Letter in response to George Pataki's "No place for big solar on prime Adirondack farmlands"

By Rebekah Pierce, local farmer/freelance writer

I’m writing this letter in response to George Pataki’s contribution on May 4, 2025, in which he lambasted plans for what he refers to as “utility-scale solar” installations within the boundaries of Adirondack Park.

I am a freelance writer specializing in agriculture and food. I am also a farmer. I have a book on this very topic, titled “Agri-Energy: Growing Power, Growing Food” scheduled for publication later this fall. I was also born and raised in the Adirondacks (Lewis, NY), although I live a bit further north now, in West Chazy.

The letter struck a chord with me for a number of reasons. First, as I mentioned, I own a farm outside of the Adirondack Park. I would prefer to live closer to my family, most of whom still live in the Adirondacks, but do not, for several reasons.

The first reason is that land in the Adirondack Park is prohibitively expensive, especially for young people, and doubly so for farmers. Pataki admits in his letter that the Adirondack Park has very little farmland, and what does happen to be available is not affordable to young couples who do not have the generational wealth to support their investments. The land that is available is not the best for farming, either, which is why we’ve settled further north, in Clinton County.

I commend the work Mr. Pataki has done in protecting the environment and advocating for our rural economies. However, the letter struck me as incredibly tone-deaf for a number of reasons, which I’ll explain in this letter.

I urge everyone to read the original letter. But for those of you who did not have a chance to read it, Mr. Pataki implores us to reconsider solar installations within the Adirondack Park. I reread the letter several times, and the only valid reason I can see for this claim, as he cites in the article, is out of concerns over our viewsheds.

I cringed reading the article, especially when he mentions several times that he lives in Essex (and it is, in fact, mentioned as an additional note at the end of the piece). It is true that he has a residence here. However, calling him an Adirondack local is laughable. He and his wife own a multimillion dollar home in Essex, along with a 14-bedroom home in Putnam County. He was not born and raised here, nor did he spend most of his career here (he only purchased the Essex home in 2003).

That’s not to say that anybody who hasn’t lived their entire lives in an area is not entitled to an opinion. However, it does indicate to me that Mr. Pataki may not have an entirely crystal-clear view of the entire picture. He has blinders on to the full breadth of issues at play in the Adirondack Park, and those blinders look a lot like the guise of NIMBYism.

For those who aren’t familiar with the term, NIMBY stands for “not in my backyard.” Mr. Pataki mentions several times in his letter that he’s an advocate for renewable energy, going so far as to say, “While in my view these have an absolutely critical role to play in United States energy policy, I believe they constitute a very real danger to the continued existence of the park as we know it.”

My question to you, Mr. Pataki, is what exactly is it in the Park that you’re hoping to protect?

Is it the people? Adirondack employment rates have plummeted. We have our prisons, sure, but those are closing in droves. And there’s tourism. However, many of these jobs are seasonal or transitory, and not something residents can rely on year-round.

Young people are migrating away from the Park, due to higher costs of living compared to other rural areas coupled with high land costs and limited employment opportunities.

So, no. A ban on renewables within the Adirondack Park would not benefit its people, especially when you consider that solar projects like this one would directly benefit inhabitants by reducing energy costs.

This project in Essex is not, as Mr. Pataki notes, a “utility-scale” solar farm, but is instead a community solar project, which allows community members to “tap back” into the energy produced onsite to lower their monthly energy bills. Utility scale solar refers to projects that connect into the power grid and sell the electricity generated right back to the local utility, and produces 5-20 MW of power. These are much, much larger. With the exception of one location in Ticonderoga that’s right at the cusp of this size, at 5 MW, I am not aware of any utility sites within the Park.

The United States is the fifth-largest importer of electricity in the world. We get about 90% of our electricity from Canada. With recent tariffs, costs are going to skyrocket even higher than they already are. Why are we importing so much of what could be produced right here? The answer is the same as it is for the reason why we import so much food: it’s easier to let someone else deal with it.

It’s easier to outsource our energy production to other countries than to have to look at facilities in our own backyard. It’s easier to buy food from other places than to shop locally because we can’t be inconvenienced by having to get to know the people who produce the food in our communities.

In the discussion about people, we also need to think about the person who is leasing the land for the proposed solar farm. Given that this new site would be on fallow farmland, we can assume the person leasing it is a former farmer, or even just that the land was formerly used for agriculture.

If this site is not turned into solar, I have a strong feeling that the person who plans to lease it would not just throw up their hands, say, “Oh well,” and continue to sit on a parcel of land, allowing it to remain unused, for the next six decades or so. Likely, the land will instead be turned into a housing development, storage unit, or, dare I say it, yet another Dollar General. The likelihood of another farmer purchasing or leasing the land is very slim, and even so – the lease rates paid by solar companies are roughly ten times the price paid by even the highest-paying farmers.

Mr. Pataki, you say you are a proponent of renewable energy sources, but you don’t want them here.

So where, then? And what about the rest of us? What about the people living within the Park who don’t have the luxury of generational wealth? The people who don’t live in multimillion dollar homes and aren’t concerned about our “views,” but instead, of putting food on the table?

What about the dairy farmer who has been working twelve hours a day (at least) for his entire life, and now, at the age of 80, would finally like to retire? For whom, of course, that land is his only retirement savings?

Personally, I would prefer for that farmer to get the best possible price for his land, and he’s not going to get it unless he leases to a solar company.

The reason why this land is a “sitting duck,” as you refer to it, for solar developers is because nobody can afford to live in the Adirondack Park. And certainly, nobody can afford to farm the land that’s in the Adirondack Park.

Another concern you expressed in your letter had to do with wildlife. This, at least, is rooted in some logic. It’s true that the fences surrounding solar farms can inhibit passage of certain types of wildlife. However, they allow other types of wildlife to thrive, namely ground nesting birds whose habitats tend to be destroyed by agricultural machinery and housing development (the latter of which, naturally, also impedes wildlife corridors).

Not to mention, solar farms also provide valuable pollinator habitat when planted with the right seed mixes, something many companies now have a special focus on. Some studies have found that insect populations can as much as triple on solar sites, simply because the land is not being disturbed as it would be in a residential or conventionally farmed area.

Which leads me to my next point: just because a solar site is being built on farmland, that doesn’t mean it’s “prime” farmland.

Mr. Pataki, my hunch would be that you have not visited the proposed site of this Essex solar farm and conducted a soil test to see how “prime” that farmland actually is. I’m not arguing that there is anything wrong with the site – simply that, just by looking at a chunk of land, there is no way of knowing the quality of the soil or its projected productivity over time.

Much of the tillable land in the Adirondacks has been overfarmed to the point of reduced fertility, with erosion and runoff a major concern in the Champlain Valley at large. Conventional agriculture has not done the area any favors, and it’s time for us to reconsider the way we’ve always done business.

I’m assuming that you are not familiar with the concept of what, in my book, I refer to as “agri-energy.” The more commonly used terms are dual use solar, agrivoltaics, or solar grazing, each of which is slightly different, but has the same general connotation: farming under solar panels.

In this model, farmers like myself graze sheep, cattle, or other livestock, or grow crops. Many farmers produce hay or even honey beneath solar panels. This is something that is exploding in popularity around the country, helping farmers make a living while also benefiting renewable energy installations.

My husband and I are able to have a profitable farm solely because we graze our sheep under solar panels. We provide a valuable service to the solar company, because they do not have to rely on mechanical mowing (costly both in terms of fossil fuel consumption as well as in time) to keep vegetation down. We have access to land to feed our animals that we could not otherwise afford.

And as an added benefit, solar farms that are given the “agri-energy” treatment, in this way I described above, often have much healthier soil and higher levels of biodiversity than conventionally farmed areas. In addition to increased pollinator numbers, grazing significantly increases soil carbon storage (by up to 80%) and nutrient availability. It results in reduced erosion and run-off. Wildlife thrives here, with everything from woodchucks to rabbits to skylarks finding protection on solar farms.

I won’t argue with you that an unencumbered view of Lake Champlain and the Green Mountains would be the best possible scenario. The best possible scenario would be for us to return to “the good ole days,” when it was possible for people to make a living in the Adirondacks by running small farms, mom and pop shops, and seasonal businesses to cater to tourists. But those days are gone. If this land is not turned into solar, it will turn into something else – arguably, something that will not benefit the community or the environment nearly as much as a solar farm.

And do we really need another Dollar General?

Until you’re ready to foot the bill for struggling farmers, until you’re ready to put solar panels in your own backyard to supply your own energy needs (rather than relying on foreign oil or electricity imports), then a solar farm – ideally, a dual use one – presents the best possible solution to the problems we all share.

Photo at top by Adirondack Explorer reporter Mike Lynch.