JACKSON COUNTY, Ohio — Dana Schutte lives with her boyfriend, Jim, on 72 acres in Jackson County in southeastern Ohio. It’s where they came to retire. 

When she bought the house two years ago, she said she had no idea a major solar project had been proposed in the area. The project is called Dixon Run Solar. It’s a 140 MW solar facility proposed on approximately 2,082 acres of privately owned land. SunEnergy1, a solar developer out of North Carolina, proposed the project in 2016. While approximately 2,085 acres are under contract in the project area, SunEnergy1 said in their application to the Ohio Power Siting Board that they only intend to use approximately 1,219 acres for construction and operation. The project is expected to consist of approximately 450,500 PV panels installed in linear arrays.

“I do not believe that it is a good thing,” Schutte said. “We know that if this goes in, we're gonna hear pounding of posts from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., six days a week for months and months.”

The project has raised concerns from surrounding landowners, including Schutte and her neighbor, Debra Yates. 

“I believe that it would be so much more beneficial if we were inching our way into the solar thing,” Yates said. “By utilizing smaller farms that benefit the local community, and be more involved with the people that would actually benefit from it, rather than having all of these huge industrial solar farms moving in and nobody seems to know anything about it—where the energy goes (or) who benefits from it. It just seems to be all about money.” 

These neighbors have questions including what are the impacts to the natural landscape? How will the proposed project affect property values? Are there health risks associated with living next to a large solar project?

In Ohio, the Ohio Power Siting Board deals with all applications for large-scale wind and solar projects in the state. Projects must be approved by the OPSB before construction can begin. The process involves hundreds of pages of documents addressing potential environmental and socioeconomic impacts. Per OPSB’s rules, developers of large energy projects are required to hold a public meeting before they file their application. They’re also supposed to mail letters announcing the meeting to people who own property surrounding the proposed project area.The first public information meeting for the Dixon Run Solar Project was held on July 22, 2021. Schutte said she never received a letter.

“The company has not been forthcoming at all. They supposedly sent letters out to property owners," Schutte said. “I never received a letter.”

SunEnergy1 told Spectrum News they do not provide comments to news organizations. Instead, they directed the inquiry to the Utility Scale Solar Energy Coalition of Ohio. Spectrum News sat down with Jake Kuss, who at the time of the interview was the assistant director for USSECO. 

One of the concerns he hears often is the amount of space these large projects take up.  

“These projects need to be within a couple miles of major transmission lines. So while there's an opportunity for solar to grow here in the state, it can only grow so much and it truly can't coat entire counties. It can't take over Ohio's farmland in such a major way,” said Kuss. “To a certain extent, it will take some agricultural land out of commission. But one of the important things, or I guess a couple of the important things to note with that, is that these projects will live for 30, 40 years and each project has a decommissioning plan. And so at the end of the project, if the landowner no longer wants to take part in utility scale solar, that project has money set aside where they can come in, take out the panels, take out the racking, and that land goes back to agricultural land.” 

Kuss said studies show solar panels are not a danger to the health or safety of the public and added that many of the concerns about solar energy are misinformation. 

“Folks just aren't familiar with solar energy and that's OK,” Kuss said. “It's relatively new here in the state, and so folks hear information that may or may not be right, but they don't know where to go for that type of fact checking. And so we like to act as a source for that information.” 

Common concerns include the toxicity of solar panels, electromagnetic fields and if solar projects permanently destroy the natural habitat. 

“Electromagnetic fields came up and truly a phone or a home appliance is more dangerous than a solar field,” Kuss said. “They're all housed internally within the system, and there are setbacks in place. So those small centers are hundreds and hundreds of feet from local residents or anything like that. So they're not putting out more than home appliances anyways, but they're so far from folks that it wouldn't matter. It's not like you're standing next to a microwave or anything like that.”

Kuss said many developers are working toward best management practices, such as improving fencing to allow animals to get through the solar project more easily. In terms of vegetation, many are moving toward creating pollinator habitats.

“Some of our members have PhDs on staff with biology degrees and things like that, studying soil or studying local animal populations. It's really becoming a very integral part of large scale solar development, especially here in the Midwest,” Kuss said. “So getting beyond turf grass, being able to bring in native species and talk about plants that, you know, used to be very prolific in Ohio, but bringing those back into the fold.”

Still, neighbors like Schutte and Yates feel there has been a lack of transparency.

The application for solar projects includes opportunities for public involvement. They question whether public input even makes a difference. 

“I believe it's all fueled by money,” Schutte said. “They don't care about climate change. It sounds good on paper, in theory, but it's all about green. It's like, how much can they put in their corporate pockets? I'm not for it at all, whether I live next door to it, or it wasn't in my county at all. I think it's corporate greenwashing.”

In July of last year, Gov. Mike DeWine signed Senate Bill 52 into law. The law gives local leaders the power to block large scale solar and wind projects in their area. However, many of these local communities receive a large sum of money each year from solar and wind projects, making it hard for poor rural areas desperate for revenue to say no.  Jackson County is expected to receive more than $980,000 each year in tax revenue from the project with money allocated to local school districts, emergency medical services, seniors citizens and more.  

With a warming climate and an immediate call-to-action to find ways to produce energy that doesn’t harm the atmosphere, many cities and corporations are turning to renewable energy. Several large corporoations, like Amazon and Intel, have plans to be carbon-nuetral in the next 20 to 30 years, which leads to these huge solar projects. 

Bigger may be faster in helping solve climate change, but these neighbors think bigger is not better.

“In working with our developers, it's important that they do engage with the community and that they do have an open door policy. Because like I said, these projects are going to live for 30, 40 plus years. Nobody wants to have kind of that aggravated relationship with a neighbor, especially for that long,” Kuss said. “Every once in a while, if you get a bad apple, bad seed in the apple that it can taint people's view. But on the whole, I think a lot of our developers are doing a great job of becoming community members, not just coming in and taking land, it's coming in and becoming a part of that community to bring everybody up.”

The Dixon Run Solar Project is expected to be completed by the fourth quarter of 2023. For more information on the Dixon Run Solar Project, click here.