Symposium Snapshots

Here are some pictures from last weeks symposium; we were very pleased with the turnout! The Floyd County Unity Center is a great venue! Thanks to all those who attended.

Larry Hoyle, board member from Motley County assists at the sign in table. We had a great group of landowner from across the area show up and they brought great questions for our presenters.

Featured speakers were getting acquainted while waiting for attendees to filter in.We had to add additional chairs as those we had set up in preparation for the event turned out to be inadequate! We welcomed the crowd!



Board members Bill Quattlebaum (Floyd County) and Jimmy Lewis (Hale County) chat with Jon LaBaume (manager of the Unity Center) before the presentations began. Many city officials, landowners and other influential community members took the opportunity to chat amongst themselves while waiting for the symposium to begin as well.


Steve Stokes, President of the CPWEA Board, opened the meeting by thanking the attendees and reminding CPWEA members about an upcoming membership meeting to take place in August. Stokes informed the audience that the association is proposing a change to its dues structure and asked that members make sure and come out to vote.


The first speaker of the night was John Sullivan, Senior Geologist for The Shaw Group's environmental division. He spoke to the group about fatal flaw analysis, environmental studies and other issues that should be addressed before jumping into a wind development. He talked about make or break issues for wind development.


Our second speaker was Brian Almon from the Public Utiltity Commission of Texas (PUCT). The PUCT selected the transmission service providers who will be building the transmission lines across Texas. They will also be actively involved in route selection. Almon gave the audience an overview of how the process works.


Finally, our third speaker for the evening was Mark Caskey, Vice President of Operations at Sharyland Utilties. Caskey talked about where Sharyland was in their process of building out transmission in the Texas panhandle. Sharyland will be building lines in Carson, Randall, Armstrong, Castro, Swisher, Briscoe, Floyd, Motley and Dickens Counties.




Thanks again to all those who attended. You can find a link to speakers presentations and handouts from the event on Caprock's Web site at http://www.caprockplainswind.com/htm/NewsLinks.html under Caprock News.

Be looking for posts on future events!