You’ll undoubtedly be shocked to learn that Erie County has fewer sunny days than most other places.
My buddy, Google, says Union City gets around 60 to 63 sunny days annually … so roughly one day a week if averaged across a year.
Not knowing when to stop — which indicates artificial intelligence is indeed taking on human characteristics — Google continued: “Like much of the broader Great Lakes and Northwest Pennsylvania region, it is one of the gloomier areas in the United States, with more cloudy and overcast days throughout the year.”
Uh, yeah … I could have done without that last part, but thanks.
So you can imagine the local puzzlement in recent years as major solar projects have been proposed across our region.
It’s akin to being the shortest, most uncoordinated person in your gym class, and with the first pick to play basketball, one of the team captains looks at you and says, “I’ll take Steve.” (Note: This is a hypothetical situation, for demonstration purposes only.)
The initial surprise of being courted by solar companies, however, turned quickly into a heated, divisive contest between those who would and wouldn’t financially benefit from this unexpected use of “private property” — who were oftentimes neighbors and at the very least inhabitants of the same small community.
Those against transforming open fields into a sea of gleaming glass and metal scoured their municipal land-use regulations looking for arguments to thwart the development, while those for the solar arrays typically relied on the tried-and-true argument of being able to use one’s property for one’s benefit.
As you can imagine, there’s a lot of gray on both sides of that equation, which zoning tries to accommodate by things like setback and screening requirements.
I didn’t attend any of the most contentious meetings … I didn’t have a dog in the fight, and I’d attended enough public meetings in my earlier newspaper career to fulfill my lifetime requirement … but from what I understand they were full of drama.
The resulting strained relationships will likely echo for years, and it’s not over, with solar projects proposed for the Corry area that are following the same refrain.
What made it particularly fascinating in the accounts I heard was the strange bedfellows brought about by the potential infusion of significant long-term dollars to property owners. The Republican Party in recent decades has made huge inroads into rural America, gains unfortunately and inexplicably, I believe, consolidated by Donald Trump’s particular strain of lying, and hypocritical, corrupt populism. A majority of people living in rural areas have bought in and sing from the same hymnal (irony intended).
Part of that hymnal is Trump’s black-and-white contention — as usual based on misinformation — that renewable energy sources like solar and wind are bad, while earth-exploiting sources like coal, gas and oil are good.
But it’s interesting how when it came to the amount of money solar companies were able to dangle, some property owners embraced the opportunity. How could they not when offered a lottery ticket that turns fallow or marginally profitable land into the equivalent of a pension plan for their families, oftentimes after decades or even generations of busting their knuckles?
My newspaper background — even some 30 years in the rearview mirror — still calls on me to consider all sides of things. As such, I’ve tried to put myself in the position of solar-adjacent property owners. I lived in rural Warren County for nearly four decades, and tried to imagine my reaction if the fields within view of my home were being considered for solar arrays.
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I’m probably an outlier, but the pragmatist in me says we’re well past the time we should have been aggressively transforming our country to renewables. The digging and burning of coal, fracking for natural gas, and relying on oil, while perhaps necessary to this point, is not where our future resides. I think most of us know it, even if we’re unwilling to admit it.
When I drive by solar fields, like the huge, newly installed array just north of Union City along Route 8, I find it amazing. It’s the sun! We’re using human ingenuity and our abundance of land to create electricity from the sun, slowing our descent into a climate-change hellscape.
As I recently drove Interstate 86 across New York’s Southern Tier, I was similarly transfixed by the handful of giant wind turbines along the route, turning slowly, creating energy from the wind!
It was not lost on me that a giant “TRUMP” sign that had been displayed for years next to a contracting business along I-86 disappeared sometime in the past year.
Now erected across that field are rows of gleaming solar panels, generating clean power while putting money in the property owner’s pocket.
Seems like a win-win.
Steve Bishop spent 15 years as a newspaper reporter, editor and columnist, and 22 years with the Corry Higher Education Council before retiring. He now writes from Union City and moonlights in community development.

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