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On 14 November 2016, The Mind Unleashed published an article reporting that a Minnesota man had been arrested and thrown in jail for six months simply because he had put up a windmill on his own (private) property: The story was one of the many social media panics that periodically appear maintaining that an overreaching government was slowly but surely making all off the grid living illegal with gradually more invasive statutes and building codes. However, stories of this type are almost never as clear-cut as they seem to be on first glance. According to rumors of the same type, a man was jailed simply for collecting rainwater (when the individual in fact was warned for years not to operate massive illegal reservoirs); another warned a judge ruled homegrown vegetables were unlawful (the claim actually involved codes prohibiting non-decorative gardens in front yards only); a similar outcry ensued earlier in 2016 when an inaccurate 2014 blog post recirculated and led readers to believe that Michigan's Right-to-Farm Act had been repealed (in actuality, the bill was updated to codify voluntary guidelines for keeping livestock). In all cases, disputes between homeowners and jurisdictions or associations were misconstrued or misrepresented as sweeping instances of legal precedent, outlawing seemingly benign activities like farming or harvesting environmental resources such as water or wind. Most of the time, the claims hinged on single cases not applicable to others' ability to garden, produce food, or collect water and wind energy. The windmill story was far more complex than an individual carted off to jail without warning for innocently attempting to generate energy himself. A December 2010 article chronicled the early stages of what became a years-long dispute. That piece reported that Nygard was aware that his desire to install a windmill stood at odds with what local authorities wanted, adding that he pressed ahead regardless: The piece describing him as a a stay-at-home dad who's trying to start a business selling home wind turbines, and noted that the windmills stood about 22 feet tall [with] blades [] 9 feet in diameter: Nygard's applied for and was denied permission to build a two-story windmill on his property in 2010. A stop work order was issued in November of that year, and Nygard pledged to fight the decision. Officials at the time expressed concern that allowing the large structure would inspire other potential nuisances, and a planning expert noted that a lack of consistency in home turbines had the potential to create further problems. Nygard was still fighting the windmill battle in October 2014, though it appeared he had made little legal progress. By that point, multiple parties had filed lawsuits over the dispute, and the city tried to prohibit the construction of wind turbines in the interim: On 3 October 2015, Jay Nygard was found to be in contempt of court and sentenced to six months in jail for failure to comply with an order to remove the turbine's concrete footing. The family maintains that it would have threatened the home's foundation, despite having had many months in 2015 during which they could perform the ordered work. However, by 6 October 2015, the concrete had been removed, and Nygard was released after only a few days in jail: The Nygards pledged to continue their windmill pursuit as of October 2015: In November 2015, Hennepin County District Court denied the Nygards' request for a new trial [PDF]. Although Nygard was briefly jailed in October 2015, it was not for the crime of self-sustainability. By that point Nygard, Orono, and several other residents had spent many years and thousands of dollars fighting over the windmill. Nygard indicated refusal to comply with the order numerous times over the years, and was jailed only after months of failure to comply with an order to remove the base of the illegal structure from his property (and years of fighting the initial denied application to install it). While the family maintained that removing the windmill's base was impossible, the task was accomplished over a weekend in October 2015 during Nygard's brief stay in jail.
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