Federal Funding Case Studies > Wyandotte, Michigan

Wyandotte, Michigan

Issue Overview
The City of Wyandotte, Michigan was founded upon industry and chemical companies located along the Detroit River.  Although manufacturing and industry jobs remain in this city of approximately 34,000 people, many of these original industrial sites are long vacant brownfields.  The City of Wyandotte and its public power entity Wyandotte Municipal Services seek to transform this industrial past into a showcase for clean energy innovation.     

Wyandotte is well underway with an innovative project to install 5 renewable wind energy turbines on a downtown brownfield site to power up to 5,000 homes and businesses. This project will demonstrate a first-in-the-nation application of urban brownfield windpower in a region seeking additional renewable resources and struggling with economic recession and unemployment.
Located at the sites of former BASF chemical company plants, this project will install five (5) wind turbines with up to 2 megawatts capacity each, for a total project of up to 10 megawatts of clean, renewable energy production capacity.  Wyandotte’s wind project will help the City become a leader under the State of Michigan’s new renewable portfolio standard law for all electric utilities.  

This visionary project is not without challenges.  The Wyandotte wind project is located downtown, within steps of City Hall and the main business district, which poses siting and engineering challenges.  The challenges of lingering brownfields contamination likewise make the project more complicated.  Moreover, this riverfront site is located within the Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge, an important migratory bird pathway under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.  A main challenge has been the financing of this approximately $10 million project for this small, struggling community.

Strategy and Result
After establishing a plan for how the proposed windpower project could best serve the local community and its energy needs, Wyandotte built a group of supportive stakeholders including the Michigan Governor’s office, their state representatives, the Michigan Public Service Commission, the Michigan Energy Department, local and state environmental groups, faith and community groups, and others. 

Wyandotte also worked closely with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and a variety of interested parties to make sure that the windpower project was designed and implemented in a way that would not threaten birds or other wildlife values.  USFWS and other key stakeholders became strong supporters of the project. 

Wyandotte approached its Michigan congressional delegation and the U.S. Department of Energy to pursue the idea.  Recognizing the value of this project, the Michigan congressional delegation succeeded in obtaining an earmark for $1,000,000 in fiscal year 2006, which supported wind tests, avian tests, design and engineering.  In fiscal year 2008, the Michigan delegation helped obtain an additional $1 million in congressionally earmarked funding to support the purchase of the wind turbines.  This money will be leveraged with $1.2 million in additional funding from the “Clean Renewable Energy Bond” program of the Internal Revenue Service and U.S. Department of Energy.  Wyandotte would not have been able to obtain the DOE funding in any other manner, as no standard federal programs provide such support for these types of projects.
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The tremendous success of this ongoing project has spurred Wyandotte to move forward on other green energy and green infrastructure initiatives.  The community is now underway to convert an old coal-fired utility boiler to a biomass unit, to convert public power utility vehicles to hybrids, to install high-tech solar energy technologies on local public buildings, and to put a large-scale green roof on the water utility building.  Wyandotte is seeking support from Congress with earmarks to leverage the public and private investment in these innovative projects.  Wyandotte’s efforts were featured on CBS News in a story about “Going Green Goes Mainstream” at www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/10/15/sunday/main2090006.shtml.