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The latest iteration of Rockbridge County’s Comprehensive Plan was approved Monday by the Board of Supervisors. During a public hearing, 10 citizens directed most of their comments to not wanting utility-scale solar facilities on agricultural lands.
Jan Lowry expressed dismay that the Planning Commission, in recommending adoption of the plan recently, didn’t acknowledge that a proposed resolution to limit utility-scale solar facilities to industrial properties had been put forward by the Rockbridge Taxpayers Alliance.
“Limit industrial-scale solar facilities to industrial zones and stop granting special exceptions,” Michelle Johnson urged the supervisors. She made note of what she described as a “lack of curiosity” on the part of government officials about who’s behind the applications for the solar arrays. “Shell companies are hiding behind these applications,” she asserted, claiming also that the facilities “are not full of benign materials.”
Allen Stout described a solar facility on a farm in Fairfield as “atrocious – a terrible scar on that community.” Because of an upcoming proposal for a solar facility near where he lives off of U.S. 11, north of Lexington, he said he’s been studying the issue. “I’ve been in the community, talked to a lot of people – nothing but negative feelings with regard to these solar power plants,” he said. “President Trump even made a mention last week about solar, about renewable energy. Said it was a scam on America … Fossil fuels are not going away. … Solar technology is not delivering what solar people say it is.”
Utility-scale solar facilities, said Cynthia Kator, “take away from the purpose of the Comprehensive Plan, which is [to] preserve the county’s rural character.” Alluding to a solar plant in Rockbridge Baths, she said, “It looks like an industrial site. What the community is saying is we really need to specifically think hard and fast about rezoning for solar and wind complexes into a … special zoning kind of area.”
As a resident of Mackeys Lane, Kator said, “We had to fight to make sure my neighbor didn’t put in a solar complex right at my front door … We bought that piece of property thinking we were coming into a rural area … Let’s not sell farmers out from under their land. Please, protect our rural communities.”
Supervisor Dan Lyons said he disagreed that allowing solar facilities on agricultural lands amounted to “selling out farmers.” Applications are coming from farmers who need the extra income, he said. “We need to protect the farmland but we don’t own the farmland. We want to help farmers use their land as they want if it doesn’t have negative impacts [on their neighbors].”
Supervisor Leslie Ayers said she didn’t think rezoning land to industrial for solar facilities would be a good idea. “It would seem to me zoning to industrial would have very bad, unintended consequences.”
Zoning Administrator Chris Slaydon pointed out that very little land in the county, maybe .4 percent, was zoned for industrial, which is intended for the most intensive uses. Solar, by comparison, is considered a more passive use, he said. He observed that areas without public water and sewer are not usually zoned industrial.
A motion by Jay Lewis, seconded by Lyons, to approve the Comprehensive Plan passed by a 5-0 vote.
