The Kenedy Ranch industrial wind project would have 600 wind turbines – each turbine requires its own, individual road for construction, maintenance and servicing. That’s 600 roads just like the one shown here cut through the Texas coastal habitat.

The hole is large enough to fit three double-decker buses. In a Wales project, the developer built a complete concrete factory on the site, which is not unusual, as well as opened quarries to provide rock for new roads—neither activities were part of the original planning application.

Each tower requires a large and solid foundation. On some towers, the turbine housing weighs over 56 tons, the blade assembly weighs over 36 tons, and the whole tower assembly totals over 163 tons. A 200- to 300-foot tower supports a turbine housing the size of a bus and three 100- to 150- foot rotor blades sweeping over an acre of air at more than 100 mph. This industrial wind project is proposing construction of 600 towers.

Although construction is temporary [a few months], it will require heavy equipment, including bulldozers, graders, trenching machines, concrete trucks, flatbed trucks, and large cranes. Getting all the equipment, as well as the huge tower sections and rotor blades, into an undeveloped area requires the construction of wide straight strong roads.