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CASPER, Wyo. — Natrona County commissioners are weighing legal options against the developers of the long-delayed Dinosolar project, citing deep frustration over requests to downsize the facility and extend construction deadlines.
In Tuesday’s work session, officials argued the inactive 2,000-acre project west of Bar Nunn has already triggered financial headaches for the Natrona County Fire District and local municipalities, prompting the board to seek legal counsel on whether to enforce the project’s expiring conditional use permit.
On Tuesday, commissioners reviewed a notice from the Industrial Siting Council regarding Dinosolar’s request to downsize and extend the deadline to begin construction. They said the project’s original conditional use permit with the county expires this year. The project was originally supposed to have broken ground by April 2024.
“This is the project that put the Natrona County Fire Department in the financial situation it was in with the ordering of the trucks that they didn’t have the funds to cover,” Commissioner Casey Coates said, noting that the city of Mills has also expended funds in anticipation of the development.
Commissioner Dave North echoed concerns about the solar farm’s community impact and its potential to bottleneck the Town of Bar Nunn’s western growth boundary. Commissioner Peter Nicolaysen agreed that while developers need certainty, the county must also enforce its timelines.
“Conditional use permits, you know, while we should give people the certainty to develop their projects once they have them, I think that it should mean something when we say X number of years,” Nicolaysen said, adding this extension pushes the envelope.
The board unanimously agreed to seek legal counsel regarding its options during the ensuing executive session.
Prior to that discussion, the board unanimously approved two letters supporting regional federal funding requests: one for the Town of Evansville’s new police operations building, and another for the City of Casper’s application for disaster supplemental funding to rehabilitate the North Platte Sanitary Sewer Interceptor.
Nicolaysen said he had drafted edits to the letters to protect the county from potential liability.
“What people present to us for the chairman’s signature and for our consideration, we don’t have to sign off on it when we’re not comfortable with factual statements,” Nicolaysen told the board. “I think that we can be supportive without being forced to make factual statements for which we don’t have a lot of basis.”
County Clerk Tracy Good also approached the board to secure early verbal approval for about $28,000 to hire a temporary election worker to assist the county from mid-June through November.
“I’m asking for that money to be pre-approved before the budget hearings,” Good told the board, seeking reassurance that the expense wouldn’t be slashed during the upcoming budget cycle.
Commissioners gave their support for the request.
In other county business during the work session, the commission:
Managing Editor More by Klark Byrd
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