An avid Oneida Eye reader and researcher came across the following article published on CourtHouseNews.com on March 10, 2014 which may be related to the ‘ACF, LLC’ demand letter to OSGC that we reported on yesterday.
The lawsuit referenced in the article seems to be a bunk prank, but if claims regarding contract details are true it may be all the evidence anyone needs to realize that Oneida Seven Generations Corp. has been intellectually and morally bankrupt for years and therefore should have been dissolved long ago.
Oneida Eye happens to think the lawsuit in question is the former, though we do not discount any testimony to the latter.
A Wisconsin tribe’s decision to kill a waste-to-energy project on tribal lands cost the contractor hired to run the plant more than $250 million in lost profits, the contractor claims in court.
ACF Leasing, ACF Services, and Generation Clean Fuels sued Green Bay Renewable Energy (GBRE), [OSGC], and the Oneida Tribe of Indians of Wisconsin, in Cook County Court.
ACF Leasing and the Oneida Tribe entered into a $22.2 million contract “that involved the leasing of three liquefaction machines by GBRE from ACF Leasing for use in a plastics to oil energy project[,]” ACF says in the complaint.
…GBRE originally won a permit to build the waste-to-energy plant in Green Bay, but the permit was revoked after the City Council found the company was not truthful about its plans[.]
The company then planned to build the plant on tribal lands, until members voted to stop its construction.
The contract allegedly provided for GBRE to pay 110 percent of ACF’s expenses on the project, and pay ACF 49 percent of GBRE’s net income for the project’s duration.
But six months after signing the agreement, Oneida’s tribal council voted to dissolve [OSGC].
“As a direct result of the December 15, 2013 vote to dissolve OSGC, the Wisconsin Bank & Trust withdrew the application for the guarantee it had submitted to the BIA…and withdrew its commitment to the project. The BIA, in turn, abandoned the project,” ACF says.
ACF claims the cancellation of the contract cost it $250 million in lost profits from the project, plus lease payments and costs.
First, to our knowledge the OSGC/Oneida Energy, Inc./GBRE, LLC project in Green Bay was supposed to be a Municipal Solid Waste gasification incinerator, not a ‘plastics to oil’ facility as was later proposed for the Tower Foods building in the Oneida Business Park/Water Circle Place area on the Oneida reservation. Perhaps the ‘plastics to oil’ component was part of OSGC/GBRE’s larger plan for the Green Bay location (1230 Hurlbut St.), but there doesn’t seem to be any record of those plans being presented to the public nor ever being approved by the City of Green Bay in any way, so why would an agreement have been entered into with ACF, GCF, or whomever for such an endeavor and when was it signed?
The article says that General Tribal Council voted to dissolve OSGC “six months” after the agreement was signed, which would mean the agreement was signed in June 2013, the month after GTC’s May 5, 2013 vote prohibiting OSGC from building any ‘plastics-to-oil’ gasification incinerators on the Oneida reservation, and four months after the petition to prohibit any kind of commercial incinerator was submitted to the Tribal Secretary’s office on February 11, 2013. Does that mean that, despite GTC’s vote, OSGC thought it had a loophole and could still allow other companies to build incinerators on the Oneida reservation in buildings owned by OSGC?
Second, the contract details spelled out seem awfully generous toward ACF/Arland Clean Fuels, don’t they?
Third, if such an agreement was entered into by GBRE of which OSGC is a shareholder, doesn’t General Tribal Council deserve to know who all of the other GBRE shareholders are? Oneida Eye contends this is exactly why GTC must demand access to all disclosure reports of OSGC, its subsidiaries, and all other Tribally-chartered corporations and their partnerships: So GTC can know who is getting the Tribe into these messes.
Lastly, did the Oneida Business Committe actually waiver sovereign immunity in a way that would place the Oneida Tribe in such a profoundly precarious legal and finacial situation? If so, wouldn’t a potential $250 million judgment be exactly the kind of situation where General Tribal Council would have to exercise its Constitutional Article IV powers to “veto any sale, disposition, lease or encumbrances of tribal lands, assets, interests in lands, or other tribal assets of the tribe”?
[Oh, and we almost forgot to add: Melting plastics and combusting the oil is in no way, shape or form a source of “green energy,” so the Court House News article’s headline is misleading at best.]
Oneida Eye views this lawsuit as nonsense and a pathetic attempt to scare GTC into reversing its vote to dissolve OSGC, and as a sad effort to frighten other tribes & municipalities which are wising up about unproven, dangerous, and money-pit ‘waste-to-energy’ projects from defending themselves against corporate vultures.
For example:
See also these seemingly related court cases:
- Wisconsin Western District Court Case No. 3:2014CV31, JWR, Inc. & David J. Wolf vs. Eric Decator & Generation Clean Fuels, LLC, (list of filed documents)
Then there’s this case:
- Brown Co. Case No. 2014SC509, Davis & Kuelthau SC vs. Arland Clean Fuels, LLC
- Documents in Brown Co. Case No. 2014SC509
The Complaint in that small claims case says:
…The plaintiff provided professional services to the defendant at agreed upon prices.
…The defendant breached the agreement by failing to make payments when due.
…As of the date of this complaint, there remains an outstanding balance due to the plaintiff for the professional services described above, in the amount of $4,505.50, which the defendant has failed to pay despite repeated demands.
And, of course, a decision in this case is still pending:
