Clean energy developer Enel Group will appeal a federal judge’s new order to dismantle, in less than a year, its 84-turbine onshore wind site that has been operating since 2015 on land in the Osage Nation in Oklahoma, in the latest year-long multimedia update. -judicial legal battle with the tribe for expired permits claimed in the construction of the 150 MW project.
U.S. Court of International Trade Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves, who issued the Dec. 18 ruling setting the withdrawal deadline and monetary penalties, follows her January ruling on excavation during construction of the Osage Wind project in Osage County, Oklahoma, without obtaining subsurface mineral rights constituted unauthorized mining.
The judge gave the Italian-based developer’s U.S. units until Dec. 1, 2025, to dismantle the turbines and related infrastructure, an effort the defendants told the court would cost $259 million. The Enel group had acquired the lease rights to the 8,400-hectare wind farm area, but did not have underground permits. The area includes oil, natural gas and minerals, the tribe said.
The order also follows several months of unsuccessful efforts by the tribe and the developer to reach an agreement
“The harm resulting from the defendants’ continued encroachment is not only the continued use of the ill-gotten fill, but also the interference with the sovereignty of the Osage Nation,” Choe-Groves said.
The legal battle has involved lawsuits by the Osage Mineral Council dating back to 2011, alleging that rock excavation that was crushed and redistributed on site for the foundations of each 1.79 MW turbine violated rights tribal minerals As trustee of the tribe’s “mineral estate,” the US Department of Justice also filed suit.
Foundation building
The construction of the turbines involved the use of explosives to create craters more than 10 feet deep and 60 feet wide to install reinforced concrete foundations, the lawsuit said. Significant amounts of ore from the site were engineered and used as backfill and placed around the foundations.
The project was built by Infrastructure and Energy Alternatives Inc., a subsidiary of energy contractor MasTec Inc. from 2022, but neither firm is named in the lawsuits.
An earlier round of litigation reached the US Supreme Court in 2019, but the justices declined to hear the case.
An Enel spokesman confirmed that the company will seek an immediate legal stay of the latest mandatory action, while it will appeal the ruling. “We strongly disagree with the court’s decision that the wind project must be withdrawn by December 1, 2025 and will seek a stay pending appellate review,” he said in a email response to ENR. “Ejecting the wind farm would negatively impact the economic and environmental benefits for the local community.”
The project provides power to 53,000 homes under a 20-year power purchase agreement that was struck in 2015, according to a profile.
Italy-based Enel Group’s energy services businesses in the US and Canada include 9.6 GW of renewable energy, 160,000 electric vehicle charging stations, 4.7 GW of demand response capacity and 14 systems utility-scale battery energy storage totaling 1.4 GWh of capacity under construction or under construction. operation The developer’s overall 12-month revenue as of September 30 is $81.3 billion.
The judge also awarded compensatory damages of about $311,000 against the developer, more than four times the total it told the court, but significantly less than the estimated $38 million sought by the plaintiffs. Enel also owes $4 million for the plaintiffs’ legal fees and other costs.
An Osage spokesman did not respond to ENR’s inquiry, but said in an earlier statement that the tribe “will always fight to defend our mineral estate that our ancestors set aside for our benefit and for future generations “.
