This story is the third in a series on the solar power standoff in Williamsport, Ohio, ABC News reports.
WILLIAMSPORT, Ohio — Chris Weaver rose from his chair in the audience and looked at the mayor across the country house.
“I’m here to ask you to resign,” said Weaver, a journeyman carpenter, who spoke with gruff authority.
Mayor John Elliott, dressed in a camouflage baseball cap and blue tank top, stood to answer.
“It’s not going to happen,” Elliott said.
Elliott earned this rebuke by writing a letter to state officials urging them to support the Chipmunk solar project, which would be located north of the village. He did so last winter when opposition to solar power was just beginning to emerge and it was not yet clear that all local officials, except Elliott, would either oppose the project or remain silent.
“Your letter to support the solar farm, when the majority of Williamsport citizens oppose it, makes you an embarrassment to your position,” Weaver said. “Time to hang up buddy.”
Left: At the June 6 Williamsport Village Council meeting, Mayor John Elliott responds to resident Chris Weaver. Right: Weaver demands Elliott resign over support for solar energy. Credit: Dan Gearino
Instead of arguing, Elliott moved on to the next person who wanted to speak. Weaver sat down. The tension eased.
This scene from a village council meeting in June helps explain why opponents of three solar projects proposed in Pickaway County, Ohio, can say they have the support of nearly every local elected official. It shows how a dedicated group of local people dominated the debate by assembling district, village and township meetings and voicing their displeasure if officials did not comply.
The overriding emotion is fear, whether it’s fear of solar projects – or fear of upsetting people who oppose the projects.
And the local struggle has broad implications. The world needs to increase its reliance on renewable energy sources, an essential part of avoiding the most devastating effects of climate change. Local opposition shows some of the disconnect between global needs and the concerns of some people who don’t want to live next to wind farms and solar projects.
Showing up in Force to Say ‘No’ to Solar
On a Tuesday afternoon in August, about 20 people donned matching white T-shirts emblazoned with the message: “NO INDUSTRIAL SOLAR ELECTRONICS ON FARMLAND” and packed into their county government offices in Circleville, a short drive from Williamsport. On the same subject : Renewable energy OK, but not too close to home.
They were there because a reporter was coming to talk to the county commissioners, and they wanted to observe.
By the time I arrived, they were spilling onto the porch of the renovated house that serves as the commissioner’s offices. I slipped between them and said hello, including Weaver, and went into the narrow waiting room outside the conference room.
The commissioners do not have the authority to approve or reject the three pending solar projects (Chipmunk, Circleville and Scioto Farms), but their opinion is a major factor for the state office that has the authority, the Ohio Power Siting Board. The board is likely to make decisions on the cases later this year or in the first half of next year.
I asked the people next to me if they had any suggestions on what to ask the trustees.
“No solar power,” said one woman, which wasn’t really a question.
A member of the county staff opened the heavy door to the meeting room and the visitors filed in, taking nearly every seat. The three commissioners took their seats behind a raised wooden table at the front of the room and showed no signs of being surprised or disturbed by the large crowd.
They agreed to talk to me, but only if I interviewed them together. Since most of the board was present, this was a public meeting under Ohio law, so the public was welcome.
Weaver sat in the front row, a few feet from me, smiling and chatting with the people around him.
I remained standing and leaned against the commissioner’s desk, like a lawyer addressing a panel of judges.
“So if I’m a solar developer, is the message, ‘Just stay out of Pickaway County?’” I asked.
“I would say that’s probably the message that’s been sent, yes,” said Jay Wippel, the board’s president and its longest-serving member, first elected in 2006. He’s also the only one of the three up for re-election in November.
Commissioners govern a county of about 60,000 that is increasingly suburban, with much of the growth coming from people and businesses wanting to be near Columbus, which is about a 40-minute drive from Circleville.
Wippel is a farmer who lives a few miles north of the proposed Chipmunk project, the largest of the solar proposals.
He said he had been approached at least five times about leasing part of his farmland to solar power producers, and had turned down the opportunity because he wanted to preserve the rural character of the area.
I asked what it was like to face pressure from solar opponents.
“It’s part of the job; we represent the people,” Wippel said. “They are all good people concerned about the areas they live in.”
Weaver and the rest of the audience watched, occasionally nodding and whispering.
‘Nothing but the Birds’
Weaver sees the Chipmunk project as a threat to the quiet retirement he envisions in the near future. This may interest you : Scientists fabricate novel electrical component to improve stability of solar cells. He has become something of an enforcer for the anti-solar side, showing up at meetings ready to speak his mind, as he did with the mayor of Williamsport.
I interviewed him and his wife, Bobbi, at their kitchen table last spring. Their one-story home on Justus Road has beige siding and white siding, as well as an in-ground pool. They built a house in the early 1990s and raised their four children there. They are used to the view of farm fields to the horizon.
The Chipmunk project would cover about 2,700 football fields, including an area across the street and northeast of the Weavers’ home, about 100 yards from their property. What worries them the most is that one of the electrical substations of the project will be in sight.
“I’m a little pissed off about all this,” Chris said.
They fear the possibility that the substation, an enclosed space filled with electrical equipment, will be a source of constant hum. To explain this concern, Chris held out his phone and played audio from his visit to a solar project in southern Ohio, recorded near a substation. The noise was like the hum of a distant hair dryer.
We walked through their yard. Chris mentioned that it was his and Bobbi’s wedding anniversary. I asked him how old he was and he laughed.
“We had fun in high school, so make it count,” he said.
Near the edge of the front yard, we stopped and Bobbi asked me to note the noise, or lack thereof.
“You hear nothing but the birds,” she said.
Chris said he has no problem with his neighbors who have signed leases, including Mark Schein, who lives two miles away. He reserves most of the criticism for the developer, EDF Renewables, a company he thinks overstates the benefits and downplays the risks of solar power. (EDF disagrees and says that anyone who wants more information should review the project application.)
One of the few local people Weaver singles out for criticism is Elliott, the mayor of Williamsport. As Weaver sees it, Elliott was easily swayed by solar developers and is now afraid to say he was duped.
Elliott, a semi-retired worker, did not respond to requests for an interview.
Constituents’ Concerns: Health, Safety and Welfare
Commissioners, at least in our conversation, maintained that they want to preserve the rural look and feel of the county and think that a large-scale solar development would detract from that. And they said they wanted to be sympathetic to the concerns expressed by voters.
They have already passed a resolution opposing the Chipmunk project. They said the project “will not promote the general health, safety and welfare of the residents of Pickaway County.”
The resolution does not cite any specific health and safety concerns. However, the state file includes letters from other officials that help fill out this picture.
Gary Cameron, the county’s emergency manager, wrote a letter summarizing the health concerns he heard from residents. It reads like a list of issues presented on anti-solar message boards, including discussion of the potential for cadmium, which is present in some solar panels, to be dangerous to human health.
Cameron wrote that solar projects could lead to “the creation of a dangerous ‘super fund’ site resulting in a disease/death pattern.”
Asked about the letter, Cameron said in an email that there is uncertainty about the extent to which solar panels contain hazardous materials and that it is his office’s job to be aware of the risks. His office is “concerned that retired solar panels, particularly broken solar panels, will accumulate at these sites and generate hazardous waste,” he said.
He said it’s reasonable for emergency managers and the public to have concerns, given that large solar projects don’t have a long track record in the United States.
“We know that community perceptions of health or safety risks should not be ignored,” he said.
The story of high risks goes beyond evidence from leading energy researchers or government data. For example, North Carolina State University’s Clean Energy Technology Center released a 2017 report on health and safety issues related to solar energy, which found that “the rapid emergence of large-scale solar power has created fertile ground for myths and half-truths about the impact on the health of this technology, which can lead to unnecessary fear and conflict.”
The report goes through the concerns and evaluates their validity. Among them is the fear that cadmium in some solar panels could be harmful. The report detailed why “the small amount of cadmium in these panels does not pose a health or safety risk,” citing research from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
From Solar Support to Solar Pushback
Commissioners haven’t always opposed solar. I asked them what had changed.
A little history: Two years ago, they negotiated an agreement with the developer of the 200-megawatt Atlanta Farms solar project, the first large-scale solar array proposed entirely within county boundaries. The agreement pre-paid taxes from the developer, giving local schools and governments an initial payment of $6 million and an annual payment of $1.7 million. It was a lot of money for a rural county and was praised by commissioners at the time.
But now Wippel opposes solar, arguing that the Atlanta farm project was a “completely different set of circumstances.”
The state had to approve Atlanta Farms, so the local role was limited to dealing with tax issues, he said. The project will start construction soon.
In the time since the deal with Atlanta Farms, two big things have changed, he said.
First, the solar industry has been getting leases for ever-larger projects, which has sparked pushback from residents. For example, the Chipmunk project is twice the size of the Atlanta farm.
Second, a state law passed in 2021 gives local governments much more power to block wind and solar projects that they didn’t have before.
For projects already in the works, including three in Pickaway County, local governments do not have veto power. But the Power Sitting Board gives more weight to local public opinion in those cases, and the new law gives local officials two votes on the board. The county board and local municipality may each appoint one member to sit on the board to help decide cases within their jurisdiction. The two votes, out of nine on the board, fall far short of a majority, but give local officials a bigger voice than before.
Commissioner Harold “Champ” Henson, a farmer, said he sees financial benefits to solar development, but one of the key factors for him is that the local governments and school districts that would benefit most from solar tax revenue are not making pressure on officials to support projects.
Most notable in this group is the Westfall Local School District, which would receive about half of the taxes from the Chipmunk project. Neither the school board nor the administration has taken a position on the issue because they are facing pressure from the same people who are lobbying the county commissioners. (The school superintendent did not respond to requests for interviews or comment.)
His larger point is that opponents of the project organized and convinced many of their neighbors, while supporters of the project did not. As an elected official, he thinks he should listen to what his constituents tell him.
After half an hour, my time was up and I thanked the trustees for agreeing to meet.
The crowd applauded, which was a sign that the officials had stayed sufficiently on message.
Dan Gearino
Clean Energy Reporter, Midwest, National Environment Reporting Network
Dan Gearino covers the Midwestern United States as part of ICN’s National Environmental Reporting Network. His coverage is on the business side of the clean energy transition and he writes ICN’s Inside Clean Energy newsletter. He joined ICN in 2018 after nine years at The Columbus Dispatch, where he covered energy affairs. Before that, he was involved in politics and business in Iowa and New Hampshire. He grew up in Warren County, Iowa, south of Des Moines, and lives in Columbus, Ohio.
Fortunately, selling a home with solar panels isn’t as difficult as many people think – you just need to understand the details of what buyers want and be aware of the potential challenges. In many cases, solar panels on your home actually increase the value of your home and make it more attractive to buyers.
Does living next to a solar farm decrease property value?
McGarr’s studies found no consistent negative impact on residential property values attributable to nearby solar farms.
What are the risks of living near a solar farm? Living next to a solar farm can have some drawbacks, including disruption of local habitat, reduced farmland resulting in poor views, and potential electromagnetic waves from solar panels. Although no energy source is perfect, solar energy is known as the safest source of energy.
Do solar farms bring down property values?
It’s a common misconception that ground-mounted solar farms reduce the value of nearby properties. An examination of property values in states across the United States shows that large solar arrays often have no measurable impact on neighboring property values, and in some cases can even have a positive effect.
Why are people against solar farms?
They worry that solar farms release chemicals into the ground or that the production of solar panels is bad for the environment, but both of these arguments are false. Solar panels are made of aluminum, glass and sand that does not enter the earth and the production is mostly clean.
Do solar panels decrease neighbors property values?
A recently published study from the University of Rhode Island (URI) found that solar facilities reduce property values for nearby properties.
What is the downside of solar farms?
In particular, solar power plants can cause significant habitat degradation. To produce solar energy on an industrial scale, you need a huge amount of land. Building solar farms usually means displacing large numbers of mammals, birds, insects and other wildlife.
Do solar panels decrease neighbors property values?
A recently published study from the University of Rhode Island (URI) found that solar facilities reduce property values for nearby properties.
Do solar panels make it harder to sell house?
According to a recent Zillow report, homes with solar panels sell for an average of 4.1% more than comparable homes without solar across the US. A study by Berkeley Lab also found that homes with solar panels tend to sell faster than those without.
Do solar panels reduce property values?
How do solar panels increase home value? The energy savings provided by solar panels represent better value for your home. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) found that every dollar saved on energy through solar increases the value of a home by $20. That’s a 20-to-1 return on investment.
Do solar panels hurt neighbors property values?
Installing solar panels in your home not only helps reduce ongoing monthly utility bills; can potentially increase a home’s value by up to 4.1% more than comparable homes without solar panels, according to a recent solar study by Zillow â or an additional $9,274 for the median US home.
What are the negative effects of a solar farm?
Environmental Impacts The clearing and use of large areas of land for solar energy installations can negatively impact native vegetation and wildlife in many ways, including habitat loss; interference with rainfall and drainage; or direct contact causing injury or death.
Why are people against solar farms?
They worry that solar farms release chemicals into the ground or that the production of solar panels is bad for the environment, but both of these arguments are false. Solar panels are made of aluminum, glass and sand that does not enter the earth and the production is mostly clean.
Do solar farms contaminate the soil?
Finally, most solar farms are really safe to operate. However, potentially toxic heavy metals and silicone byproducts are used in these projects. Damaged units or weather can release these pollutants into the environment. As such, consider taking soil samples to monitor for potential contaminants.
Are solar farms harmful to wildlife?
So what actually happens with residential and commercial solar, do solar panels actually harm wildlife? Rest assured, your residential solar system will not harm the environment. Residential solar panels do not harm wildlife when properly installed.
Do solar panel farms give off radiation?
Do solar panels emit EMF radiation? Although solar panels emit EMF radiation, it is quite small and probably not dangerous. The real problem is that a solar panel system, or photovoltaic system, creates dirty electricity that ends up radiating EMF radiation into the home.
How toxic is the production of solar panels? The act of producing one ton of polysilicon leads to three to four tons of silicon tetrachloride waste. In fact, solar power produces 300 times more toxic waste per unit of energy than nuclear power, according to Environmental Progress, a Berkeley, California-based nonprofit that supports the expanded use of nuclear power.
What are the negative effects of solar farms?
Environmental Impacts The clearing and use of large areas of land for solar energy installations can negatively impact native vegetation and wildlife in many ways, including habitat loss; interference with rainfall and drainage; or direct contact causing injury or death.
What is the downside of solar farms?
In particular, solar power plants can cause significant habitat degradation. To produce solar energy on an industrial scale, you need a huge amount of land. Building solar farms usually means displacing large numbers of mammals, birds, insects and other wildlife.
Why are people against solar farms?
They worry that solar farms release chemicals into the ground or that the production of solar panels is bad for the environment, but both of these arguments are false. Solar panels are made of aluminum, glass and sand that does not enter the earth and the production is mostly clean.
What are the negative consequences of solar?
The potential environmental impacts associated with solar energy—through land use and habitat loss, water use, and the use of hazardous materials in production—can vary widely depending on the technology, which includes two broad categories: photovoltaic (PV) solar cells or concentrated solar thermal power plants. (CSP).
Are solar farms safe in residential areas?
The local habitat is disturbed â Although solar energy is known for its minimal impact on the environment, solar farms are at risk of damaging the soil. Residential and commercial solar panels are often installed on rooftops causing minimal disruption to their surroundings.
How much noise does a solar farm make?
At a distance of 30 feet, the sound is about 65 decibels – or roughly equivalent to the sound level of a conversation. At 500 feet, it’s completely silent. Also, the noise produced by the solar plant occurs only when the equipment is in use.
Are solar farms hazardous?
Hazardous waste testing of solar panels on the market has shown that different types of solar panels have different metals present in the semiconductor and solder. Some of these metals, such as lead and cadmium, are harmful to human health and the environment at high levels.
Are solar farms hazardous?
Hazardous waste testing of solar panels on the market has shown that different types of solar panels have different metals present in the semiconductor and solder. Some of these metals, such as lead and cadmium, are harmful to human health and the environment at high levels.
What are the dangers of a solar farm?
Solar farms share similar environmental risks as rooftop solar panels, for example hail, freeze-thaw and wind damage. However, they are exposed to additional losses such as frost, foundation failure and significant displacement due to variation in soil moisture or flooding.
Do solar farms contaminate the soil?
Finally, most solar farms are really safe to operate. However, potentially toxic heavy metals and silicone byproducts are used in these projects. Damaged units or weather can release these pollutants into the environment. As such, consider taking soil samples to monitor for potential contaminants.
Do solar farms leak toxic chemicals?
Solar panels often contain lead, cadmium and other toxic chemicals that cannot be removed without breaking the entire panel.
What are 10 disadvantages of solar energy?
10 disadvantages of solar panels
- High upfront costs. …
- The size of the system depends on your available space. …
- Sunny weather is required for best performance. …
- The production of solar panels can harm the environment. …
- Low energy conversion rate. …
- It cannot be used at night. …
- The solar panels are fixed in place where they are installed.
What are the disadvantages of solar energy? On the other hand, the key disadvantages of solar energy include that it doesn’t work for every roof, it’s not ideal if you’re about to move, the initial cost can be expensive, savings can be low if your electricity bills are low, and finding a local installer can be difficult.
What is the biggest problem with solar energy?
One of the biggest problems with solar energy technology is that energy is only created while the sun is shining. This means that night and cloudy days can interrupt the supply.
Why solar energy is not popular?
However, problems with solar energy, i.e. high cost and inconsistent availability, have prevented it from becoming a more widely used energy source. Solar power accounts for less than 0.5% of all electricity generated in North America, even though there are vast swaths of the continent where the sun shines constantly.
Why is solar energy not popular? The available electricity grid infrastructure is built to operate with consistent levels of energy production and these grids may not be able to cope with the inconsistency of solar energy. Another factor that reduces the competitiveness of solar energy is how often electricity is generated; also known as capacity factor.
What is the biggest problem with solar energy?
One of the biggest problems with solar energy technology is that energy is only created while the sun is shining. This means that night and cloudy days can interrupt the supply.