MOUNT VERNON – A packed house of curious Knox County citizens nx officials gathered at Knox Memorial Theater on Nov. 30 to hear concerns of the planned solar development in the county.
The issue at the center of the discussion was the Frasier Solar/Open Roads Renewables solar panel installation south of Mount Vernon.
The self-titled education group, Knox Smart Development, hosted the event led by local resident Jared Yost with guests from surrounding counties.
Yost, who has lived south of Mount Vernon since 2001, discovered news about the Open Roads Renewables project earlier this year. He described himself as a person who overanalyzes and researches to his heart’s content.
“I made sure that I wasn’t quick to make any assumptions or make an opinion on it. So I spent time researching,” Yost said.
But something didn’t sit right.
“My instincts and my gut told me that this was not something that I was going to want to have near me. So the more I researched and the more I found out, all it did was validate my instincts. I knew that I didn’t want this stuff near me at all. I do not want this project near me.”
This was the theme throughout the nearly two-hour discussion, ranging from guests and those asking questions from the gallery.
Yost said he wasn’t anti-solar, though he said “we should be focusing on things such as rooftops, un-farmable land, vacant or unusable.
Yost said, “we believe facts speak for themselves. As passionate as I am and as emotional as I want to be about this, I have to keep myself reserved and not let that overpower just presenting facts. So that’s what you’re gonna see here tonight, just facts.”
Executive Director of the Climate Science Coalition of America Steve Goreham said:
- Solar panels takes up vast amounts of land
- The more wind and solar, the higher the cost of energy (grid reliability)
- Knox County solar project won’t have permanent jobs
- Questionable or lack of solar durability.
Open Road Renewables rejects the claims made by Goreham, and general concerns noted during the event.
ORR was particularly adamant about rejecting the idea that potential toxic materials are in solar panels that can be put into a private property owner’s well; the degradation of farmland; lowering of property values and the loss of Knox County’s rural landscape.
File complaints
Open Road Renewables filed its application to move forward with the project last July.
Its next step is a public hearing in the spring, with a date not yet finalized. A date will be likely announced later this month by the Ohio Power Sighting Board.
In between July 2023 and spring of 2024, public comments can be filed to the Ohio Power Sighting Board.
Knox Smart Development speakers encouraged those in the audience to file comments to the board to show their opposition of solar farms within the county.
Knox County for Responsible Solar
On the other side of the solar debate is the citizen-led Knox County for Responsible Solar, which believes in property owners having the right to manage what they feel is best for their land.
Member Kathy Gamble also said the group feels the development is good for the community for tax revenue because of the payment in leu of taxes (PILOT) program.
“We’re in favor of homegrown renewable energy,” Gamble said. “That’s pretty much where we’re coming from.”
One negative Gamble sees from the project is the occupation of farm land in the county.
If approved, the panels will occupy a maximum of 840 acres of land — less than 1% of farmland in the county, Gamble said.
Gamble acknowledged if the panels are installed the county won’t look the same in some aspects — using the example of a cornfield outside her home.
“I don’t think it’s going to take away from the uniqueness of the county as a whole,” Gamble said. “Now in the neighborhoods where the panels are going up, it is going to be a change and I think that the homegrown renewable energy is worth the change in these different areas. But I can sympathize with that.
“It’s what has been there for a couple hundred years and the people that live out there had no reason to think it wasn’t going to be that way for another couple hundred.”
Knox Pages is currently working on several stories from the Nov. 30 event, breaking down each sub-topic including environmental impact; effects on property values; solar durability and more.
This independent, local reporting provided by our Report for America Corps members is brought to you in part by the generous support of the Knox County Foundation and Kokosing.