Denton Municipal Electric can be faulted for a few different things that have been in the news recently. However, one thing they should have their collective-back patted for is how well they have embraced renewable energy resources. On June 21st, DME Power was awarded the 2011 Public Power Wind Award from the U.S. Department of Energy and the American Public Power Association. Which must be a fairly big deal considering the shear amount of letters in each of those acronyms. DME co-won the award with CPS from San Antonio.
Denton leads the nation in terms of the amount of wind energy per capita. In 2009, DME made efforts to ensure that almost half of Denton’s power comes from renewable resources/wind energy. DME purchases wind power from the Wolf Ridge Wind Energy Center in Cooke County. WRWEC (that’s a five-letter acronym, by the way) houses about 75 wind turbines. DME also receives power from the landfill to gas energy project located at the City of Denton landfill.
The University of North Texas plans to follow suit and plant several wind turbines just south of the new stadium, on the east side of Bonnie Brae. These wind turbines will be used to provide a portion of the power to The Stadium at Mean Green Village, making it the first college stadium the first in the nation built with renewable energy in mind.
Earlier in the month, Denton also came very close to taking home the coveted title of “The Best Tasting City Water in America.” In what must be the most boring tasting competition in the world, we lost to what is most likely the most boring town of the nation, Racine, WI. Denton placed in the top five of the 73 cities competing. In case you were wondering, Denton’s beard-filtered tap water comes from surface water in Lake Lewisville and Lake Ray Roberts.
This is all in addition to the DCTA’s brand new rail train which opened to the public just this week. So, keep doing what you’re doing, Denton. Take a ride on your brand new form of public transportation, walk/bike back home in the 100 degree heat and then cool yourself off in your award-winning air-conditioning with your almost award-winning tap water and think about what we’re going to do to Racine, WI and San Antonio.
Oh yeah, and go-ahead and download the (somewhat) hard-to-find A-Train Passenger Schedule here.