Solar Array Construction and its Impact on Nature

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Seven months ago, I had a visit from a friend. He works for the big private school out behind us as part of their gardens and grounds crew.  This school owns a lot of property, including the land and homes to our south and the forest at the bottom of our hill on the east side.  He wanted to know if I had heard what the school planned to do with that forest, and when I said no, he filled me in.  The school planned to clear-cut the forest and put in a large solar array which would supply 25% of their electrical needs.  This forest has been a beautiful background to my lovely gardens for the 18 years we have lived here!  It is lovely at all seasons and its potential demise made me sick at heart.

At his suggestion, I called the town hall, saying I had heard a rumor about this. Our town clerk called me back after checking with the Planning Department, and she let me know it was not a rumor.   This was the beginning of many months of trying to stop this travesty from happening.

Fighting the Good Fight

Bob and I took a walk down to the school’s campus and made a visit to their Physical Plant. I wanted the powers-that-be to know that we had found out about this (not from them, which would have been a courtesy).  We then went to the town hall and talked to the town planner, the building inspector, and anyone else that would talk to us.  I invited the planner, his assistant, and our environmental officer over to see the impact this behemoth would have on the wildlife corridor and on our property value.  We live way up atop a huge hill, and there would be no way to screen this three acre solar array from our view.  We also pored over the wetlands maps and shook our heads.  I let everyone know that those maps were wrong!  Turns out the last time they were updated was back in the ‘70’s.

The Town Planner and his staff visited several times. We were told that we would be extremely impacted, but nothing could be done because the school owned the property.  My response to that was, isn’t there a law protecting residential neighborhoods against industrial solar arrays?  And, if not, shouldn’t there be?

I wrote a letter to the school’s Headmaster on September 21 and invited her to our property so she could see what our impact would be from their project.

There is nothing ‘green’ about destroying a forest to put in a solar array…

The Headmaster is an English lady and she brought her right-hand fellow with her about ten days later. They strolled through all my gardens and she just loved all of them.  They came inside and toured the downstairs, too, all the while remarking how lovely it all was.  I served them a tea at the dining room table, and our neighbors, Mary and Chris joined us.

The gentleman from the school gave us a whole presentation about reducing their carbon footprint, being sustainable, and going ‘green.’  Their plan was to take down all the trees.  My argument was that taking down acres of forest was certainly not going to help our environment in any way!  Solar panels will never supply shade on a hot day.  They will never clean the air.  They will never provide shelter for small animals and birds.  We begged them to use some other land, their rooftops, maybe solar carports on campus…but, they were determined.  They thanked us for our hospitality and they left.

Seeking Legal Council

We hired an environmental engineer to come take a look and we walked the woods with him. He told us that it sure looked like wetlands to him and that the best thing for us to do would be to hire a lawyer.  He mentioned that the town hall would probably be more receptive to someone local, so we called our friend and neighbor, Tim Fitzgerald.  Within two days, he let us know what our problem was.

In our town, there were no laws for large solar arrays, which is why the prep school in question felt they could just forge ahead.  Tim went to other documents in the planning office and used the verbage from the five pages of regulations for wind turbines and communication towers to make a text amendment to protect Windsor neighborhoods from these industrial arrays.  We submitted it to the town planner’s office in late October and it was on the agenda for the December 12 meeting.

Accepting the Inevitable

In the end, it became evident that we would not be able to win against this large institution. There was no vote in December, and with the January meeting looming, we received an invitation from the headmaster to meet in her office on campus.  When we arrived, she was very nice and said that they knew that, although unintentionally, they had wounded us deeply.  Buying our property was mentioned.  The following morning, their real estate agent arrived with their proposal.  They offered us much more than we could have expected on the current market, offered their gardens and grounds crew to move my roses and dig new gardens for them within a 25 mile radius, and half the closing costs.  This offer is sight-unseen and as-is.  They made us an offer we couldn’t refuse, and we accepted.

Starting Over

And so, after almost 18 years here at our beautiful home in Windsor, we have found a new home in Suffield, Connecticut. We will be moving in April and there will be more stories to tell.  But, there is a moral to this story.  Everyone should call their town planner and make sure that there are regulations in effect to protect residential neighborhoods against these huge, industrial solar arrays!

With the ‘go-solar’ movement, I think most folks figure that the panels will go on rooftops.  This school didn’t want to do that…it was easiest for them to kill this forest and put all the panels in the same spot.  Their offer to us came the morning of the January 10  Planning and Zoning meeting.  We knew that they were grandfathered in and we couldn’t stop them.  But, when I called the town planner and pulled our text amendment, I made him promise me that he would write a new one.  He did make me that promise, and I know he will follow through.  Hopefully, this never happens to anyone in Windsor again.

 

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