PIERRE, S.D.—Dueling companies are threatening to take each other to court over the right to generate electricity from wind turbines that would be built on the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe’s reservation in central South Dakota.
Dalton Creations of Houston announced earlier this week it was joining the tribe to create a new company that would develop a wind farm on the reservation.
But officials with Winterhawk Energy and Development of Evergreen, Colo., said Friday they have been working with the tribe for several years to plan a wind project and that a 2007 agreement with the tribe prevents the tribe from negotiating with anyone else. The tribe has passed four resolutions indicating it is working with Winterhawk, company officials said.
Paul X. McMenaman, senior director of Winterhawk, said the company’s lawyers told Dalton Creations on Friday to halt its plans. The Dalton plan was worked out by just a few tribal officials, was never presented in a public hearing and violates the provision that bars the tribe from making a wind deal with anyone but Winterhawk, he said.
McMenaman said Dalton Creations has not done enough planning or conducted enough studies to pursue a project. “They are going to go no place with it,” he said of the Dalton plan.
But John Dalton, chief executive officer of Dalton Creations, said his company is likely to go to court to stop Winterhawk from trying to sabotage his agreement with the tribe.
“We have a legitimate resolution from the Crow Creek Tribe of the Sioux Nation. We have a resolution signed by the chairman and by the tribal council members. We have all the documentation that relates to that,” Dalton said. “Our attorneys are fixing to at least communicate with Winterhawk and either have them cease or desist or we’ll end up in legal actions with them.”
Dalton said he plans to stop Winterhawk from interfering with his project.
“The Winterhawk group, they’re obviously very poor losers and they’re fixing to get in a lawsuit with me,” Dalton said. “I can become a pretty vicious adversary when it’s necessary, and I will in this case.”
McMenaman said it takes three to five years to start construction on a wind energy project, but Dalton has said he wants to start building next year even though he hasn’t done any studies.
“Either Mr. Dalton is a crook and just making stories up, or he doesn’t know what the hell he is doing. He has nothing in place to get a project built, and he’s talking about having it built next year,” McMenaman said.
Duane Big Eagle, a former tribal chairman who has worked with Winterhawk, said the tribal council is now so fractured that it has trouble getting enough members together to form a quorum. If half the council members meet, the other half argues it was an illegal meeting, he said.
“As far as the tribal council itself getting together and having a meeting, I don’t think that has happened or is going to happen,” Big Eagle said.
Big Eagle said Winterhawk has worked with the tribe for four years or more and that the company has lived up to its promises in planning to bring wind energy to the reservation.
“Then you have people who don’t have any clue or any financial support or anything who step into the picture and start making promises to certain council members,” Big Eagle said. “It’s really not fair to those that are really trying hard and working honestly to try to make something happen here at Crow Creek.”
Dalton said his new company, Sioux Wind, would get additional funding from private investors to build a wind farm owned by the tribe. A company that builds wind turbines could start manufacturing them by the end of the year, he said earlier in the week.
McMenaman said Winterhawk signed an agreement to do a feasibility study with the tribe in 2006 and then signed an option to do wind studies and other planning in 2007. Wind data have been collected across the reservation, and an independent company has said the data show 266 turbines could be located on the reservation, he said. In addition, Winterhawk is in line for a study on environmental factors and other issues related to gaining permission to use Western Area Power Administration transmission lines to market electricity generated by wind towers, McMenaman said. WAPA has lines in the area to distribute hydropower generated at the Big Bend Dam on the Missouri River next to Fort Thompson, the tribe’s headquarters.
Buffalo County, which encompasses the Crow Creek reservation, is consistently listed as one of the poorest counties in the nation. It had a 23 percent unemployment rate in March, according to the South Dakota Department of Labor.
