TENNIS ANYONE? | Central theme of solar farm debate: 'We love this place' - Bristol Herald Courier

TENNIS ANYONE? | Central theme of solar farm debate: ‘We love this place’
Joe Tennis

Beyond all the debate over whether a solar farm should be located around Wyndale in Washington County, Virginia, a central theme emerged during a five-hour meeting of the Washington County Planning Commission on June 24 in Abingdon, Virginia.

And that is: “We love this place.”

Which was really a heartwarming consensus and spoke well for true pride in place.

This is a great place to live, if you can figure out how to make a living, a friend once told me.

That has certainly been true for the 30 years that I have called Washington County home.

And it was clear that it was the same feeling for the farmers and homeowners who waxed poetic about the scenic hills, valleys, creeks, roaming deer and beef cattle paradise shouldered between Whitetop Mountain on the sunrise side and the flank of Clinch Mountain on the west.

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Speakers from as far as Sandy Level, Virginia, and Jonesborough, Tennessee, came to speak on solar energy and what could happen if you build a large-scale solar farm.

Most people paused to say, “You’ve got a beautiful county here.”

No matter who you are, just about everybody can agree Washington County is a beautiful place.

So, be proud of this 566-square-mile slice of the Old Dominion.

Here is home to three forks of the Holston River, two wildlife management areas, a state forest, a national forest, a national recreation area – and 1,600 acres of South Holston Lake.

Washington County can also make a claim to being home to more miles of rail-to-trail projects than any other county in Virginia, counting the Virginia Creeper Trail, Mendota Trail and the Salt Trail.

People come on vacation. They come back again and again. And then they move here.

And, with this being the Fourth of July week, all the 1776 celebration stuff should not be lost when remembering how Virginia’s largest county southwest of Roanoke started.

Washington branched off from the now-extinct Fincastle County to form an area that once stretched to what is now the Kentucky border and south into what is now Bristol, Tennessee.

It was named in honor of a big, brave man named George Washington, then a general in the American Revolution, still a few years before he became the country’s first president.

And is it beautiful?

Yes, for sure, absolutely.

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