LEGISLATURE & LOBBYIST

Edward Garvey and Christine Brusven worked at the MN Department of Commerce as Deputy Commissioner and Special Assistant to the Deputy Commissioner.  They wrote the MN Renewable Energy Standard and shepherded it through the legislature for Governor Pawlenty as part of the Next Generation Energy Act 2007.  

Now Mr. Garvey is a principal at Weber Johnson specializing in lobbying for wind energy.  Ms. Brusven is the lawyer for AWA Goodhue LLC.  Her firm, Fredrickson & Byron, is a Weber Johnson client.   They wrote the law; now they lobby and lawyer on behalf of the beneficiaries of the law.

AWA Goodhue LLC is a T. Boone Pickens company whose only Minnesota location is a Service of Process.  The MN Secretary of State registration shows its business address is the same as American Wind Alliance (AWA) and Mesa Power.  Chuck Burdick, Sr. Wind Developer at National Wind confirmed this is T. Boone Pickens.  The AWA website http://www.mesapowergroup.com/  also confirms this as do other documents.

AWA Goodhue LLC became a MN registered entity December 14, 2009 – well after US Wind/ National Wind/ Goodhue Wind/ GW Holdings put in the “Goodhue Wind” application with the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC).  Mr. Burdick stated that National does not own AWA Goodhue and vice versa.  Ms. Brusven is attorney for both.  The names change frequently and apparently every new entity just takes over the ongoing permit and C-BED applications as if nothing has changed.  

Mr. Paul Reese, a Goodhue County dairy farmer, provided a precise written explanation to the PUC as to why this particular project does not qualify for Community Based Energy Development (C-BED) status.  Within weeks Representative Welti introduced H.F. 3641 to modify C-BED.  It appears Mr. Reese’s letter may have been used as a template to write legislation to modify MN law to ensure AWA Goodhue project qualifies for the bonus money from electrical rate payers.

The MN Renewable Energy Standard exempts industrial Wind Energy Conversion Systems from all the normal checks and balances other electrical energy generation sources have to meet.  Wind is not required to show “need” for additional electrical generation by utilities to meet consumer demand. The “Certificate of Need” for wind development is that Minnesota has not yet met the mandate written in the Minnesota Renewable Energy Standard. Wind is exempt from having to perform an Environmental Impact Statement.  Wind is exempt from consideration of its negative effect on the energy grid and its negative effects on electrical rates.  

If the deck was not already stacked enough in favor of wind developers, there was the introduction of “REFIT”, H.F. 3537 which Great River Energy says will further reduce the financial risk to wind developers.

Just the AWA Goodhue and a project planned by Horizon Wind will cover 25% of the land in Goodhue County. With the additional MWs (mega watts) still in the MISO queue it appears this county will likely be wall-to-wall industrial turbines.  Recent contracts show land owners are leasing away their property rights “above, at and below the ground” for the next 30-50 years.  The contracts are with the wind company that came to peoples’ doors as well as “successors and assigns”.  Most contracts contain a clause whereby the land owners can’t complain if things go bad.

The negative health affects of living close to industrial turbines is well documented.  The MN Department of Health’s 2009 study did no original research, but concluded that there are fewer problems reported when turbines are greater than .6 miles from homes.  MN standard is 750 feet.

The original application has numerous well documented “mistakes” including: missing 95 homes on the map (this is a lot of homes in a rural area), turbines shown on non-leased land, and meteorological tower information from Clarks Grove in far Southern MN.  The local meteorological tower was put up in February 2009 and received its County construction permit to be put up in December 2009.  National Wind and AWA Goodhue haven’t used any data from the local tower in their proceedings yet.

C-BED projects must obtain a resolution of support from the county board of the county where the project will be located.  Goodhue Wind LLC, now GW Holdings LLC, got a resolution of support from Goodhue County November 4, 2008.  Since that time, virtually all project facts listed in the County resolution have changed substantially:  “small” became “large”; 2 Townships became 4 Townships; 39 turbines became 52 turbines; 2 MW turbines became 1.5 MW turbines; and Texas Billionaire T. Boone Pickens’ company American Wind Alliance was added as equity partner through AWA Goodhue LLC, and is now the company getting the PUC permit.  The Goodhue County Commissioners, County Administrator and County Attorney have been asked in public testimony, in writing, by phone and in person to consider removing the Goodhue County resolution of support on the grounds that the current project is not the one described in the resolution of support. They were provided with a draft resolution to serve this purpose.

State Representatives Steve Drazkowski and Tim Kelly provided specific clarification to Goodhue County in mid-March 2010. Counties may adopt more stringent local zoning control standards for siting wind turbines which the PUC must consider and apply when considering wind development project applications, unless the PUC finds good cause not to do so.  If a county crafts new zoning ordinances, it would not be forced to assume all permitting and regulation responsibilities for the entire wind project.  Representative Drazkowski also reminded Goodhue County officials that “a wind development company that deploys wind turbines is financially exempt from local and county property taxes on the wind energy infrastructure…”
 
For citizens of Goodhue County this has been a fascinating civics lesson so far.  It looks like government of the lobbyist, by the lawyer, for the benefit if wealthy out-of-state investors.   The public may “comment”. But since the MN law is written entirely for the benefit of wind developers based on an imaginary public good; and since much of the information about the current permit is “trade secret”; and since Mr. Pickens is a billionaire with full time lawyers at his disposal, “public comment” appears to be designed to appease uninformed citizens by making them think the facts of the case matter.


This is the letter to the editor I sent out to local newspapers. I don't know if they printed it or not.  The people of Goodhue deserve to know the truth about how wind farms started.
 
The residents of Goodhue County are about to become the latest victims of a left wing scam in the name of Al Gores fake (and now totally disproved )science of "Global Warming". The new Wind Farm which is to be located near the town of Goodhue has drawn criticism from locals and they have a right to criticize. I am one of the few in the US who knows the history of Wind Farms and how they came to be.

In 1976 the American Voters elected an incompetent president; Jimmy Carter. He, like his Democrat predecessors and the new hate filled Democrats of today feel that we as Americans do not deserve to live the lifestyle that we live and we should live in the Soviet style of poverty and a life in block style apartments,(Google Earth, Moscow?notice the lack of houses!?the lack of individuality!) food lines and mass transit while they, the so called intelligent elite will live a life of luxury because they as our overseers deserve it for having to put up with us peasants.(please read George Orwell?s ANIMAL FARM and 1984)

A man who worked for Billy Bob Carter named John Eckland, was the Head of Energy Research for the CIA. In cahoots with Billy Bob, they devised a plan to inform the American people that we only have 10 years of oil left in the whole world. (look it up) That is when Billy Bob did the only right thing he did as president and that was to sign into law allowing for research into Renewable Energy. This allowed me to attend a school located in Red Wing, The Red Wing Energy Education Center. I dropped out of the U of M in Engineering because of money. My goal was to be a Renewable Energy Research Engineer which led me to Red Wings? school.

From there I went to the Altamont Pass just east of San Francisco at the very start of the Wind Farm Revolution. I worked R&D at Fayette Wind Farms and guess who was the owner of this Wind Farm, none other than John Eckland, our now former CIA head. At the time I thought "how cool this was". All of the time though I was planning my escape back to Minnesota to form my own R&D outfit to study the energy usage and potential for Renewables on the "Small Family Farm" which is loosing its? fight with corporate farms which are going to be the death of us all. (the only real disaster that we face but no one seems to care)

I started to become disillusioned after a while, especially when thinking of how is America going to cope without oil. Billy Bob Carter said "Never again will America use more oil that we have in the past, NEVER AGAIN!" A threat and a promise. The new Democrat leadership still ehemently denies us our own oil. I started to put all of these doubts together and especially after I saw that these wind machines and solar could NEVER supply us with any substantial amount of energy or at a reasonable price. I could fill a book with what I learned but you will have to take my word for it here because of space.

My final judgment came when I thought about Mr Eckland. If I was a person who worked for the CIA and I had this devastating information about the death of America because we will be out of oil in ten years, I would take the money I had and buy an isolated retreat stocked with survival supplies (plenty of guns and ammo too) for my family. One could only deduce that if we ran out of oil like Billy Bob said then anarchy would ensue in its? aftermath. We could no longer feed our population and transportation would come to a standstill. This would lead to survival of the fittest and he who has the food and guns may survive. If you think this is pretty drastic, sit down and think about it.

Our whole civilization depends upon oil and certain people want to take it from us. I came back to Minnesota in 1988 to start my organization about Small Family Farms as a non-profit organization and spent 2 years trying to find funding. I was met only with opposition. Most people had no clue what Renewable Energy was or why we need it even after explaining that soon you will see when all hell breaks out and you wished that you paid attention. All hell is breaking out now and people are climbing over each other in an effort to make a name for themselves in the Renewable Energy field.

I since went on to building robotics for the Aerospace, nuclear and industrial fields plus spent five years working on a Dairy Farm while I waited for this day to come and I could continue my research.

Al Gore is a disgrace to America along with the Democrat leadership who are forcing this upon us this way. These giant wind turbines will not
work to supply us with any great amount of energy. I have many reasons for my conclusion and could fill a book. Without Nuclear energy,
coal and oil we WILL not survive yet here we are.

General Electric is the biggest supplier of giant wind turbines in the world and they stand to make billions. Guess who the top dog at general
electric is? Why he is no other that the owner of NBC and controls the NBC News which is basically the "All Obama Network" Are we not supposed to hate these rich people? Obama says we are(Obama is rich).

I wonder how big of a bonus this NBC guy got? Let us all gather together and throw this man out the window of his huge office at General Electric. hate hate hate...hate hate hate NBC News lied through their teeth all during the last Presidential election and today we have our new angry president who did not answer one impromptu question during the whole campaign and certainly not from Fox News, the most watched news in America.

What ever ever happened to Mr Eckland our ex CIA chief? He is living the life of a multimillionaire in Palm Springs from the money he made off of
the scam that he perpetrated upon America and part of this money was American tax dollars.

What ever happened to me? I finally got my Renewable Energy/Renewable Agriculture Research Center off the ground after the events of the last couple of years. Renewable Energy will work for small farmers by using a different concept than that perpetrated by the left. You can visit my website at: www.sunrisealternatives.com.

Your best bet for a better America is to support your local farmers by buying local. Your second best bet is to re-think your vote in the next election. The left depends upon your ignorance for their survival. What is ignorance? It is not stupidity; it is the lack of knowledge. I am sure that some enlightened (ignorant) leftist will answer this by calling me just plain stupid. They are all calling you stupid.
Become informed.

"Stupid is as stupid does" but ignorance can be overcome.

Merry Christmas to all who strive to destroy it.(the left)
Ed Nobach Jr
Sunrise Alternatives
Red Wing MN

 
Government of the lobbyist by the lawyer for the benefit of industrial wind developers is a serious problem.  Touted to protect the environment, the Minnesota 2007 Renewable Energy Standard it is instead enriching out-of-state corporations on the backs of Minnesotans. 

The New Generation Energy Act was a Governor’s Initiative championed by Tim Pawlenty.  Edward Garvey & Christine Brusven wrote the MN Renewable Energy Standard (RES), then shepherded it through the legislature for Governor Pawlenty.  Now Mr. Garvey is a principal at WeberJohnson lobbying for wind energy.  Ms. Brusven is the lawyer for Texas billionaire T. Boone Picken’s company AWA Goodhue LLC.  Her firm, Fredrickson & Byron, is a WeberJohnson client.  They wrote the law, now they lawyer and lobby for the beneficiaries of the law.

The RES requires Excel energy to produce 24% of its electricity from wind by 2030.  The law exempts wind from the normal checks and balances required of other electrical generation sources.  Exempt from showing need, environmental impact, negative effect on rate payers and negative effect on the electrical grid.

The Public Utilities Commission reviews wind development applications with support from the Department of Commerce’s Office of Energy Security.  The lawyers and lobbyists did a fine job of writing and tweaking the RES and related laws to force the hand of the Public Utilities Commission and the Office of Energy Security to meet the mandate laid out in a law written entirely for the benefit of wind developers.

This has left Goodhue County and her Townships in the dismal position of having a small amount of power and influence over a poorly defined, untested portion of the wind permitting process.  The real stakeholders are left trying to discern reasonable setback distances from houses for 450 foot turbines that reasonably should not exist. 

The only reason T. Boone Pickens is signing 30-50 year leases with landowners in Goodhue County is huge financial gain with little or no risk.  State mandate, MN Community Based Energy Development (C-BED) tariff on rate payers, federal subsidies, federal production tax credit, ten year depreciation, federal tax shelters, current transmission capacity in Goodhue, and the MN Flip business model do nothing to reduce carbon.  Pickens declared in 2008 that his 68,000 acre ranch located in the Texas Panhandle, one of America’s windiest regions, will not have a single turbine.  “I’m not going to have the windmills on my ranch…they’re ugly”

I spoke with Shane Myre at Governor Pawlenty’s office both by phone and in person.  Mr. Myre assured me that he passed on my concerns to the Governor.  He also assured me there was no chance Governor Pawlenty would meet with the citizens of Goodhue County to hear our concerns.  The results of Pawlenty’s Governor’s initiative are a fiasco.

Tim Pawlenty is a fiscal conservative on most issues.  When it comes to wind-generated electricity, Tim Pawlenty is generous with tax and rate payers’ money to fund the feel-good illusion that industrial wind turbines will reduce carbon emissions. Lots of money combined with the expertise and inside track of Pawlenty’s former Commerce Department staff make Minnesota the perfect target for a billionaire with a few hundred extra turbines.  That’s why I say, “Picken’s gets the gold mine; we get the turbine shaft.  Thanks T. Paw.”