Not long ago LuAnn Aman, who lives on Maplehill Drive, brought an article from ABC News to the Tribune. She and her husband Tom are the grandparents of Jacob “Jake” Hansen who is involved in the operations of a group of wind power turbines near Trimont. And what I’m leading up to is the fact that Jake was one of the people featured on ABC’s “Good Morning America” telecast last month. This ABC-TV news segment was based on the 67 giant towers now generating electricity on the edge of a locality named Trimont.

Trimont is a community with a population of 750 people over in Martin County. This “dual locality” is seven miles straight north of Sherburn and Interstate 90 on state Highway 4.

I’m using the phrase dual locality because Trimont is actually a combination of two towns — Triumph and Monterey. These two rural localities, less than a mile apart, merged in 1959 to create Trimont.

There are two more examples of merged towns here in Minnesota — Norwood Young America and Elko New Market. This last locality is between Albert Lea and the Twin Cities and just to the west of I-35 up in Scott County.

Now, let’s get back to the Aman-Hansen connection and other aspects of this particular wind energy topic.

Jake’s mother is Karen (Aman) Hansen who grew up in Albert Lea and graduated from high school in 1976. His father is Dale Hansen. Jake grew up in Morgan, a community up in Redwood County situated on state Highway 67 between Redwood Falls and Sleepy Eye.

The ABC News report said Jake was home-schooled. His job prospects were based on farming or truck driving in the Morgan area or finding something else for his future life. One day he heard a radio commercial sponsored by an Iowa college that had a wind technician program. As a result, he attended Iowa Lakes Community College in Estherville for two years.

Jake graduated from this program and the article said he had 12 job offers in a fast expanding field. He accepted the one based on the Trimont project.

The Iowa Lakes Community College started its wind technician program in 2004 with one instructor and 15 students. What may have been the incentive for this program was a new collection of wind towers to the west of Estherville near Spirit Lake and Okoboji Lake, Iowa. Now the college has five instructors and over a hundred students in this program.

One detail in the ABC News article helps to explain just how high these windmill-like towers really are. The Statue of Liberty is 305 feet tall to the tip of the torch. A Trimont wind turbine tower is 384 feet tall to the tip of the blade at its highest point.

There are three details in this ABC News release worth passing along. At the present time the Trimont wind farm is producing enough electricity to power 29,000 homes. The local farmers and government are sharing about $2 million a year. The third detail is based on the fact that a second wind farm is now being constructed to double the number of wind turbines and a third phase is being planned.

One of the other details in this ABC News release worth noting is the way the name of T. Boone Pickens was used in regard to wind energy. This man who made a fortune as a Texas oilman is spending a lot of his money on television commercials trying to tell the nation the future for energy is with renewable sources. Also, his firm, Mesa Power, has already spent $2 billion to construct the world’s largest wind farm near Pampa, Texas. As my version of an old saying might go, T. Boone is matching his money with his sensible talking in the television commercials.

Special thanks go to LuAnn Aman for inspiring this worthwhile column.

Ed Shannon’s column has been appearing in the Tribune every Friday since December 1984.