Two Connecticut towns at the center of growing opposition of solar farms take case to Lamont

EAST WINDSOR — Amanda Berube finally got to show Gov. Ned Lamont the solar farm across from her home — the site of a sudden explosion and fire and the source of loud machinery humming that annoys her family when it is in operation.

The governor took a 90-minute tour Tuesday of Connecticut’s two-town capital of solar arrays, dipping back and forth between East Windsor and Ellington. In these two historic farming communities, energy companies have been buying up land and changing the lives, landscape and lifestyles of Connecticut River Valley residents such as Berube, a young mother, and John Hoffman, a corn, hay and soybean farmer.

“This is my neighborhood here,” Berube told Lamont, pointing across the street to her white house on the corner, then to the right. Behind the wire fence is a solar farm, about 100 yards from one of the landmark tobacco-curing barns. 

“Oh, so you were next to the fire?” Lamont asked.

“The explosion came from one of the poles here, the second one I believe,” Berube said, pointing. “It just kind of wiped out all of these trees. … It kind of carried its way toward the road and the fire department got here just in time.” She also played Lamont a recording of the loud humming that has been a daily occurrence for nearly three years.

A busload of 20 local activists, advocates and planners stopped near the governor’s black SUV at East Road and Middle Road. It was the first stop on a tour arranged by East Windsor First Selectman Jason Bowsza, Ellington First Selectman Laurie Burstein and state Reps. Jaime Foster and Carol Hall.

“Governor, we’re hoping we can get your help on a few of these bills,” said Hall, a Republican member of the legislative Public Safety Committee who represents Enfield and East Windsor.

The event was an attempt to persuade Lamont and the General Assembly to do something to stop what residents call a proliferation of solar arrays in the two towns that they say far exceeds their responsibility to support solar energy at a time of rising electric costs.

In the bus, Matt Hart, executive director of the Capitol Region Council of Governments, who helped narrate the tour, said about 30% of the operational solar in the entire state is located in East Windsor. Total sited solar in the town is 170 megawatts, enough electricity to power about 34,000 homes.

“Ten percent of East Windsor’s total acreage has been or is in the process of being approved for grid-scale solar. And very important, I think, 38% of that acreage is prime farmland,” he said.   

The motorcade passed by hundreds of acres of shiny aluminum-framed solar collectors next to hundreds more acres of active farmland ready for tilling. Other fields are targeted for more solar developments, which could keep them from cultivation for decades more, until the solar equipment becomes outdated.

The final stop on the tour was at Earthlight, a solar installation company in Ellington that advocates say is a good neighbor, employing 150 local people who put solar collection panels on residential and commercial buildings with a 10- to 13-year payback, now that federal tax credits have expired.

“The takeaway here is the economies are all working against our local businesses that are solar and our local farmland preservation initiatives,” said Foster, adding that solar fields are not contributing to the local economy.

In an interview at the end of the tour, Berube said her family built their home before the solar array went in. They appreciated the peace and quiet, and were surrounded by farmland, she said. 

And now “the sound from the utility, from sun up to sun down, and it’s extremely loud and it just permeates through our home,” Berube said. “Multiple explosions, multiple electrical events at the facility and then the fire in the past year. It’s been very difficult.” There are plans for another array on hundreds more acres of prime farmland in her area, she said. 

For Hoffman, the local farmer, told Lamont, “We’re getting close to 50% of the state’s solar is in four towns. So we really need your support.” 

Hoffman also works for Oakridge Dairy in Ellington, the state’s largest dairy farm, which has lost hundreds of acres of land near its processing plant. Hoffman said another solar array is proposed for a 400-acre field near Berube’s house that could feed a dairy cow for a full year. If the plan goes through, it would force the dairy — which is less than a mile away — to seek food for its cows elsewhere, as far as Cromwell, Rocky Hill or Stafford. 

“They’re going to go much farther to try to find enough feed,” said Hoffman, who pointed out that federally regulated milk prices don’t cover the high costs of production. 

Foster, a Democrat whose district includes East Windsor, Ellington and Vernon, said she expects a solar field safety bill that was recently approved at the committee level to go before the House for a vote, then the Senate. 

“We found a loophole that there is no plan for when there is an incident on a solar field,” Foster said. “If there’s a fire, who determines the point of safety? It certainly shouldn’t be just the developer, on their own, who gets to say, ‘Yep, it’s safe, I’m turning it back on.’ They obviously have a financial incentive to turn it back on.”

To help farmers, the state has been buying the development rights of farmland around the state, Lamont said. But Hoffman said that many of the state’s remaining dairy farms have already used that option.

Lamont said he wants to do something broader in the way of legislation aimed at protecting more than just a few towns from excessive solar farm development.

“What I can do statewide to make sure that this doesn’t happen again and make sure that any of these things not yet developed we can preserve?” Lamont said to about 25 people in the reception room at Earthlight.

“I’m trying to figure out how we can preserve the open space,” he said, and find incentives for energy firms to go to industrial and commercial areas for solar sites. 

New rules are needed addressing the sites for solar collectors, Lamont said. 

“We’re taking open space, we’re taking fields and we’re commercializing them, in this case, with solar. I think that’s going the wrong direction,” he said.  

“Look, I love clean renewable power that’s also affordable, but I also love open space, protecting open space, and I don’t think we have that balance right now,” Lamont said.