CA: Was Manure-to-Power Venture Just Bull? (Orange County felon W Patrick Moriarty back again)

As he sold investors on an improbable plan for turning Inland Empire cow manure into electricity, W. Patrick Moriarty had an answer for everything.

With a folksy delivery, the Orange County businessman promised cutting-edge technology, a respected engineering firm and tax-exempt financing to extract methane gas from mountains of manure and use it to generate enough power to light a small city.

"He told me categorically that we would get our money back with interest and that the project was good as gold," said Shmuel Erde, a Beverly Hills lender.

What Moriarty and his business partner, Wayne Stephens, didn't tell Erde and numerous others who altogether invested more than $10 million was that their company, Chino Organic Power Inc., had no licensed technology, no equipment, no permits — not even a guaranteed supply of manure.

Another thing Moriarty didn't tell Erde and the others was that he had gone to prison in the 1980s in what then-U.S. Atty. Robert C. Bonner called "the most significant corruption case in recent California history."

The roots of Chino Organic go back to 1989, when Stephens and a group of friends founded Chino Resource Recovery Inc. and set out to build a power plant fueled by cow manure. They, too, soon ran into legal troubles.

. . . Moriarty became Stephens' partner in a new firm, Chino Organic Power, with a far more ambitious business plan that called for more than $150 million in tax-exempt financing and a strategy for taking the company public, according to records and interviews.

An experimental, alternative energy source was now touted as an electric utility projected to generate 85 megawatts, enough for all the homes in Chino and Chino Hills, with power to spare.

It's California, the home of Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, and Dianne Feinstein. That's as close to a guaranteed source of manure as it gets.

Daily News of Los Angeles, January 9, 1987 (excerpts only)

Convicted political corrupter W. Patrick Moriarty testified Thursday that he gave $17,500 in laundered campaign contributions to the campaigns of six state Assembly candidates selected by Assembly Speaker Willie L. Brown Jr.

Moriarty, a former fireworks manufacturer now imprisoned for bribing public officials, said the names of the candidates and the amounts of the contributions were sent to him in a May 20, 1982, letter from former Democratic Assemblyman Bruce Young.

Young came to his office on May 21 to talk to Moriarty about the request, which he called "a big hit," Moriarty said. On May 26, Moriarty decided to make the contributions through an associate, who issued the checks for him and was reimbursed, Moriarty testified.

The candidates Moriarty identified as receiving laundered contributions are: Steve Peace, D-Chula Vista, $2,000; Rusty Arias, D-Los Banos, $3,000; Richard Polanco, D-Los Angeles, $1,500; Maxine Waters, D-Los Angeles, $1,000; and Charles Calderon, D-Montebello, $2,500.

Another candidate, Burt Margolin, D-Los Angeles, got a check from Moriarty's associate for $7,500, Moriarty testified, but returned the contribution when he learned its true source was Moriarty. Young later issued Margolin a check for $6,000, government prosecutors have charged, that was actually from Moriarty.

Young, 40, represented the Norwalk area from 1976 to 1984, when he retired from the Legislature to become a Sacramento lobbyist. He is accused of secretly taking money and political favors from Moriarty and two cable telvision companies while he was carrying bills favorable to them through the Assembly.

Moriarty pleaded guilty to seven counts of mail fraud and is currently serving a seven-year prison term. He has agreed to cooperate with the government's investigation into Young and others.

Our local electric utility here in Vermont, Washington Electric Cooperative, has opened a new landfill to methane power plant, and, miracle of miracles, it is proving to be the cheapest power they've got.

Of course, they aren't exactly a low cost operation. Their rates have to be among the highest in the country. But still, they seem to have a done the right thing with this plant.

http://www.washingtonco-op.com/news/Feb2006.pdf

So, power from cow manure isn't impossible. Just don't put a crook in charge of it.

Thanks! Interesting.

In California, the name Moriarty should have been familiar to most people from the 1980s. The prosecutions went on for a decade and there were literally thousands of articles outlining the political corruption. As I recall, about 10 others were convicted along with him. With billions of new dollars now flowing into new energy alternatives from California's latest environmental and global warming frenzy, I don't think its a coincidence that Moriarty was positioning himself in the business.

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