The growth of wind farms across Oklahoma and a year-old state law has private pilots moving to register their private air strips, many in western Oklahoma, according to a report by The Oklahoman.
As Paul Monies for the newspaper found out, there is a rush on to register the air trips with the Federal Aviation Administration as a direct result of Senate Bill 808 passed last year by the Oklahoma legislature. Under the measure, wind turbines had to be at least 9,100 or 1.5 nautical miles from a school, hospital or airport. The law took effect November 2015.
Consequently, more than two dozen private air strips have been certified by the FAA this year. Rural landowners certified their landing strips as airports, a move the wind industry considers just a move to block construction of more wind farms. The industry calls the air strips “shamports.”
