When the powers-that-be at Silicon Ranch first laid eyes on a gorgeous and available 4,500-acre parcel of timberland in northern Baldwin County, they probably believed they’d found an ideal site to build a utility-scale solar farm.
The unzoned property is plenty big enough to accommodate the 2,000 acres of solar panels they want to install; it’s adjacent to an existing high-voltage transmission line and has good highway access; and it looks like it’s in the middle of nowhere. Check, check, and check.
But it’s not quite that simple. The proposed solar farm, whose explicit purpose is to offset the power needs of Meta’s new data center in Montgomery more than 100 miles away, has gotten locals’ hackles up.
Maybe the Silicon Ranch folks thought the residents of rural Stockton wouldn’t mind losing more than three square miles of woodland for a project that serves a mega-corporation. Or maybe they thought that such a small town wouldn’t have the political muscle to stir up much of a fuss.
If so: Bless them. In the three scant weeks that the public has known about the project, a community meeting has drawn hundreds of concerned citizens; an active anti-solar Facebook group has sprung up out of nowhere; and environmental nonprofits and politicians alike have weighed in.
The solar developers might not have realized that the county where they decided to plant a flag is in the midst of an identity crisis, a tug-of-war between economic development and small-town character. Overpriced pop-up subdivisions keep sprouting up here like so many sad daisies, gray rooftops overtaking our green pastures, bringing with them an army of gas stations, fast-food franchises, and anonymous beige shopping centers, all flashing LED signs at us.
The chainsaws and earth movers have been creeping north for a while, chewing up the landscape. Just a short jog up I-65 from the proposed solar site, the brand-new Novelis aluminum recycling and rolling plant has gobbled up its own sizable plot of land. There, at least, the environmental impacts have been counterbalanced by 1,000 new jobs, new roads, and plans for beefed-up emergency response readiness, even before its grand opening.
Clear-cutting more land is controversial enough down here, but wait! There’s more. The property that Silicon Ranch wants to build on is rich with creeks and wetlands that feed the Mobile-Tensaw Delta. In 2013, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers denied a different developer’s request for permits to build four recreational fishing lakes on the property, after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service cited “high-quality” wetlands and “high-quality habitat” on the land.
Lower Alabamians prize the ecological diversity of our delta, known as America’s Amazon, and we know how a watershed works. We’ve seen with our own eyes, time after time, how damaging it can be to start moving dirt around environmentally sensitive areas. Just this week, the Alabama Department of Environmental Management (ADEM) fined a developer $78,000 for dramatic runoff damage to Wolf Bay in the southern part of the county.
If, like Novelis, the solar site brought jobs or other clear benefits — heck, if it even contributed to the state’s overall energy capacity instead of merely offsetting the vampiric needs of Meta — then Silicon Ranch might have had an opening with which to bring locals around to their side. The $5 billion Novelis facility has left a huge scar on the landscape, sure, but it’s also fueling the revitalization of downtown Bay Minette. The good people who live and work in our county seat are getting a Big Mike’s steakhouse and a hotel with an indoor pool, so – upsides.
At best, the solar farm would bring a handful of short-term jobs and an as-yet-unknown number of tax dollars. Given the heat this project has generated, I’m willing to bet that a lot of locals would be fine with leaving that money on the table.
If the Silicon Ranch executives are hoping that this will all blow over, I wouldn’t count on it. It’s an election year, and politics are adding fuel to the fire.
Last week, Gov. Kay Ivey signed into law a controversial environmental regulation bill that prohibits the state from enacting stricter environmental regulations than the federal government. In an impressive stroke of bad timing, the Baldwin County legislative delegation voted overwhelmingly for that bill just as the Stockton story began to gain traction, with only Sen. Vivian Davis Figures, D-Mobile, and Rep. Jennifer Fidler, R-Silverhill, voting nay. (Two others didn’t vote.) Now, politicians who want to come out against the Stockton project, like Sen. Chris Elliott, R-Josephine, find themselves stained by that “yea” vote.
Good old reliable Alabama politics, mucking up best-laid plans.
When news first broke about the Stockton solar plan, Silicon Ranch hastily posted a page on their website that attempted to assuage citizens’ environmental concerns. But amid the pastoral photos and conciliatory FAQs, the language is heavily peppered with references to their rights as private property owners. The tone is friendly enough, but there’s an edge to it.
It’s true that the “Stop Solar” advocates don’t have many tools with which to combat the almighty rights of property owners on unzoned land. But they’re cranking up political pressure, and local leaders are feeling it. Even though the Baldwin County Commission hasn’t yet received any applications related to the project, they’ve already engaged an outside engineering firm to create a wider net of accountability. Between the EDA, U.S. Fish & Wildlife, ADEM, and the County Commission, environmental reviews — all heavily scrutinized by a concerned public — may yet stymie the project.
Not being from around here, it’s entirely possible that the Nashville-based Silicon Ranch executives didn’t know any of this when they found that gorgeous 4,500-acre piece of timberland in northern Baldwin County.
But now they do. And as my mother would say, they’re up to their eyeballs in alligators.
Catherine Dorrough is a writer and graphic designer in Fairhope, Alabama. Her wide-ranging work has appeared in The Guardian, Mobile Bay magazine, and the Journal of Commerce. In 2024, she was nominated for UCLA Extension’s Allegra Johnson Literary Prize. She is a longtime patron of the Fairhope Public Library and a member of the Friends of the Fairhope Library, a grassroots nonprofit that supports the library through fundraising and volunteer service.
Alabama Reflector is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.

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