North Liberty solar farm sees opposition in county ordinance changes - South Bend Tribune

North Liberty solar farm sees opposition in county ordinance changes

Large solar farm plans in North Liberty stir opposition and perhaps tighter county rules
Joseph Dits

Some North Liberty area residents are raising opposition to a project that could plant solar farms on 2,300 to 2,500 acres of farmland, pitting one view of environmental protection against another.

Scott Remer of Hexagon Energy sees this as a way to let exhausted farm fields rest, replenished by native and pollinator-friendly plants, while the long rows of solar panels quietly do their work across 35- to 40-year leases that the company has secured from the property owners.

The 300 megawatt collection of panels — enough to power 50,000 homes — would feed into the nearby Dumont electrical substation. Because it’s one of the most powerful substations in the U.S., Remer, senior director of development, said that makes for a low-cost opportunity for Hexagon to simply “plug and play.”

But opponents see a misnomer in “solar farm.” They see a loss of food-producing land — often corn or soybeans — that would be replaced by glass-and-metal industrial products.

They argue that it would disrupt the rural vistas that drew them to live there, along with a series of claims that it could interfere with wildlife.

Among them, Amanda Mitchell on Riley Road started a website and effort called Rethink Industrial Solar in St. Joseph County after Hexagon recently asked to run a transmission line through her property. Her surprise and negative reaction came after Hexagon had already spent a few years reaching out to and establishing leases with specific sites where it wanted to erect solar panels.

Initially, neighbors cited that the company planned solar fields directly south of Potato Creek State Park along Indiana 4. But a more recent map from Hexagon shows nothing along Indiana 4. All of the scattered parcels with Hexagon leases are south of there.

The proposed changes come to the county’s Area Plan Commission at 3:30 p.m. June 18 for a public hearing, then the commissions’ vote on a recommendation. Ultimately, it would come to the county council for a final vote on July 9.

The complaints spurred St. Joseph County officials to propose changes to retighten zoning ordinances that, in 2020, had been relaxed to actually encourage such large-scale solar operations on farmland.

What's in the proposed changes

County council member Amy Drake, who’s pushing the bill, feels the residents’ concerns. She said the current regulations are so lax that “solar can grow out of control.” She said neighbors are right to be nervous about the “unknowns” of what large-scale solar operations could do to farmland.

“I — and others on the council — are pushing for a special use requirement for solar,” Drake said, “so that we have an opportunity to vote and consider each solar farm that goes on ag land — and so that we can make sure that we don't end up with an overgrowth of solar and too much of a loss of our agricultural land.”

As the ordinance is written now, solar farms can set up without ever coming to the county council for a hearing.

The proposed changes would require a special use permit for agriculturally zoned land — thus, a council review and vote.

The changes also would set requirements for landscaping between the solar panels that benefit pollinating insects and birds, along with clarifying the agreement for how the solar panels will be removed once the land leases end decades later.

The changes would require that the solar panels are set back at least 250 feet from a “non-participating” neighbor’s home or 150 feet from that neighbor’s property line, whichever is greater. Plus, there would have to be a visual buffer of evergreen trees when solar panels are next to a subdivision with more than 10 plots.

Remer said such changes are all good, but the company feels as if the county is doing a “bait and switch” after he’s spent years communicating with county departments on the project.

“We’re struggling with how to adapt,” he said.

He also noted that the company is willing to exclude certain areas and plant bushes and other vegetation as visual buffers. He said Hexagon also has funding and plans for taking down the panels when their time expires.

“Our goal is to make this as non-impactful as possible,” he said.

Going for a solar moratorium?

Now Drake wants to get even stricter. She suggests that the setback requirement should grow to 500 feet. County planning staff report that, statewide, other counties typically require setbacks of 100 to 300 feet.

If and when the proposed changes pass, Drake and council member Randy Figg, whose district includes North Liberty, are urging Area Plan Commission to also put forth a county moratorium on solar farms. Drake said she feels more encouraged as she senses more residents in the opposition. Opponents nearly filled the council chambers at Tuesday’s meeting, and just prior to that, several had lined the street in front the County-City Building with signs of “Stop Solar Farms” and “Save Our Farmland.”

In central Indiana, Boone County officials passed such a solar-farm moratorium this year. LaPorte County officials are drafting one. And Marshall County officials are considering one.

St. Joseph County already has two large-scale solar operations: the Honeysuckle Solar Farm on about 1,000 acres near New Carlisle and Indiana Michigan Power’s 210-acre solar farm in Granger.

Drake said she’s heard there could be a few other solar farms in the works in the county. A moratorium, she said, would be a way to put a pause on solar to explore what the impacts really are.

But she also questions solar as a reliable replacement for other forms of energy, the government subsidies that support solar and whether solar panels can be recycled at their life’s end.

Linda Matzat and her husband treasure their property where rare wildflowers grow in 40 acres of native forest that they preserve and in yet more acres of native prairie and ecosystems that they’d planted.

They, too, firmly said no when Hexagon approached them for access. She admits that they are in the “bottom of the learning curve” with solar farms, but they are bothered by online claims that they haven’t been able to investigate, such as one that says waterfowl can be harmed if they dive toward solar panels, mistaking them for water.

Amanda Richman, who lives close to Lakeville, stood among protesters Tuesday and said there should be a moratorium, “because people need time to investigate the issue, and farmers need time to investigate what they’re getting into.”

Another man, giving only his name Richard, who lives three miles from the potential solar operations, said he didn’t want to lose the pastoral landscape that he chose to live among. But he also said, “I’m here to listen to both sides.”

The council didn’t allow public comment Tuesday on the solar ordinance, as President Mark Root said there’d be time for that in the upcoming meetings.

What next for Hexagon's project?

Remer told The Tribune that he’s quietly heard frustrations from farmers with whom he’s secured leases. He said they feel as though neighbors are interfering with their right to earn income from their land.

And he counters the impression that he was operating in secret to establish the leases. He’d sent letters to residents where Hexagon wanted access but didn’t reach out to other neighbors, he said, because the process didn’t require it.

He also said Hexagon isn’t a large, “faceless corporation.” Based in Charlottesville, Va., it started with four employees and now has about 30, working primarily in Indiana, Illinois, Arkansas, Mississippi and Virginia. Remer himself is raising a young family.

The project near North Liberty needs time before it can actually happen. Remer said that Hexagon has applied to hook into the electrical grid with the organization PJM, which coordinates the movement of electricity in a grid from New Jersey and Washington, D.C., to North Carolina to South Bend and Chicago.

By the end of next year, he said, Hexagon may hear the decision from PJM about whether its bid for access to the grid is feasible.

If it does move ahead, Remer said, the electricity will pour into the grid like water feeding into a water main. So, some of the power could end up being used locally or further down the line.

The county’s planning staff reports that they’d studied Indiana’s 92 counties and found 53 that have set regulations for large-scale or commercial solar operations. Of those, staff report, 26% allow large-scale operations in agricultural districts without a public hearing process, like St. Joseph County, and 59% require a special or conditional use permit, as the county now proposes.

When the county council passed revisions to the ordinance in 2020, they'd reportedly billed it as making this “one of the best places in the nation to develop solar.”

South Bend Tribune reporter Joseph Dits can be reached at 574-235-6158 or jdits@sbtinfo.com.