AUSTIN -- Officials at the state General Land Office are hoping winds from the Gulf Coast could soon supply electricity to light living rooms, run refrigerators and power personal computers in Texas. Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson will announce Thursday that his office will accept bids from companies wanting to lease state land to build and operate windmills to generate power beginning in April. The lands are scattered throughout the state, including along the Gulf Coast. Through the General Land Office, Texas leases land it owns for oil drilling. The state receives royalties, which are deposited into a trust called the Permanent School Fund. The land office wants to apply that same program for developing wind power.

Giant wind turbines already tower over parts of West Texas. In 2001, more wind generation was installed in Texas alone than had previously been installed in the United States in a single year, according to the American Wind Energy Association. But Texas has never opened its land on a large-scale basis for leases for wind-power production.

Tom "Smitty" Smith, director of the Texas chapter of Public Citizen, which monitors environmental issues, acknowledged that some people might claim that windmills in the Gulf of Mexico would be an eyesore. But he says Texas, which owns the right to land 10.3 miles offshore, already uses the gulf for energy extraction. He said the decision on such a project becomes a choice about whether Texans want the pollution from power plants that leaves cities in a haze or whether they are willing to put wind turbines in the ocean.

Land office officials have not predicted how much money they believe the program could generate, and they don't know whether companies will be interested in developing offshore windmills in the gulf.