'Seriously, this sucks': How a small Minnesota town was left with a giant pile of wind turbine blades

GRAND MEADOW, MINN. – Darcy Richardson had big plans for a garden patio enveloped by flowers in her backyard in this little community south of Rochester.

She gave up once the blades arrived.

Trucks dropped off more than 100 fiberglass turbine blades on the empty lot next door in 2020, haphazardly stacked to the edge of Richardson's property. Almost four years later, the mountain of old wind parts — which is visible on Google Earth — is still there.

Some blades are cracked and stained. Locals say they draw feral cats and foxes and are a safety risk because kids climb on the junk.

They're also ugly, ruining Richardson's view, hurting property values and attracting the curiosity of seemingly everyone who drives the highway into town.

"After six months we were like 'C'mon guys, what's going on,'" said Richardson, once a master gardener. "After a year we were like 'Seriously, this sucks.'"

What happened in Grand Meadow is more than merely a local mess. It reflects tensions over the boom of wind energy in southern Minnesota during a shift away from fossil fuels, the problem of recycling green infrastructure, small town political infighting and government and corporate bureaucracy.

Frustrated city leaders have tried every angle they can think of to clear the lot, pressuring the property owner, the recycling company, and now powerful state regulators on the Public Utilities Commission (PUC).

A failed push to recycle

The story began with the company NextEra Energy, a large Florida-based clean energy developer.

In 2020, NextEra rebuilt a wind farm in Mower County to make the large 99-megawatt facility more efficient, installing longer blades on most of the 43 turbines. Each of those turbines is enormous, stretching 440 feet from the ground to the fully extended tip of the new blades.

Often, expired turbine blades end up in a landfill. The fiberglass components are tough to reuse, creating a weak recycling market. This is a nuisance for a growing industry that flaunts its green image.

In this case, NextEra tried to recycle. The company contracted with a Spanish company, Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy, on the Mower project, which in turn struck a deal to recycle the leftover blades through Ohio-based RiverCap Ventures.

RiverCap planned to offload the junk to a company that grinds up blades to use in concrete, according to former vice president Brian Donahue. But things never got that far.

Donahue said he and other top leaders at RiverCap left and the company went out of business. Donahue and another former RiverCap worker helped create a new venture called Canvus that took over responsibility for the blades in 2022.

Donahue said Canvus doesn't have enough money to move the blades either, at least yet. It's expensive to drive them to Canvus' facility in Ohio. Donahue said they can fit only one blade on a truck at a time.

His company turns the old parts into public benches that sell for about $5,000 apiece.

"I can only do what our company is capable of to clean up the mess that was left behind by another," Donahue said.

Battle with the property owner

While there is plenty of frustration in Grand Meadow toward RiverCap and Canvus, some in the town of 1,100 also criticize two brothers from a well-known family who leased RiverCap the land.

At the time of the deal, Tony Warmka was serving on the City Council and Travis Warmka was the fire chief. The duo had bought the land from the city for $1 to develop the empty site for industrial use.

But the city views the wind blade graveyard as an unlicensed dump that is breaking zoning ordinances.

"That led to some uncomfortable meetings, but [Tony] really hasn't wanted to discuss it," said James Christian, a former mayor and councilman who is now Grand Meadow's city administrator. "He's getting a check every month, so. He knows he's in violation. He's known since the day they showed up."

Richardson and her husband Jim, the city police chief, declined to talk about the Warmka family, saying they didn't want to broach a sensitive issue publicly in the small town. Tony Warmka used to be their neighbor. Christian's mother and a county commissioner live nearby as well.

Xander Stejskal lives near the blades and wrote to state officials in early August, saying the Warmka brothers "should pay for shipment and the towns issues after involving critters and invasive animals."

Tony Warmka said he would respond to a call from the Star Tribune and did not. Travis Warmka could not be reached.

The city issued two notices to their company, TMT Properties, for violating city code and passed a resolution demanding the lot cleared of debris by July 2023. By that time, Tony Warmka was off the council after opting against running for re-election.

Normally, Grand Meadow might go to court for approval to intervene and clean up junk on a property, such as impounding a junked car left on a lawn, Christian said. But one estimate for blade clearing was roughly $500,000.

"We don't have that," Christian said.

Grand Meadow is looking into whether it can fine TMT. The city asked for help from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, with no luck. Christian is now trying the PUC, where utility regulators plan to weigh in next month after taking public comments on whether the board can or should intervene.

Xcel Energy now owns the wind farm, but the company says it can't move the blades because it doesn't own them and described the situation as "isolated." Xcel is still sensitive to the issue because the blade junk is not exactly building goodwill in a wind-rich area.

Annette Olson co-owns Olson Tree Services, a business adjacent to the blade pile, and said, like several others, she is not opposed to renewable power. But "it's frustrating when they talk about all the things we need to do to help our environment, but yet they fail to do their part," she said.

Xcel spokesman Theo Keith said the company is open to including new protections in blade recycling contracts to protect host communities. NextEra declined to comment. Siemens Gamesa said it has a confidential agreement with RiverCap to remove the blades from Grand Meadow.

Donahue, at Canvus, said their lease expires by the end of the year so the blades will be moved soon. But the Richardson family living next to the junk pile, and others, are skeptical.

Darcy Richardson said she sometimes tries to imagine the wind blades as snow piles. The family said they once would have hosted a wedding in the yard, but not anymore. She has a smaller deck close to her house with a small statue of a farmhouse windmill amid black-eyed Susans. It's the more idyllic vision of renewable energy.

Richardson asked the PUC to consider "what would you do if it was in your backyard?"

Jim had another message: "Don't mess with my wife's flowers."