January 29, 2010 11:39 PM UTC

Gardner Takes on Wind Industry

• 5 Comments
• by: ClubTwitty

[New Title]

All energy, including renewables, brings trade offs and impacts.  Siting of facilities will remain a major issue–whether its wind farms, geothermal or concentrated solar.  

Sorting through these complexities as efforts are increased to exploit renewable sources, is challenge enough if we are serious about embracing this future.  Now Rep. Cory Gardner is proposing a bill that will add new layers of impediments rather than solutions to these matters.

The wind power industry fears bipartisan legislation that would make the wind blowing across your land a private property right unto itself could upend an industry just finding its groove in Colorado.

Though bill sponsor Rep. Cory Gardner, R-Yuma, said state law already allows wind rights to be separated from the surface rights to a piece of private property, the bill would make the law explicit, allowing wind rights to be “severable” from surface rights.

That means wind would be treated like oil or gas, which are separate property rights that could be owned by someone other than the landowner, creating a “split estate.”

Gardner’s efforts–co-sponsored by Democrat Mary Hodge in the state Senate–are likely to raise numerous issues and create, rather than resolve, conflicts.  

The wind power industry fears the split estates the bill could create might end up complicating land deals and scare wind developers away.

“Our legal advice really is that lenders won’t lend to projects with split estates,”

said Nick Muller, executive director of the Colorado Independent Energy Association, whose members produce energy mostly from renewable and natural gas sources.

For many landowners, wind farms have been a boon.  They often support the facilities due to the lucrative leases they can negotiate with the wind industry.  This encourages development where siting is less likely to be an issue, and opposition less likely to develop.

Severing the wind rights from surface rights could complicate permitting, particularly when the surface and wind rights are not owned by the same person, he said.

“It would also sever the project owners from the long-term relationship with the landowner,” said John Covert, executive director of the Colorado Harvesting Energy Network, which promotes “community-based” renewable energy development.

Today, he said, wind developers negotiate directly with the landowner in order to build wind turbines on private land.

“If a property had severed wind rights, developers would stay away,” he said. “I just don’t know what problem the sponsor is trying to solve.”

I support developing Colorado’s New Energy Economy, and believe that Governor Ritter’s focus on this is one of his true accomplishments. Gardner’s efforts to sever the wind that blows cross a particular landscape from the land itself is a recipe for litigation, conflict and impediment to development of Colorado’s renewable resources.  

Moreover, Gardner’s legislation reflect a particular myopia that regards every piece of nature as a commodity, able to be severed from the very environment that draws it forth from the breathe of the world.

The Great Chief in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land. How can you buy or sell the sky? The warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us. Yet we do not own the freshness of the air or the sparkle of the water. How can you buy them from us? Every part of this earth is sacred to my people.

We know that the white man does not understand our ways. One portion of the land is the same to him as the next, for he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes from the land whatever he needs. The earth is not his brother but his enemy and when he has conquered it he moves on. He leaves his fathers’ graves and his children’s birthright is forgotten.

…And what is there to life if a man cannot hear the lovely cry of the whippoorwill or the arguments of the frog around the pond at night?

The whites too shall pass – perhaps sooner than other tribes. Continue to contaminate your bed and you will one night suffocate in your own waste. When the buffalo are all slaughtered, the wild horses all tamed, the secret corners of the forest heavy with the scent of many men, and the view of the ripe hills blotted by talking wires.

Where is the eagle? Gone. Where is the buffalo? Gone. And what is it to say goodbye to the swift and the hunt, the end of living and the beginning of survival.

Chief Seattle, 1855