By John Estridge
Creating and implementing amendments to the county’s zoning code is sort of like watching a tennis match.
The ball, which is the proposed amendments, goes back and forth across the net between the county’s Area Plan Commission and the county commissioners.
Currently, both entities are trying to implement amendments to cover solar energy areas within Franklin County. At this time, there are no such areas in the county, but there is a proposed one. These areas go by several names including: photovoltaic power station, also known as a solar park, solar farm, or solar power plant.
Paul Cummings, director of development at Geenex Solar in Franklin, told Franklin County Commissioners the company wants to implement a 1,300-1,400-acre solar energy area under panels within Bath Township. It would generate 180 MHz. It is planned for 2022. His company usually works off leases that are up to and including 40-year leases,
He said it will connect to the Indiana and Michigan 138 kilovolt line that runs through Bath and up to Northern Indiana. Whitewater Valley REMC is one of the customers of I & M, he said.
And to follow the tennis analogy, the ball or amendment is in the act of heading over that net back into the APC court. This method of amending the county’s zoning ordinance was put in place by state legislators so the governing body could be held accountable for their actions by the voting public.
The APC is an appointed board. While the members may propose amendments, it is the elected body, the commissioners, who must make the final approval.
Commissioners discussed the proposed four amendments sent to them by the APC. Commissioners readily agreed to three of the four, which were minor in nature. However, they did not agree to the main amendment, which would force rezoning any area wanted for a solar energy park to be in Open Industrial or Enclosed Industrial zoned areas. This would necessitate the rezoning of Prime Agriculture (A-1) and/or Secondary Agriculture (A-2).
Prior to that amendment narrowly passing in the November APC meeting, the solar park would have been allowed in A-2 as a conditional use. According to www.axley.com, a conditional use is: one that is conditioned upon certain requirements. With a conditional use, the landowner (or user of the property) applies for a permit, known as a conditional use permit. The local government then reviews the application and makes a decision regarding the permit. Originally, A-1 was not allowed to be used for a solar park even through rezoning.
Importantly, a conditional use is temporary regarding the property. When a conditional use ends, the property’s use goes back to the zoning designation and what is commonly allowed in that zoning designation. Also, the permit remains open, meaning if the person with the approved conditional use permit adds to or subtracts something that is different than what was approved, the APC can bring the permit holder to a public meeting and either make that person put the conditional use back the way it was approved, or take the conditional use away from the person, ending the conditional use.
With rezoning, the new zoning designation goes on with the property even after the use, which caused it to be rezoned, has ended. It is often said the new zoning designation goes on in perpetuity.
Commission President Tom Linkel said he did not want to limit property rights or what a landowner can do with his or her property. Again, commissioners had talked about not allowing solar farms in A-1. Linkel said he had looked at that anew.
“I go back to personal feelings,” Linkel said. “If I owned in A-1 – I wish I did. I own in A-2. – If I owned in A-1 and someone offered me money to develop a site on my farm, and the county told me I couldn’t do it, I would have hard feelings. I know we have a lot of people who say we have to preserve our ag land, but it is all about land use and rights for the individual.”
Connie Rosenberger is an educator in Union County, a member of the FC APC, and she lives in Bath Township. She and her family have been outspoken during this process concerning the need to preserve farmland. She attended the meeting via Zoom, and expressed her opinion concerning the need to preserve such excellent farmland as that which is in Bath Township. Also, she questioned a statement Cummings made where he said he and his company – after the site is decommissioned — wanted to leave the affected soil as good as it was or better than it was before the solar panels were constructed.
“I agree with (property rights) to an extent,” she said. “But when you talk about (negatively) affecting farm ground for a generation, not knowing the condition that farm ground will be left in, I think that is not acting as good stewards of our ground. We’re blessed with some awesome crop ground to feed the world. And I think taking that out of production for what God intended it for, is a big mistake.”
She then asked Cummings about his soil claim.
“Greenex was originated in North Carolina and according to their website, they originated in 2012,” Rosenberger said. “You said farm ground — when it gets put back in operation — is better than you left it. How many farms have gone back to farmland where you know it is a fact?”
Cummings admitted none of the farmland the company has converted to solar farms has been decommissioned.
“So, we really don’t know that to be a fact, right?” Rosenberger said. “That’s what we’re hoping for, but we really don’t have any data to support that yet.”
Linkel disagreed with Rosenberger about her first point, the tragedy in taking prime farmland out of production. He said he has traveled extensively across the Western United States and much of the good farmland in that area remains fallow as the federal government pays farmers not to farm that land due to an overabundance of food production.
Instead of rezoning both ag zoning designations to industrial, Linkel would like to see a new zoning designation created in the county called Ag Alternative Energy Zone.
County attorney Grant Reeves is working on the wording of the proposed new zoning designation. When he is finished, it will be sent to the APC. Due to the needs of having to advertise the subsequent APC public hearing on the proposed amendment, the matter cannot go before the APC until its January 2021 meeting.
The other three amendments, which the commissioners said they approve, consist of: Three strands of barbed wire to be added at the top of a perimeter fence around a solar field. Also, adding a $1,000 fee to an intermediate application and make the applicant pay for the actual cost of a technological review of the intermediate application. And not allowing solar field construction and its use to hinder drainage fields, especially those of nonparticipating property owners.
