Negotiations with utility-scale developer Longview Solar will pick up again on Tuesday during a Worcester County Commissioners public hearing to review plans to develop the Heron Solar Farm west of Berlin and the Seabeach Solar project east of Snow Hill.
The commissioners rejected the proposal at its June 21 meeting because of a tax abatement request.
Don Hawkins, who lives across from the 190-acre proposed Heron Site located south of Libertytown Road, has watched the property sit idle on the real estate market for a number of years and is concerned what might lie ahead.
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These lands will be unfit for farming when the solar panels are removed. The panels are monitored remotely and can take months to repair breaks. Decommissioning is based on ownership so if the company is leasing the land, the decommissioning bond will be a fraction of what it should be. These company's are LLC's that will not stick around when its time to pay for the clean up.
ReplyDeleteHaving miles of brownfields in Worcester County will degrade everyone's property.
What will make them unfit for farming?
ReplyDeletePanels encase carcinogens and chemicals. The developers contract allows for remote monitoring that means broken panels take months to repair. Ground maintenance contracts shows minimal mowing and if that is not often enough, they will apply pesticides. Please view the UMES project in Somerset County. The weeds are 2 feet higher than the panels after just 5 years. Very little, if any, electricity is being harvested. I think the company has already gone bankrupt after it received more than a half a billion dollars of taxpayer money. Please go to the MD Public Service Commission and view the decommissioning plans when the land is leased and then compare it to the projects that are developer owned. Maryland taxpayers will be paying the cost to dispose of the panels and the site will likely be a brownfield.
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