It sounds like a match made in heaven: Schools have high energy bills and roofs that sit there doing nothing all day; solar companies have photovoltaic panels that could be installed on those roofs to generate clean energy and savings for the school. Easy, right?
Mix in multi-million dollar contracts, a political consultant and lobbyist, and years of delays, and you’ve got a disaster instead of a shiny, happy partnership.
In 2008, the San Ysidro School District in California signed a contract with Manzana Energy (also known as EcoBusiness) to build solar panels on school sites and sell the electricity generated by the panels. According to a 2008 Union-Tribune article, the district agreed to buy “all the power the panels generate over 25 years for a flat fee of $18.9 million. Manzana will pay $16 million to buy and install the panels.”
But here we are, four years later, and not a single panel can be seen on the roofs of any school buildings. Fed up, the San Ysidro School District terminated its contract with the company in late 2011. Now, Manzana Energy is suing the school district for $17 million, possibly more.
Am I the only one that’s confused?
Manzana Energy says unanticipated problems, like drainage issues and roof structures that couldn’t support the panels, have prevented it from making progress. Oh, did I mention Manzana is owned and operated by Art Castañares, former political consultant and lobbyist? The plot thickens. According to the San Diego Reader, Castañares believes Manzana/Ecobusiness has a strong suit because they were not terminated according to contract language and because, Castañares says, “We have a good law firm that has successfully sued a lot of public agencies.” Castañares added, “We begged them to arbitrate; it makes me sick to have to do this to a school district.”
Of course the School District maintains that by failing to place a single panel in four years, Manzana was already in violation of the contract. In fact, by Castañares’ own admission, the company hasn’t managed to get a single solar-energy project up and running in that time.
The sad thing is, as this case moves forward, it will once again be the students and teachers that lose. The school district has struggled with massive budget cuts over the past few years. Now, they’ll need to allocate valuable funds for legal counsel, rather than text books, play ground equipment or a pay increase for their hard-working teachers.
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