Fight Over $500 Million Rail Tie Wind Farm In…

TIE SIDING — The Rail Tie wind project has been a thorn of contention in southern Wyoming for years that’s now evolved into a legal battle royale.

The legal fight to kill off the controversial wind farm project in Wyoming’s southeastern Albany County may be one of the fiercest being waged over an alternative form of electricity production in the state.

Deep-pocketed donors who live in the 4,300-acre Fish Creek Ranch Preserve near Tie Siding have kicked in money to pay the legal bills to halt the Rail Tie project, a disputed $500 million wind farm investment proposed by a Spanish energy giant.

Otterbox founder Curt Richardson, who owns a cattle ranch near Tie Siding, and others have shown interest in the litigation.

There are other big-name donors from the preserve who have contributed to the litigation war chest to fight Rail Tie.

There’s John Davis, a retired certified public accountant and lawyer from an Indianapolis water utility who built his dream cabin less than a mile from the border of Colorado in the foothills above the Laramie Plains.

He climbed out of his Polaris Ranger and yelled through the open door of his neighbor’s home to see if friend Jim Grant could poke his head out during Cowboy State Daily’s visit to the region this week.

Silence.

Grant, a famous author who writes his thriller Jack Reacher novels under the pen name Lee Child, didn’t answer. Only painters were around.

Andrew Grant, Jim’s younger brother, is in the process of taking over the writing of the Jack Reacher series. Andrew and his novelist wife Tasha Alexander also have a home on the preserve and are supportive of efforts to fight Rail Tie.

Alexander writes historical mystery fiction novels and gained notoriety for her Lady Emily series.

“If you need to borrow a cup of Chivas Regal, you can come next door,” said Davis of his neighbors in the preserve.

Walking along Grant’s front porch that overlooks the Laramie Plains, the 345-volt Ault-Craig transmission lines can be spotted on the horizon several miles in the distance.

The lines represent a cash register for their owner, the Western Area Power Administration (WAPA).

WAPA is a Western United States power marketing administration with the U.S. Department of Energy that markets hydroelectric power from federal dams operated by the Bureau of Reclamation and other agencies. It’s what Rail Tie’s owners want to connect their wind farm project into.

Grant’s home is about 6 miles south of U.S. Highway 287 in southeastern Albany County near where Spanish energy firm Repsol wants to start building concrete footings next spring for more than 100 wind turbines for the 504-megawatt development.

The bumpy path along Cherokee Park Road to the Fish Creek Ranch Preserve where Davis and his notable neighbors live is difficult to navigate with herds of pronghorn that can sometimes wander onto the road that traverses across the sagebrush landscape of the arid highlands at an elevation of 8,000 feet.

It’s another mile or two along cratered and dusty roads climbing through forests of evergreens and sagebrush growing alongside each other to reach the nearly two-decade-old rustic cabin that 72-year-old Davis and his wife, Susie built when they started to think about retiring.