Questions and answers with Tom Landwehr, newly appointed Minnesota DNR commissioner.

By DENNIS ANDERSON, Star Tribune | Sunday, January 9, 2011

Presiding over the state’s outdoors requires listening to opinions, the new leader said. He also spoke of the strong presence of politics and the need to better target habitat projects.

Q Did Gov. [Mark] Dayton give you marching orders as DNR commissioner?

A He said he hires people who know their jobs and shouldn’t have to give them a lot of guidance. Also, he wants the DNR to treat its constituents as customers, and doesn’t want us to be arrogant.

Q Define your leadership style.

A I like to listen. I think before a commissioner takes action, he needs to listen to a variety of opinions. I’m not a micromanager. I expect people working for me to do the right thing and do it well. We’ll have good people being held accountable.

Q The prolonged time Gov. Dayton took to name you underscores the politics that often affect conservation. Is there a way to minimize its effect on fish and wildlife management?

A I’d love to say there is. But it’s the curse and the virtue of a democracy. Everyone gets a say. These are state resources we manage, and they belong to us all. It used to be the Legislature set seasons, and the conservation community in the end said this isn’t the best way to do it. So there have been improvements. But the Legislature sets funding of the DNR, and its direction is determined by the governor. I don’t see that changing.

Q That seems fatalistic. Can’t improvements be made?

A Even in states whose DNR is managed by a citizen commission, politics exist. I have been impressed with the notion of a conservation congress, like the one in Wisconsin, because it allows for constituent input. But it wasn’t that long ago that Minnesota’s resource management was considered top-tier nationally, and I know when I started with DNR they were very well regarded. So I don’t think the model we have necessarily creates the problem. It could be the political environment we operate in.

Q Are we delivering conservation correctly in the state? Or should the DNR and other resource agencies be reformed?

A I don’t have grandiose thoughts at this time. I think we can look at all of the divisions and the structure of the DNR and see if changes should be made. More philosophically, what should the DNR’s responsibilities be and what should be decided elsewhere? That would be a great discussion, but it’s up to the Legislature. We can look at processes in DNR and the structure to see if things under the commissioner’s control should be aligned differently.

Q Did you develop your outdoor interests as a kid?

A My dad was a big outdoorsman who competed in a 400-mile canoe race for many years. As a result, I was in a canoe on the St. Croix many summers with him while he trained. I also fished and camped with my family, and hunted some.

Q Your primary interest is waterfowl and wetland wildlife management, but you worked in private-land habitat development to benefit pheasants for a number of years.

A When the pheasant stamp and fund were established in the early 1980s, I was one of four biologists who were assigned to work with private landowners. For four years I worked out of Shakopee. Then I moved to Madison, in western Minnesota, and to Owatonna.

Q Can ducks and other species rebound here, given the loss of natural habitat in the farmlands and elsewhere?

A Conservation can be accomplished by regulation or by incentive. In many cases, rural property owners believe it is their right to drain wetlands. The point I tried to make to landowners when I worked with them was that drainage projects often impact people downstream. And people don’t have the right to affect people downstream.

Q Can our wetland wildlife situation be improved by regulation?

A We have good laws on the books already. But we’ve lost 99 percent of our wetlands in some areas, and society for better or worse has decided we don’t want more regulation. So if we’re not willing to regulate, we have to do it with incentives.

Q Money is tight and more incentives seem unlikely. What hope should duck hunters have that waterfowl populations will improve?

A The effective way to improve farmland wildlife is to target habitat projects better. We need to put habitat where it will do the most good. If we can use state money — primarily from the Legacy Amendment — to leverage federal money to do habitat work, we can bring a disproportionate amount of money to Minnesota and optimize its positive effect by, as I say, targeting it more effectively.

Q What is your position on mining in northeastern Minnesota, given the concerns some people have on its possible adverse effect on the boundary waters?

A I understand a lot of rural communities depend on use of natural resources for their livelihoods. And Gov. Dayton understands that job creation is very important. The charge for the commissioner is to find the most sustainable way to use natural resources, including precious metals. I think we can find a way to do that.

Q Is there too much overlap in authority over water among the DNR, the Board of Water and Soil Resources and the Pollution Control Agency?

A We need to break down the “silos” separating the work we all do, so we’re optimally efficient. I think also we need to look at core areas in the farmlands, identifying them using satellite imagery, and in those areas strive for habitat that is at least 40 percent grass and 20 percent water. We need to connect these areas with habitat corridors, where medium-sized mammals can move from area to area.

Q Do you see an upswing for logging and the forest products industry?

A Demand for forest products is weak due to the housing decline. But loggers up north need some help, and what I’m hearing from them is we should make more timber available. We shouldn’t have procedural and bureaucratic obstacles that delay the sale of stumpage.

Q The lack of recruitment of young hunters and anglers threatens the wildlife management funding structure here and nationally. Are there remedies?

A A lot of people want information about how to get started in the outdoors but don’t know where to get it. “Becoming an Outdoors Woman” and other DNR efforts are excellent. But to succeed, the efforts will have to accelerate, and we’ll need partnerships with wildlife groups and perhaps schools to do it.

Q Management of some of the state’s hundreds of wildlife areas seems beyond the DNR’s capability, given manpower and cash shortages. Are there solutions?

A We need to get private businesses involved. Much of what needs to be done around wildlife areas is low-tech management. We need people to burn, to control weeds, to put up fences. If we could get private businesses in local communities doing that kind of work, we would be more effective and get more people invested in conservation.

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While state struggles, Legacy money flowing

Prairie wind power

By Liz Morrison, The Farmer, December 2010 Issue

Farmers near Hoffman began harvesting a new cash crop this fall: the prairie wind.

Grant County Wind LLC is Minnesota’s newest community wind farm. Commissioned in August, the 10-turbine facility generates up to 20 megawatts of renewable electricity – enough to supply all the homes in Grant County and more.

The $43 million project is partly owned by 29 Grant County investors. It’s one of more than a dozen communitybased wind projects that have sprouted on Minnesota’s windy western edge in the last few years.

About a quarter of wind power

Community wind power is a hallmark of Minnesota’s renewable energy landscape, says Cheryl Glaeser, renewable energy program officer for the Southwest Initiative Foundation in Hutchinson. Locally-owned, commercial-scale wind farms generate about a quarter of the state’s wind power. She adds: “We lead the nation in community wind.”

The Grant County group spent almost seven years putting together the wind deal.

“We had our first meeting six years, eight months, and 17 days before commissioning,” says Project Manager Ed Persons, Kensington, a University of Minnesota professor who retired to a Grant County sheep ranch.

After studying the local wind resources, he and 13 other Grant County farmers and businessmen formed a limited liability company and began working with Juhl Wind Inc., a Woodstock firm that has developed more than a dozen Minnesota wind farms. Juhl Wind helped the group with project deSign, permitting, utility power purchase agreements, turbine acquisition and finanCing. Later, the group recruited additional local investors, bringing the total to 29.

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Wind still strong across the state

GRANT COUNTY WIND: Ed Persons of rural Kensington (left), a retired University of Minnesota professor, and Ron Prahl, a Grant County farmer and wind farm operations manager, are two of the local investors in a new 20-MW wind farm in Grant County. Prahl and his family have several turbines on their farmland.

By Liz Morrison, The Farmer, December 2010 Issue

Minnesota is still moving windward.

Although the state has slipped in the national wind power rankings, falling to seventh place in the second quarter of 2010, “development is still very active,” says Tricia DeBleeckere, senior energy facilities planner for the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission.

“There’s strong interest in wind power in Minnesota,” agrees Cheryl Glaeser, a renewable energy expert at the Southwest Initiative Foundation in Hutchinson.

The state has about 1,800 megawatts of wind power. Projects now in development – including a 200-MW wind farm in Nobles County in southwest Minnesota, and projects in Big Stone, Meeker and Renville counties in central Minnesota – would add 800 MW in the next few years.

Encouraging factors

Several factors have encouraged wind power expansion, Glaeser says.

Probably the biggest is Minnesota’s renewable energy standard, she says, which is one of the most aggressive in the nation.

It requires state utilities to get 25% of their power from renewable sources by 2025.

Other drivers of interest in wind power include federal tax credits, which can be worth up to 30% of the cost of qualified wind projects, and a recent cash grant program funded with federal stimulus money.

Stumbling blocks

Still, wind power developers have faced some pretty stiff headwinds in the last couple of years. The recession dried up investment capital and credit.

“Projects couldn’t find equity partners or debt financing,” Glaeser says. “That’s gotten better, but it’s still challenging.”

The weak economy also softened electricity demand, making it harder for producers to find a utility to purchase the wind power, she says. In September, Minnesota-based Xcel Energy, a leading buyer of wind power, announced that it wants to acquire an additional 250 MW of wind generation.

“That’s very good news,” Glaeser says.  Meanwhile, public opposition to wind farms is on the rise in some parts of Minnesota, the PUC’s DeBleeckere says.  She has heard objections relating to aesthetics, noise, flickering shadows from the turning blades, location and need.

Another stumbling block is the lack of available transmission capacity to carry wind power from rural areas to urban markets, says Fritz Ebinger, an attorney and policy analyst with Windustry, a Minneapolis-based education and advocacy group. Building new transmission lines and figuring out who pays for them is a long and controversial process, he says. But more capacity is on the way. New transmission lines are planned for southwest, central and southeast Minnesota in the coming decade, and could spur wind farm creation, Ebinger says.

The immediate outlook: local

Because of the current transmission constraints, Ebinger and Glaeser expect to see more community-based wind farms of 5 to 10 MW sprouting in the next few years.

“There are spots on the transmission system where there may be room for a 5 or 10-MW project, but not for a larger project,” Glaeser says.

These locally-owned wind farms are good for the region’s economy, says Mary Anne Welch, Windustry marketing and community outreach manager. Wind gives farmers a new source of income, either from leasing their land for turbines or through direct investment in a project.

Wind lease payments are usually confidential, but often include a fixed lease payment per turbine or per megawatt of installed capacity, a percentage of gross revenue, or a combination, Ebinger says.  A 2009 Windustry summary of publicly available compensation discloses lease payments for several Midwest projects.  According to the report, annual lease payments can range from $1,500 per turbine to more than $9,000 in rare cases; annual lease payments on a per-megawatt basis can range from $1,500 to more than $5,000.

Wind power also pumps money into county coffers. A recently completed 20-MW wind farm near Hoffman will generate about $64,000 in local taxes, says Project Manager Ed Persons.  And the labor needed to build the project was equivalent to 22 full-time jobs for a year, he adds – nothing to sneeze at in a town of 620.

Wind is spurring job creation in manufacturing and related service sectors, too, Glaeser adds. Several Minnesota companies are now working in the wind sector because of the state’s wind strength, including firms that manufacture, transport and maintain some of the 8,000 components in a wind turbine.

At the Minnesota State Fair this year, Welch talked about wind power with a steady stream of farmers and entrepreneurs.

“There’s a lot of enthusiasm,” she says.  “Many want to know what they can do to support rural economic development.  They see wind as an opportunity, and they want to know how they can make it work.”

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Up-front costs make finances big challenge

By Liz Morrison, The Farmer, December 2010 Issue

Grant County Wind’s farm site, about five miles west of Hoffman along U.S. Highway 59, has several advantages, says Project Manager Ed Persons, Kensington.

It has plenty of wind, with speeds averaging around 17 miles per hour; a nearby 41,600-kilovolt transmission line; and space on the power grid for an additional 20 megawatts of intermittent electricity.

The group secured a 20-year power purchase agreement with Xcel Energy.

“That was a cliff-hanger,” Persons says.  Reason? The purchase agreement had to be renegotiated three times as the cost and scope of the project grew during the long development period.

Grant County Wind’s power purchase agreement is “front-loaded,” providing a higher rate in the early years of the contract when the debt is being paid off, in exchange for a lower rate in the later years of the contract.

Financing tough

Because of the huge up-front cost of a wind power plant – about $2.15 million per megawatt of installed capacity – financing is one of the biggest challenges, Persons says.

The Grant County wind farm was built with $43 million in construction financing provided by the general contractor and the wind turbine supplier. The project broke ground Aug. 14,2009, and was completed Feb. 15,2010. It went on line Aug. 9.

Now that the wind farm is up and running, the Grant County investors are seeking long-term debt financing and a major equity partner. The investor group will receive nearly $13 million in cash grants from the U.S. Treasury, buying down their capital needs by one-third. The public subsidy is one of a host of federal and state incentives aimed at encouraging renewable energy projects.

In a complex ownership arrangement, Grant County Wind’s equity partner will receive most of the returns from the project for the first 10 years or so; then ownership will flip to the local group.

Wind power is one of the few opportunities outside of agriculture “for small, rural communities to generate income,” Persons says. “It’s adding value to a local renewable resource.”

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Negotiating a wind lease? Consider complex issues

By Liz Morrison, The Farmer, December 2010 Issue

Leasing farmland to a wind developer offers an important new source of income for landowners – one that’s compatible with raising crops and livestock.

Wind energy is “a good way to diversify farm income,” says Fritz Ebinger, an attorney and policy analyst with Windustry, a Minnesota education and advocacy group. However, wind easements and leases have significant effects on property rights, he cautions.

These agreements involve a host of complex legal, financial and tax issues, he says, and they usually last for a long time – 20 to 30 years.

“It’s a new kind of land agreement and one that often is not well understood,” he says. That’s why it’s essential to work with a qualified attorney.

Farmland owners have a lot of questions about wind leases, agrees Cheryl Glaeser, renewable energy program officer at the Southwest Initiative Foundation.  Over the past 18 months, the foundation, in partnership with other organizations has held 30 forums on wind energy, forums which attracted big crowds.

“Landowners are being approached by wind power developers, and they want to know if they are getting a good deal and if it’s a reputable company doing the project,” Glaeser says.

Her advice if you are approached by a developer?

“Talk with the neighbors,” she says.  “Find out who is doing the project, how long they’ve been around, if they have other projects in the ground. Ask a lot of questions, and take the lease or easement proposal to a lawyer who is familiar with wind leases and easements.”

A good source of general information about wind power agreements is Windustry’s website at www.windustry.com.

Here are some general suggestions from Windustry about negotiating wind propertyagreements:

• Gather information about the project. Obtain written materials on your wind resources, the specifics of the wind farm project, the transmission plan, permitting requirements, equipment suppliers, power purchase agreement and the financing plan. How will construction and wind farm operations affect farming activities and your long-term plans for the land?

• Evaluate the wind energy development company. Has the developer successfully completed other wind projects in your region? Is the developer committed to getting the project built, and does it have the capacity to pull together a successful mproject? Does the developer have the ability to obtain financing for a multimillion dollar project? Ask for references, a list of projects and names of landowners currently under contract. Talk to landowners, local authorities and economic development boards where the developer has other projects.

• Ensure fair compensation. There are many forms of payment, including annual rent, a percentage of the income generated by the wind turbines on your land, a flat payment, equity partnership, or some combination.  Windustry’s advice: “Work with your lawyer to ensure that you will be adequately compensated for your wind easement or land lease.” Include an escalation clause that allows your compensation to increase as energy values rise.

• Spell out what happens at the end of the project. Your agreement should have a provision that outlines who is responsible for removing the wind farm structures and restoring the land.

• Work with your neighbors. “You will all be in a better negotiating position if you share ideas about the contracts offered,” Windustry says. “Experience shows that everyone is better off when landowners in a region work together on wind development.”

By Mike Wilson, Farm Futures, Extra 2010, Volume 7

CONTROLLED SUBSURFACE DRAINAGE MAY BE THE NEXT BIG MANAGEMENT TOOL TO BOOST YIELD AND REIN IN RUNAWAY NITRATES

- Doug Mills can control the amount of rain his crops get each growing season.

Well, sort of.

Mills is one of a handful of Corn Belt farmers tinkering with controlled drainage, an underground system that allows farmers to open and close subsurface blocks or gates attached to tile lines, causing water to be held in the water table or flow out, depending on crop moisture needs.

The five -state project, sponsored by the Agricultural Drainage Management Coalition, or ADMC, has long-term potential to boost yield through better water management, and simultaneously curb nitrates that escape into rivers and pollute the nation’s water supplies.

Mills says controlled drainage can provide a “double return” on investment by draining away excess water in wet years, or conserving every last gallon possible to get through dry growing seasons. He estimates a yield kick of 4 to 10 bushels an acre, especially during dry growing seasons, when moisture conservation is at a premium.

“Water management will either give or take away 50 bushels of corn per acre; it’s that important,” says Mills, who farms 4,700 acres of corn and beans with his father, brother and cousin near Crawfordsville, Ind.

Cleaner water.

Drainage is a proven management tool on more than 60 million U.S. crop acres today, but many fields have clay tiles that are more than 100 years old, and most do not uniformly drain the fields.

Drainage helps grain production, but it works against drinking water quality.  Most of the Midwest gets its drinking water from waterways fed by runoff and subsurface drainage. In recent years farmers grew more corn acres, responding to greater world demand for feed and ethanol uses.  That led to more nitrogen applications and greater concerns about hypoxic waters such as the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico.

Controlled drainage helps hold water in the soil longer, allowing more of the nitrogen to be used by soil microbes and growing crops, so that less is lost from the fie ld. According to ADMC project results, controlled drainage reduces nitrate flow out of tile lines 40% to 60%.

While drainage systems are designed to get excess water off fields quickly to reduce crop loss, “adding managed system controls allows the farmer to reduce the rate of water loss during drier periods of the growing season,” says Harold Reetz, ADMC executive director. “Being able to adjust the water table to different levels during the year gives the farmer one more management component to help improve yields, increase efficiency and become more environmentally responsible. ”

That’s good news as farmers become more proactive in environmental issues. “We’re being accused of being hard on the environment, and that we’re losing too much nitrogen down the tiles,” says Mills.  “This helps show we are trying to solve some of the problems we have.”

Management tool

Some of the farms in the project use satellite-controlled water control structures, resulting in a truly managed and remotely monitored water table (results are posted online at www.admcoalition.com). The next step in the project is to see if in-ground stops, triggered by water pressure, can also improve water management.

Many pilot project farmers decide for themselves when to raise or lower the drainage blocks. They generally lower the gates in spring to allow soils to dry, then raise them in summer if weather turns dry.

“Part of the management trick is trying to figure out what level you want those blocks at, at any given time,” Mills says. “We’re trying to determine the optimum level of water available at each stage of crop growth.  You don’t want the water table too high because you want the roots to dig for moisture, and you want the tile to drain the water. But when you get periods like this year when rain shuts off the first of August, you want to be able to hold water in to stretch moisture supplies another couple weeks.”

Mills believes technology has helped farmers learn the true benefits of drainage.

“Yield map advances have exploded the drainage industry,” he says. “When yield monitors came on line, you were actually able to see the yield you were losing. In most fields you can tell right where the tiles are, – just based on yields coming through the monitors. What you thought was just a 2-acre mud hole was really a lO-acre mud hole, and that area was probably half the yield of the whole field.”

Subsurface-controlled drainage won’t work everywhere, but Mill believes it can be a tool to help farmers save nutrients if future regulations or nutrient trading comes into play.

“The government may come in and force – or entice – farmers to lower nitrates, one way or another,” he predicts.  “It will be basically controlling the amount of nitrates leaving your tile, either through lower N rates, less fall application or cover crops for example.”

By TIME HARLOW, Star Tribune | Last update: January 3, 2011 – 1:37 AM

The man largely responsible for the development and growth of Minnesota’s Afton Alps and Mount Kato ski areas has died.

Paul Augustine, 79, of Hastings, died Saturday at the Afton Care St. Croix Senior Home, said his son, John. He’d been ill for some time and had battled Parkinson’s disease, his son said.

Augustine opened Afton Alps in 1963, and 37 customers turned out on opening day. By the mid 1970s, Afton Alps had 17 chair lifts, four chalets and two rental shops. The popular recreation spot continued to grow and became known for its fully lit slopes and ski school.

In the late 1970s, Augustine bought Ski Haven in Mankato, Minn. He expanded it and renamed it Mount Kato. It now has 19 runs and eight chair lifts.

In the 1980s, he bought Moon Valley Ski Area in Malone, N.Y. He rebuilt the area and several runs to the lower part of the mountain and renamed the ski center Titus Mountain, according to the National Ski Areas Association (NSAA).

Augustine, who was raised on a farm near Hastings, served two terms on the NSAA in the 1980s and was president of the Midwest Ski Areas Association for three years. He was one of the founders of the Twin Cities Independent Ski Areas Association.

For his efforts, the NSAA awarded him its Lifetime Achievement award in 2008.

In Afton Alps’ early days, Paul Augustine did everything from using a hose to help make snow to running the cash register to answering the phone, John Augustine said.

“He was a general ambassador for skiing,” John said. “He was a man of the people.”

Augustine is survived by his wife of 45 years, Rose, three children, two sisters, one brother and three grandchildren.