Arkansas Organizers Install Wind Turbine

Glen Hooks, the Sierra Club Eastern Region Director of our Beyond Coal Campaign, recently shared a story about his work to install the first wind turbine in Little Rock, Arkansas. It's a great story about community action on clean energy! From Glen:

A while back, my friend James Burke and I had an idea to put up a windmill in Little Rock.  We then (with much help from others) raised a bunch of cash to buy and install Little Rock's first wind turbine.  All the money (about $18K total) was raised from people and groups in the community here, mostly small donors. 

We're putting it up at the Dunbar Community Garden today (Wednesday, June 3), where it will help generate clean energy to power their greenhouse.  It's the first wind turbine in the whole state that uses a feed-in meter, meaning that the energy generated goes into the grid and is bought by Entergy at peak rates. Since the Dunbar Garden is technically a city park, the city is now technically a power producer for  Entergy--and that power is wind power. 

The photo is me with the blades.  You can see near the bottom where I signed it.

Great partnership here with ECO, Audubon Arkansas, the Dunbar Middle School, Dunbar Community Center, Entergy, the City of Little Rock, and the Sierra Club!

About 600 schoolkids come through the garden every month to learn about nutrition and gardening. By the end of Wednesday, this bad boy should be spinning away and generating clean energy for them to learn about.

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Great work, Glen! We look forward to hearing more stories like this from around the U.S.