Farmers unhappy with New Ulm

Some are up in arms over wind rights fight

By Brian Ojanpa

NEW ULM — The city of New Ulm doesn’t want a few farmers to break wind, so to speak, and it will pay them not to.

But the farmers are having none of it.

“It’s not a money issue or a wind turbine issue anymore. It’s the way we were treated by New Ulm,” said farmer Clete Goblirsch, who maintains that his wind rights aren’t for sale at any price.

Meantime, the city of New Ulm is pondering whether to acquire those rights by force through the last-resort process of eminent domain.

“The issue of controlling wind rights is the stumbling block,” city attorney HughNierengarten said of New Ulm’s quest to erect five wind turbines on land just across the Minnesota River from the city.

New Ulm’s plan to produce electricity generated by the wind turbines has raised the hackles of a group of landowners, who have been protesting the quest for about a year.

New Ulm reached acreage-lease agreements with three landowners last year for turbines to be erected on their property.

Those landowners have declined to talk about it publicly. Under the agreement, each will receive $6,400 annually for one-half to one-acre parcels.

Goblirsch and others claim those people were pressured into signing leases under the threat of eminent domain, the process whereby governments take ownership of private land for public projects.

Nierengarten has said the negotiations were fair, “and anyone who tells you differently is lying.”

Goblirsch remains undaunted, using words such as “manipulative,” “deceitful” to describe New Ulm’s handling of the issue.

Goblirsch neighbors such as Jeff Franta say they have no beef with wind energy — provided the means to produce it doesn’t usurp productive farmland.

Moreover, Franta fears that the five planned turbines are a bad omen:

“We feel like it will very likely grow into something a lot larger than just a few turbines,” he said..

Acquiring wind rights for a wind energy project is necessary to ensure that winds have unimpeded flow to turbines.

“Wind rights place limitations relating to the height of obstructing structures,” Nierengarten said.

A landowner who sells wind rights agrees to refrain from building wind-obstructing structures within defined setback requirements.

As a practical matter in rural areas, this would mean that landowners selling wind rights couldn’t erect their own towering wind turbines within a certain distance of a city-operated turbine on an adjacent property.

Goblirsch said the city has offered him $25 an acre for 117 acres it wants to acquire for wind rights.

Goblirsch thinks that figure is a pittance, because in these times of searching for alternative energy sources, wind has taken on heightened value.

“The way I look at it, wind is oil in the sky,” Goblirsch said. As such, mineral rights come into play, he reasons, and this question must be answered: Can a person’s mineral rights be taken through eminent domain?

Though New Ulm’s wind project proposal is small, it could have much broader implications as government entities seek to develop similar alternative energy sources.

Eminent domain is a hot-button issue, and the state Energy Security Office predicts that use of it could have “severe adverse consequences” on other wind projects.

Nierengarten said there are 235 acres of wind rights yet to be acquired before the wind turbine project can proceed.