Saturday, August 09, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
ARBITRATION SOUGHT: Lawsuit filed over wind farm
Company alleges government breached agreements by halting project at test site
By KEITH ROGERS
REVIEW-JOURNAL
A company that planned to build a $130 million wind power project at the Nevada Test Site filed a lawsuit this week claiming that the National Nuclear Security Administration breached agreements when it halted the project last year.
The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas by attorneys for the Delaware-based MNS Wind Co. names the administration's Nevada Operations Office, the Department of Energy and NTS Development Corp. as defendants. The administration is a branch of the Department of Energy that oversees the test site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
A spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration's Nevada Operations Office in North Las Vegas, declined to comment on the lawsuit Friday.
The project to build 545 wind turbines for generating electricity was abruptly canceled in July 2002 after Air Force officials, without explanation, expressed national security concerns relating to the mission of the National Nuclear Security Administration for Defense Department to train, test and develop tactics in an unfettered environment.
A Nellis Air Force Base spokesman at the time explained that turbine blades whirling atop Shoshone Mountain would disrupt radar signals during training exercises.
A week later, sources with knowledge of Air Force operations on the outskirts of the test site said the turbines would disrupt sensitive sound-tracking equipment at the government's secrete installation along the dry Groom Lake bed, widely known as Area 51.
"MNS spent two years and millions of dollars in performing under the agreements by developing the site only to have the DOE repudiate or breach all of its agreements," according to court papers filed Thursday.
The complaint for MNS by Los Angeles attorney George Caplan calls for an order compelling arbitration against the DOE and in a separate claim seeks damages for negligent misrepresentation. The lawsuit cites agreements "that were intended to result in the development of one of the largest wind energy farms in America at the Nevada Test Site."
In a telephone interview Friday, Caplan said if the court upholds his request for arbitration then MNS, depending on the arbitrators' decision, stands to receive compensation for the work it accomplished and the value it created.
"We're talking in excess of $5 million both in actual out-of-pocket expenses and the investment of an entire team of people who worked on the project for approximately two years," Caplan said.
The complaint states that "after signing the agreements, the DOE touted the proposed NTS project as a model partnership between the private sector and the federal government in the quest to build additional generating facilities at other federal facilities across the nation."
The complaint refers to agreements between the parties on Dec. 22, 2000, and Jan. 17, 2001.
Tim Carlson, former NTS Development Corp. president, who left the public-private venture two years ago, said Friday, "We negotiated the terms of the agreement with the understanding that if a national security issue arose then the president of the Untied States could stop the project.
"We had no knowledge of what the Department of Defense was or was not doing because of the secret nature of their work but gave them opportunities to come to the table," Carlson said.
