BYRON, N.Y. — A News10NBC investigation reveals how the race to build solar farms in Genesee County is dramatically transforming the rural landscape as part of the state’s efforts to meet its clean energy mandates.
The town of Byron, long known as a quiet rural community, is changing quickly and dramatically. Local leaders say they’ve had enough.
Trucks, backhoes and other heavy equipment are everywhere in Byron as developers lease farm fields to plant a different type of crop, solar arrays. Hundreds of workers have descended on the region, driving steel beams into the ground to support the thousands of solar panels being installed for the Excelsior Project. When completed, the project will cover 3,600 acres.
“You can’t see the countryside anymore,” said Byron resident Gayla Starowitz said.
Starowitz and her husband have lived in their house in Byron for 50 years. She says what has kept them here is the quiet isolation.
Brett Davidsen, News10NBC: “What has that peace been replaced with?
Starowitz: “A lot of trucks and dirt and noise and the view is pretty much gone.”
A bird’s-eye view shows how far the solar arrays stretch. Byron is not alone.
A second solar farm is also underway in Genesee County in nearby Elba and Oakfield. This one is permitted for 4,650 acres. A third one is under review in the town of Alabama and is projected to be about 1,200 acres.
Davidsen: “When you look out here, what do you see?
Matt Landers: “Sadness.”
Landers is the Genesee County manager.
“I have a hard time bringing myself to drive through here to see what was once beautiful farmland and countryside is now being overtaken by these solar projects. It’s kind of an apocalyptic view when you drive through here,” Landers said.
The appeal of Genesee County to investors is the flat, treeless terrain, willing landowners and the proximity to high voltage power lines. Landers says the towns were powerless to stop the projects. They’re all being overseen by the Office of Renewable Energy Siting (ORES) created by the state legislature to specifically speed up the review and permitting processes, essentially removing any local control.
“They can set aside any local laws, local moratoriums, local zoning. They can set it aside and put a site where they want to put it. And that’s what’s happened here,” Landers said.
The state says a lot of input is considered before a permit is granted.
“On the whole, we look at all the comments, all the feedback, all the impact that may be associated with the generation resource. And it’s our job, again via statute and the laws that we’re carrying out, to make sure we strike the best balance that we can,” Jessica Waldorf said.
Waldorf is the ORES chief of staff. She says consolidating the process at the state level ensures protections are built in.
“We’re in it to make sure we protect environmental resources and that we also make sure that we’re protecting, ultimately, the ratepayers that are going to be both paying for and benefiting from the resources that come through our process,” Waldorf said.
Clean energy advocates say the large solar projects are critical for creating much needed supply to the state’s aging power grid. Marguerite Wells of ACE NY says the state needs to build as fast as it can.
“We need to build as fast as we can and the fastest electrons we can bring online right now are solar and wind,” Wells said.
But will it mean lower energy bills?
“The honest truth is that nothing right now is going to make our bills go down. It’s how much can we prevent them from going up steeply,” Wells said.
The solar projects do provide financial benefits to towns and counties through tax agreements, job creation and a spike in local spending. But Landers says he’d gladly give all of that up. Genesee County is now spending money on public relations firms and outside legal counsel to try to slow the pace of future solar projects.
Starowitz says she fears it may be too late.
“We put our life here. We raised our family. We like it here. We liked our quietness. And I’m not sure how much longer we would want to stay with this,” Starowitz said.
There is a bill in the state Senate and Assembly that would give local municipalities the final say on if a renewable energy power plant can be sited there.
Click here to read the full bill
Those bills have not made it out of the energy committee.
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