View a PDF or Word Doc Version
Ostrander, MN - December 10th, 2009- Root River Energy, along with managing partner, National Wind, is proud to announce that it has secured over 20,000 acres of land in Mower and Fillmore Counties. This represents about two-thirds of the leased acres needed to develop up to 300 megawatts of community-owned wind energy in the area. With 10,000 acres signed in the last few months, Root River Energy’s Jim Connolly and Barry Rogne have been one of National Wind’s most productive field teams during this period.
Over 7,600 of these acres are located in the eastern Mower County footprint, an area Root River Energy expanded into during the Spring of 2009. The project’s overall goal is to sign 30,000 contiguous acres.
“The project is really coming together nicely as we continue to receive a positive community response from both the Fillmore and Mower County footprints,” says Connolly. “The Mower County expansion has helped accelerate the project’s development. Also, landowners are realizing that our business model focuses on building positive relationships, allowing the community to share in the project’s revenues and influence the process to meet their needs.”
For example, an amendment to the land lease commits Root River’s development team to designing access roads that conform to existing farming practices as much as possible. Often, access road construction is a common landowner concern. Access roads are fundamental to development and need to be constructed to effectively transport wind turbine components to their specific site location. They also allow operations and maintenance personnel access to the turbine during the life of the project to perform routine inspections that ensure the facility is working properly.
“Our goal is to build roadways that run in the same direction as field operations, in order to minimize the loss of efficiency in farming procedures,” adds Connolly. “We definitely allow for landowner input in access road placement; our goal is to work with the landowners to come up with the most viable option.”
If you are interested in learning more about Root River Energy, please contact Jim Connolly or Barry Rogne. You can reach Barry or Jim through our new office, located in the new Ostrander Farmer’s Co-op building, at 208 Main Street, #4, P.O. Box 156. Call 866-742-6448 and the Co-op will direct your call appropriately.
