pay off. He's exploring his own way to decrease the industry's landfill footprint, in hopes that blade recycling can blossom into a local industry. Van Vleet said finding better ways to decommission wind farms will be an uphill battle, but when it comes to confronting the looming waste issue, "it's something that's happening, whether we like it or not, so we just as well get in on it." His startup opened its first processing facility in central Texas this year, and it's leasing a second space near Des Moines, Iowa. They can be used for decking materials, pallets and piping. "If you're a small utility or municipality and all of a sudden hundreds of blades start coming to your landfill, you don't want to use up your capacity for your local municipal trash for wind turbine blades," he said, adding that permits for more landfill space add another layer of expenses.īusiness From Walmart To Google, Companies Teaming Up To Buy More Solar And Wind PowerĮnglund believes he's found a way to recycle blades by grinding them up to make chocolate chip-sized pellets. Once there, Van Vleet said, the size of the blades can put landfills in a tough spot. They can be anywhere from 100 to 300 feet long and need to be cut up onsite before getting trucked away on specialized equipment - which costs money - to the landfill. "The blades are kind of a dud because they have no value," he said.ĭecommissioned blades are also notoriously difficult and expensive to transport. Ninety percent of a turbine's parts can be recycled or sold, according to Van Vleet, but the blades, made of a tough but pliable mix of resin and fiberglass - similar to what spaceship parts are made from - are a different story. "The stands are an inch and a half thick steel.
"These towers may be supporting as much as 150,000 pounds, 250 feet in the air," Van Vleet said. Rob Van Vleet climbed atop a 127-foot-long turbine blade and walked the length like a plank.
But the turbine scrap area looks more like a sci-fi drama set. It's a waste problem that runs counter to what the industry is held up to be: a perfect solution for environmentalists looking to combat climate change, an attractive investment for companies such as Budweiser and Hormel Foods, and a job creator across the Midwest and Great Plains.Īt the end of a long gravel road on the southwest Nebraska prairie, the state's first wind farm, Kimball Wind Project, is caught in the breeze. There aren't many options to recycle or trash turbine blades, and what options do exist are expensive, partly because the U.S. will have more than 720,000 tons of blade material to dispose of over the next 20 years, a figure that doesn't include newer, taller higher-capacity versions. While most of a turbine can be recycled or find a second life on another wind farm, researchers estimate the U.S. Rob Van Vleet secures a wind turbine blade onto an oversize truck at the Kimball Wind Farm in southwest Nebraska.
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