Small Indian Tribe Lands Big Wind Energy Deal

A Chicago-based developer of large-scale renewable energy projects will build a 160-megawatt wind farm on the Campo Indian Reservation about 60 miles east of San Diego, under an agreement announced today.

If completed as expected by 2012, the 100-turbine facility in the Laguna Mountains will generate enough electricity during peak production for more than 100,000 homes, according to Brian Brokowski, a spokesman for San Diego Gas & Electric. Under a memorandum of understanding, Chicago’s Invenergy will build and operate the estimated $300 million facility for the 351-member Campo Band of Mission Indians of the Kumeyaay Nation, and SDG&E will purchase and distribute the electricity. The project will provide revenue for the Campo tribal government, and the tribe will get an equity stake in the wind farm.

“We are excited to be working with Invenergy and San Diego Gas & Electric to bring this project to reality for the benefit of our tribal members and residents of San Diego County,” Campo Chairwoman Monique La Chappa said in a statement.

The project will be the Campo tribe’s second wind energy facility. The band completed a 25-turbine project in 2005 that is visible to motorists along Interstate 8. In a joint statement, the three partners say the wind facility could offset as much as 57.6 million pounds of carbon dioxide emissions annually.

While the project still must win approval from the U.S. Department of Interior’s Bureau of Indian Affairs, it would not require state approval and sidesteps likely opposition from rural residents who live near the reservation.

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.