Every household in windswept Sherman County will soon get a Christmas gift in the mail: a $590 check.

Jefferson County authorities, aided by several agencies, were undertaking a major search on and along the Lower Deschutes River Monday for a man who apparently fell into the river and was swept downstream near the Trout Creek Campground Sunday night.

Part of the Klondike Wind Power Project sits on the property of John and Gordon Hilderbrand in Sherman County, Ore., home to many wind turbines.

It pays to live in Sherman County: $590 a year. In this sparsely populated landscape south of the Columbia River Gorge, annual checks for that amount are local residents' share of a windfall brought by the growing wind energy industry.