Somewhere, Chief James Bigheart must be doing a victory dance.
On Wednesday, the Osage Nation prevailed again in federal court in Tulsa, winning a decisive ruling in the longest-running legal battle over wind energy in American history.
In her judgment (I’ve posted it here on Google Drive), US District Court Judge Jennifer Choe-Graves ruled that Enel’s subsidiaries, Osage Wind LLC, Enel Kansas LLC, and Enel Green Power North America, “committed trespass, continuing trespass, and conversion in the construction of a wind farm on Indian land.” She ruled that the plaintiffs in the case, the US Government and the Osage Minerals Council, prevailed on the merits and are “entitled to monetary damages on their conversion trespass claims and equitable relief in the form of ejectment on their continuing trespass claim.”
While the tribe did not succeed in collecting millions of dollars in damages from Enel (Choe-Graves awarded $242,652.28), the tribe did win an award for trespass ($66,780). Choe-Graves, an Obama appointee, also ordered Enel to pay the plaintiff’s attorney’s fees, including those incurred by the US Department of Justice and the Minerals Council, which total more than $36 million.
The key paragraph in her judgment can be found on page two, item four, which says, “Defendants are liable for continuing trespass and shall remove the wind farm from the Osage Minerals Estate and return the Osage Minerals Estate to its pre-trespass condition on or before December 1, 2025.”
For years, Big Wind has played hardball with rural communities. In some cases, Big Wind has sued rural governments to try to force them to accept wind projects they don’t want. (I’ll be writing more about that soon.) Across the US, only a handful of turbines have ever been taken down due to local opposition. In 2022, two turbines in Falmouth, Massachusetts, were dismantled after numerous complaints from local homeowners about the noise from the turbines and a years-long legal battle.
It’s difficult to overstate the importance of this ruling. Enel has said that removing the 84 turbines in the Osage wind project would cost the company $300 million. Whatever the cost, the fact that a federal court has ordered the removal of the turbines is unprecedented.
Read the rest of this piece at Robert Bryce Substack.
Robert Bryce is a Texas-based author, journalist, film producer, and podcaster. His articles have appeared in a myriad of publications including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Forbes, Time, Austin Chronicle, and Sydney Morning Herald.
Photo: Chief James Bigheart, Osage nation Source: visittheosage.com.
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