By John Vibes
For more than a year, we have been following the story of a Minnesota man, Jay Nygard, who is routinely risking jail time because he refuses to remove a wind turbine from his property. Nygard has been in and out of court over the years, and despite a short-lived victory in October, he was recently back in front of a judge facing a contempt of court charge for refusing a court order to remove the turbines from his property.
He did eventually remove the turbines, leaving only the cement bases because removing them would cause structural damage to their house. This was not good enough for the local government, who ignored the advice of three different engineers and demanded that they remove the bases, despite the risk of damaging the home.
This is all that remains of the windmill on Nygard’s property, a concrete footing, in the ground.
On Friday, Nygard was arrested and is now facing six months in prison for refusing to remove the base.
According to Kahler Nygard, Jay’s son, his father even attempted to make peace with the county and compromise on a number of different issues, but they ignored his appeals.
“The choices for my dad were to potentially destroy our foundation in the house or go to jail, he even offered an olive branch saying he would add an easement to the deed saying when the house is demolished the pad must be removed, but that was ignored also,” Kahler said in an exclusive interview with The Free Thought Project.
“The base was level with the ground and 4 feet cubed. We removed the top half of the concrete and used a metal cutting tool to remove the top half of the bolt assembly, rendering the structure unusable,” Kahler explained.
“They say that we have to remove to footing 100% and have it inspected by the city, which we have three different engineers all saying we should just leave it, one of them even does contract work for the city,” he added.
Kahler said that although there are no ordinances against windmills, the county has a personal vendetta against his family.
Nygard has the right to do whatever he wants with his own property, but unfortunately in a democracy such as the United States, the property rights of an individual can be overridden according to the whims of politicians and the demands of uninvolved third parties.
Please share this story with your friends and family in hopes of keeping a good man, whose only “crime” was self-sustainability, out of jail.
John Vibes is an author, researcher and investigative journalist who takes a special interest in the counter-culture and the drug war. In addition to his writing and activist work, he organizes a number of large events including the Free Your Mind Conference, which features top caliber speakers and whistle-blowers from all over the world. You can contact him and stay connected to his work at his Facebook page. You can find his 65 chapter Book entitled “Alchemy of the Timeless Renaissance” at bookpatch.com.
Pretty much squelches the .govs credibility on them wanting us to have a small carbon footprint…..
We could be burning alcohol in our cars much cheaper and cleaner but they aren’t wild about that idea either.
alcohol is less efficient than gasoline or diesel, and costs more to produce. It requires more petroleum products to produce enough alcohol to replace the petroleum burned in cars, so it is a losing proposition.
See above
Read what I stated. I’ll break it down for you. In order to produce the vegetable matter that is fermented to make alcohol for fuel, more gallons/pounds/tons of diesel, gasoline and other petroleum products are consumed to produce the alcohol as fuel. the ratio is about 1.15 gallons of diesel and gasoline, and motor oil burned to create each gallon of alcohol produced.
Hemp oil is better
Why? Because you can get high on the emissions?
Defend this man, where? The article itself only states MN. I live in MN and haven’t heard this story. Too much info is missing.
why don’t you ask your local news why they are not reporting it?
Same impression I got and I don’t live in MN. Lo and behold, apparently this wind turbine has been up since 2010 and allegedly certain behaviors like suing neighbors who complain over a certain strobing light effect of a spinning shiny turbine against your window —- may have something to do it…. Maybe…
So he makes the turbine out of non-reflective material. Will that get your little panties out of a wad, comrade?
Oh, I’m sorry – little tweety-bird landed a shit-nugget on this thread.
Douch
Your a douch
Well, at least he didn’t have a pellet gun in his glove compartment or he’d be looking at 5 years from these thugs.
Or the guy with the pellet gun didn’t have a chunk of concrete with him,,,,,,
Who should the militias shoot? The local cops? All of the local cops, or just the ones involved in this case? Should they shoot the judge? Or perhaps use their guns to shoot all of the prison guards and break this guy out? Tell us who the militias should shoot to resolve this issue once and for all.
Shooting is not the answer but neither is govt. oppression. If we all would open our pie holes and start telling these officials we won’t stand for it then it might change. Recall the judge or municipality employees…..they can be fired, and should be—DEMAND IT
No Janice you are correct, shooting is not necessarily the answer. His local militias should have been there though along with everyone around him to help back him up.
The people to stand up for his and by extension their own rights to do with their property as they see fit. The militias to ensure that the government does not sick armed men in uniform on them.
This stopped being about a wind generator YEARS ago …. nothing but a pizzing contest …. people talk a woman’s scorn – absolutely nothing compared to a gooberment official that got a finger poked in his eye ….
Whoever is behind the whole revenge crusade must have some real juice – otherwise that judge would have stopped this bullshit looooong ago ….
You are 100% correct. I have not walked into a courtroom where I was not prejudged, Jay Nygard
Half a story. At least give the reason the county offers for its actions, so we can judge if there is any grey area. I don’t like this type of journalism, which pre-supposes agreement so much that it ignores part of the story.
my head just spins, so theres no law against turbines, yet he has to remove them, as well as the cement base? Make the base a patio for the dog or something, we never hear all the story on these things nor the outcome. I did check sources on this and appears to be all correct for those questioning the story.
Good idea, put a dog house on it.
I repurposed the area with compost bins, did not matter. Nothing mattered that day to the judge, I was going to jail, period. Jay Nygard
In Idaho there are govt subsidized turbines on private land.
There are hundreds, if not thousands of government subsidized turbines on private land in Texas, which claims to have the most wind turbines of any state in the US. Guess the government subsidized monopolies don’t like a little private competitition.
THIS IS WHEN YOU LOCK AND LOAD AND GET READY FOR WAR
IF THIS IS the WAY IT IS NOW…EVERY COP NEEDS TO BE READY TO NOT COME HOME TONIGHT
LOCAL GOVERNMENTS NEED TO BE READY TO BE ROUNDED UP AND EXECUTED
that’s a little harsh…..how about just fire them….that’s what I want.
Where is the Democracy & Constitutional Rights to look after your self & NOT be hinderance to the country.. own self enterprise…
If there’s no ordinance against it, it must be Center Point Energy throwing it’s weight!
Local codes exist for a good reason. In fact, codes are humanities earliest regulations dating back 4000 years. If he wants his windmill then he has to move to an area where he can do it.
Sheep Alert. We must obey the shepherd, who protects us from wolves so that we can be fleeced and eaten by the authorized party.
I suspect you are exactly they type of person that motivated the creation of codes; you’re a pompous, slobbering know it all that would run and hide after your substandard construction collapsed and kills someone.
Zoning codes are unconstitutional. Unless someones actions on their property, directly threaten your property (dumping sewage or hazardous waste close to shared water/ground water, or recklessness with fire/HazMat materials/firearms), it’s no ones business what they build. Stop trying to run everyone elses lives and mind your own business.
Like I said, codes are humanities oldest regulations and for good reason. The irresponsible actions of people like you that affect innocent parties are why we have codes. And personally as far as I’m concerned, you can build whatever you want, but if you ignore codes then you cannot sell the property with that structure on it.
MN law allows for all to harvest the wind, outlawing them is illegal as I proved when I sued Orono and won when they had a total ban on turbines. Jay Nygard
How did they enforce a non existent ordinance ?
Where is the ACLU?— this man’s rights have been violated
The ACLU would not talk to me because I am white. Jay Nygard
Answer your own question…where are you? Are you sitting out front of this guy’s place with YOUR rifle?
just cut off the rebar jutting out. Problem solved.
I did, I cut of the anchor bolts, did not matter to the judge. Going to wreck my foundation, did not matter to the judge.
Again I repeat: codes are humanities oldest regulations for good reason. It was learned 1000’s of years ago that far too many people are unscrupulous and love to lie especially by omission (yes, not disclosing facts is a type of lying). So maybe you think it’s OK to lie because it is natural?
I used to be a contractor. I have seen the type of sh*t people like you are capable of. And as I have mentioned, humanity’s earliest writings dealt with – get ready – ta da! building codes. And please cite your source for you own self serving proclamation that unsafe behavior has been halted in areas without codes.
This is a joke. This man is clearly an Activist, as, of course, is the writers of this article. Trying to claim this is some kind of “war” against this idiot, is nothing more than political activism in and of itself.
That base will NOT affect his home. Lifetime in the trades. It was NEVER an original part of the home, nor the foundation, therefore, it has absolutely zero effect on this mans home foundation. Period. IF it does effect it, at all, it is entirely his OWN fault, since he is the one that added this concrete and was stupid enough to but it up against the foundation of his home.
He also installed this windmill to where it effected his neighbors. That will NEVER fly and was, in and of itself, moronic to begin with.
I could go on for a very long time. This homeowner is totally in the wrong. He believed he could use his political activism, the press, and those who side with his progressive, liberal agenda, to FORCE state entities to agree and bow down to his view of “green energy”, so he could basically proceed doing whatever the hell he wanted to do. Just because you “own” your property, doesn’t mean you no longer have to follow the laws of the land, or your state.
IF this man would have done things the right way, I’m sure he would be collecting some “free energy” this very day. However, he did not. I’ve installed, worked on, maintained hundreds of Solar systems of different and varying types. I think they can be great. However, they have their own issues, and limitations, as well. They are nowhere near perfect, and do not always benefit, in the ways some people love to claim.
You also have absolutely NO right to interfere with others just because you want to benefit yourself, even if you claim to do so in the name of “Green Energy”, as the courts have rightly ruled, in this specific case.
The progressive left just loves to take cases, such as this, and attempt to mold a martyr, so they can keep working on changing basic, common sense laws, and ways of life, by forcing the Judicial system to agree with them. Minnesota, sadly, is a massively biased state. They are among the most liberal in the Country, have the most liberal judges, (in the main counties), so to have a ruling such as this come from there, is a positive sign, that at least this judge, used the actual law to create her ruling, as EVERY judge is supposed to do. NOT to base your ruling on ideological or politically held, beliefs.