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Today's Paper
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Discussions between Xcel Energy and St. Croix County on a joint development agreement concerning construction of a new solar farm in western Wisconsin have broken down, with Xcel attorneys formally leaving the negotiating table last month.
The Ten Mile Creek project calls for 300 megawatts to be generated on solar panels spread across 2,980 acres of leased land in St. Croix County. The project also includes building and routing a new transmission line to the existing grid connections at Xcel’s Allen S. King Power Plant in Oak Park Heights.
St. Croix County Administrator Ken Witt announced Xcel’s intentions at the County Board of Supervisors meeting on June 2.
“Their response is, ‘No JDA, we plan to file at the end of the year with the (state Public Service Commission) and maybe we’ll talk again after that.’ So that’s the status,” Witt said of the letter sent on behalf of Xcel Energy. “It takes two to negotiate, so there’s not really any action that you can take to force them to.”
On the part of Xcel Energy, company officials told the Pioneer Press that county officials had stopped communicating with Xcel’s team for months, only to submit a substantially different set of conditions.
“While the county has suggested that Xcel Energy chose to end negotiations, the reality is that discussions had ended seven months prior after the county stopped meeting or communicating with us,” Xcel spokesperson Chris Ouellette said. “When a revised draft was eventually shared, it differed materially from prior versions and included significant new provisions that had not been discussed. At that point, we determined it was not productive to continue discussions based on that version of the document.”
Talks between the county and Xcel regarding the project have been ongoing since at least January 2025, when Xcel staff presented to the St. Croix County Board of Supervisors.
The project has been controversial for many landowners, who have voiced concerns about the potential property value impacts of a large-scale solar array close to their homes, as well as possible impacts to local wildlife and road infrastructure during construction, among other concerns. The panels would exist on parcels of private property, where Xcel officials would enter 35-year leasing contracts.
Theoretically, a joint development agreement would provide contractual protections between the county and a developer on a proposed project.
From the county’s perspective, the draft agreement needed to address potential local impacts such as emergency response planning, road use and repair, drainage, decommissioning of the solar farm, financial assurances, setbacks, buffering, lighting, wildlife protections and agricultural considerations.
Attorneys representing Xcel — Lisa Agrimonti and Haley Waller Pitts of the Minneapolis firm Fredrikson & Byron — said in a letter to St. Croix County legal representatives dated May 20 that the county’s most recent proposal went “well beyond the original intent and scope of those discussions,” and would impose additional burdens on Xcel Energy, as well as the county.
They continued that the terms could “conflict with Public Service Commission of Wisconsin and engineering requirements.”
“For example, although we have discussed this issue in detail already, the proposed draft would require Xcel Energy — a fully regulated public utility — to post financial assurance with the county related to decommissioning,” the attorneys wrote. “This new cost is in excess of PSCW requirements and outside of the county’s authority.”
They wrote that the county also added more than 40 new paragraphs plus revisions to other sections “without any discussion with Xcel Energy and their legal team.”
The Xcel legal representatives ended the letter by writing that it would be “more appropriate to recommence discussions after a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity application is filed with the PSCW, to the extent the parties see value in doing so at that time.”
On Wednesday, Ouellette reiterated that after the application is filed, the project details will be fully defined, and the county will have had the chance to review the contents.
Xcel would be open to future discussions at that time, she said.
The Ten Mile Creek project has drawn intense local interest. Back at the January 2025 meeting, residents filled the St. Croix County board room and hallways, bringing up concerns regarding the loss of agricultural land, possible impacts to property values, wildlife and local infrastructure, among other issues.
A month later, attorney Rebecca Roeker of Milwaukee-based Attolles Law presented to the county board regarding the merits of pursuing a joint development agreement. The county reviewed such a proposal for months, and in November hired Attolles Law to negotiate those terms. Soon after, Roeker and Xcel met for about four hours discussing potential terms of the joint development agreement.
Also in November, Xcel Energy announced plans to pare down the proposal to its current size. Originally, the Ten Mile Creek proposal included up to 650 megawatts of solar panel production on 5,000 acres spread across some 60 square miles of St. Croix County.
In February, the St. Croix County Community Development Committee reviewed the updated joint development agreement completed after the negotiations between Roeker and Xcel’s legal team, but the committee declined to recommend approval. Based on requests from the public, the committee said additional changes needed to be made to the agreement, and negotiations with Xcel should continue.
In April, Roeker incorporated those additional changes in the joint development agreement, and sent an updated proposal to Xcel Energy. But in May, Xcel’s legal team responded that they would be walking away from negotiations.
On June 11, the Community Development Committee recommended creating a resolution that acknowledges that Xcel terminated negotiations, while also stating that St. Croix County remains willing to restart talks if Xcel decides to join them. The county board is scheduled to consider such a resolution in July.
Xcel Energy representatives have said that they expect to file an application with the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin this year.
“At this time, we do not anticipate any impact to the overall project timeline,” Ouellette said.
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