42 Comments

Thank you for shining a light on this, Robert. It gives a lot of us hope. Does anyone on here know whether the judge ordered the removal of the entire facility or just 4 feet below the surface as most contracts provide? I am trying to wrap my head around the decommission cost per turbine. If my assumptions and math are right, the cost of removing the turbines is greater than the value of the electricity sold over the hypothetical life of the project. https://open.substack.com/pub/martinmachtan/p/the-osage-nation-taught-us-what-big?r=1ol6v1&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

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Outstanding victory.

Let us know when you and Nora go to the big watch party. We might fly out there just to have a beer in Oklahoma to watch that!

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It's huge. Yes, will let you (and everyone else) know. As Danette Daniels said after the court decision came out, "It's a joyous day."

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Robert, it would be nice if you could respond to the letter below to the editor of the Wall Street Journal. The email address is wsj.ltrs@wsj.com. The writer of this letter obviously doesn't know about green subsidies.

What’s Wrong With Green?

While Steven Koonin claims “nobody" wants electric vehicles ("The Right Way to Ditch the Paris Agreement," op-ed, Dec. 17), they represented more than a quarter of new sales in my state this past quarter. I like my EV and I like my heat pump space and water heaters.

Once built, wind and solar generators require no continuing fuel supplies. That’s why the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power was able to start receiving solar generated electricity, with battery storage, at less than 3.3 cents a kilowatt-hour, guaranteed for 25 years.

Disregarding climate-related costs, fossil-fuel use is costing every American $2,500 a year in direct and indirect health costs. That’s a subsidy. Developing countries can skip intense fossil-fuel development and concentrate on cheap renewable energy not subject to fires, spills, price spikes and supply disruptions. There’s never been a war over access to the wind or sun.

TOM HAZELLEAF Seal Beach, Calif.

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Thanks. But I am focused on my own reporting and writing.

Arguing with ideologues in the letters section of the WSJ isn't the best use of my time.

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I’m a little late to the party. Glad justice is served. Who would Enel be selling the electricity to? Curious if there is further complicity to this story.

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AECI out of Springfield, MO, is the buyer of the power from the wind project. Not sure what will happen to that contract when Enel takes the turbines down.

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Great update, Robert. Re question below about why subsurface rights predominate over surface rights, its a well established principle of US oil and gas law that a severed mineral estate predominates over the surface estate, unless specifically provided otherwise by statute (e.g. surface damage acts or government regulations) or agreement of the parties. Not familiar with all the facts and legal filings here but would assume that is the governing legal principle. Hence as you point out below, ENI should have gotten a permit from the tribe.

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Agree. Enel should have sought a permit from the tribe. Rather than do so, they sped up the work and began working at night under lights.

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$36m in legal fees ? That’s crazy $$$$. No wonder the average community doesn’t have much of chance.

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Yes, that sounds like a lot. if you read the judge's opinion, she carefully looked at the expense requests and disallowed some of them. Also, recall that the litigation has been ongoing for years. In the case of the tribe, they first sued in 2011.

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It's not entirely clear to me why the subsurface rights are predominant here. It's not as if Enel is extracting valuable minerals from the land. Yes they need to excavate to build the towers, but is that enough to trump the mostly above surface wind tower installations? Does this turn on the failure of Enel to get a permit? And do the Osage have the right to withhold a permit because of their subsurface rights that could be damaged?

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As I explained, the tribe owns all the the rock and minerals below the surface. If you want to exploit any of that stuff, you have to get a permit from the tribe. That was explained to Enel in the 2014 letter from the BIA. Rather than seek the permit, Enel ignored the BIA, ignored the tribe, and sped up the work on the turbines. All of this could have been avoided if Enel had done what the BIA told them to do. It's all a result of sheer corporate arrogance.

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If this is mineral (subsurface) vs. surface usage/extraction, then the irony is that the moving air is considered a mineral and subsurface resource governed by the oil and gas precedent.

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They used a lot of rock from below ground to shore up the turbine bases (mining the rock without a permit). And of course they injected many tons of cement for each of 83 turbines into the subsurface--and the subsurface is Osage-owned.

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Dec 20Edited

Question for you - how will they take the turbines down? By crane, or will they blow them up? The latter may produce fiberglass shards over the entire region from the blades. This will make this region polluted and it will unable to be grazed for ever.... nearly impossible to get rid of that fiberglass out of the ground. The fiberglass can kill the cattle, sheep or goats.

Great to hear this - thanks for the update Robert!

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I was invited to attend a tower drop in California a few years back. Robert is correct about removing the blades by crane. They then used thermite to cut a large wedge out of the bottom of the tower and after quivering for a few minutes fell over like a tree. It was 400 feet high. Made quite a nice thump.

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Thanks for this note.... will be interesting to see what they do - I am sure we will have video's coming - hopefully soon!

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They will have to use a crane to remove the blades and nacelle. Not sure about the towers. Whatever the method, it's going to be expensive.

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Yes thanks, this is how it should be done, in a perfect world - hope they don't use the cheap and nasty method! I don't suppose we will ever hear just how expensive it is?

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In the judge's opinion, the cost was put at $269M. But Enel has also said the price tag will be $300M. Either way, it will likely cost more to take the turbines down that it did to put them up. Oh, and don't forget, those turbine blades have to go somewhere. That means, most likely, the nearest landfill that will take them.

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The only unfortunate fact is that almost all of the money, of course, went to the lawyers..

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pretty amazing when the little guy, who is right!….wins. great day. when I was at Interior, we all understood sovereignty.

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Yes, it's truly amazing how Enel ignored the tribe. Amazing too, that the tribe was willing to play the long game. I just talked to my friend, Danette Daniels, an Osage tribal member who is in our docuseries. She told me "It's a joyous day." That episode of the docuseries is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhbKcq0QDaw&t=22s

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Cool. I didn't know about this. Thanks. Here's the key line from that story: "The Horse Heaven Hills is one of several clean energy projects that are accused of putting culturally important tribal resources at risk."

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Thank you for covering this critical story. There are 5 companies courting land owners in Pomeroy, WA. including Enel, NextEra, Cordelia-Tenaska, Respol, and Puget Sound Energy (PSE). If they are all successful, 245,000 acres will be covered with wind and 7000 acres of solar are already permitted on a NE facing slope. It is weird hearing the farmers, who are being exploited for leases, ask only about assurances for removal of the turbines at the time of decommissioning. We are a Frontier county (less than 3 people per square mile), and have 1/3 of the land in Federal wilderness. The views are irreplaceable. Where have the environmentalists gone?

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Great news! Thanks.

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This is awesome news! Thanks for your dogged reporting. I doubt we'll be reading about it in the mainstream press.

Now, the legal precedent this case sets need to be translated to other rural communities (like mine) who want no part of this landscape-gobbling, wildlife-slaughtering industry that likely wouldn't exist without enormous amounts of subsidies and physics-defying propaganda. And for what ... a desultory amount of unreliable power?

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Thanks for reporting stories that don’t make the news cycle. This is BIG!

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It is a very important ruling. But don't expect to see the NY Times writing about it. The tribe's victory over Enel and its long fight to protect its sovereignty doesn't fit the narrative about "green" energy.

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Exactly!

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Were they actually on Indian lands? How were they able to construct these monsters without a permit? Or were they on private lands that still were governed by the Osage Sovereign Nation? Wow. With so many lawyers, how did they miss this and all of the precedents of Indian Sovereignty in the past??

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The lands in Osage County were a split estate. The tribe owns the subsurface rights. The surface rights are owned, in this case, by the family of John Kane, who happens to be the chief justice of the Oklahoma Supreme Court. As for the lawyers and the legal issues, the law is clear. Why Enel ignored tribal sovereignty? I agree with Waller, who said the company thought they could just roll over the tribe.

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Wow thanks for this additional tid bit of info...

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Great news! I live in Tulsa, let me know when they start coming down and I’ll join you!

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Add me to that list. I live in Tulsa also.

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Will do. Yes, I'll be there. With my siblings. We will be whooping and hollering.

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