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A week after Connecticut Siting Council signaled it will approve a controversial $11 million solar array along scenic Nod Road, Simsbury filed a challenge in hopes of reversing the council’s opinion before a vote later this year.
At the same time, the owner of a disc golf course at the property repeated his warning that his business will have to close if Lodestar Energy’s proposal goes forward.
And in a three-page letter this week, state Rep. Melissa Osborne, D-Simsbury, called on the council to use its judgment and to respect Simsbury’s residents by turning down Lodestar.
“Local voices are especially important to that judgment. Statewide siting authority exists to prevent legitimate statewide needs from being defeated solely by parochial interests,” she wrote “It should not operate as a presumption that municipal knowledge, community identity, local planning, and the lived experience of residents are subordinate in every case.”
Osborne’s letter goes to the heart of an argument that’s being raised in a growing number of communities in recent years. With the explosion of development of solar farms and affordable housing, suburbs and rural towns are balking at state initiatives — the Siting Council and the 8-30g law — that they say strips away all local powers.
The Siting Council has operated for more than half a century with the mission of balancing the need for public utility services statewide against the need to protect any individual community’s environmental, scenic and historic assets. Much of that boils down to overriding local tendencies toward NIMBYism.
But in recent years, several towns have been complaining that the scales seemed tipped against them. East Windsor, unwilling home to by far the most solar farms of any Connecticut town, sued in April after the council approved a large-scale expansion of one.
Osborne called on the council to give full weight to its obligation to protect legitimate local interests.
“The statute does not contemplate that renewable-energy development should automatically prevail wherever a developer has obtained site control and demonstrated technical feasibility,” she wrote. “It requires judgment concerning whether the public benefits of a particular project justify the particular harm that will be imposed at the proposed location.”
In its July newsletter, the town’s Sustainability Committee acknowledged that the project would provide some benefits.
“The Nod Road Solar project would occupy 19 acres of former country club land and produce enough electricity to power 450 homes. It would generate about $50,000 in tax revenue annually to the town and be part of the Statewide Shared Clean Energy Facility program through Eversource that offers reduced rates for electricity to low- and moderate-income residents,” it said.
Solar panels atop businesses, homes and at the Tobacco Valley solar farm produce about 25% of all the electricity used in town, and the Nod Road project would boost that to 30%, it said.
In a 31-page report last week, the Siting Council said it had determined Lodestar met state fire, safety, air quality and other standards, and identified no reasons to reject the proposal. The town on Thursday filed a memo claiming Lodestar’s application was incomplete and that the company failed to follow through on promises to provide further information.
Tower Ridge Disc Golf, which leases the property where Lodestar intends to put more than 10,000 solar panels, said it will be out of business if the council approves the plan.
“In the likelihood the CT Siting Council votes yes on November 9th, it will leave us with no other option than to close the course,” the company posted on Facebook last week.
In her letter, Osborne laid out a case against the project and said this isn’t a case of NIMBYism.
“The proposed Nod Road location occupies a particularly sensitive place within Simsbury’s landscape. The site sits between the Farmington River Valley and Talcott Mountain State Park, near the nationally recognized Heublein Tower, the New England National Scenic Trail, and the Farmington River, which is designated as a National Wild and Scenic River,” she wrote.
“These are not incidental or interchangeable scenic resources. The historic, scenic, and rural character of Simsbury is at the root of the community’s identity,” she wrote. “That character is not simply an aesthetic preference. It is an intrinsic driver of Simsbury’s economy and an essential part of the community residents experience as home.”
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