BATAVIA, Ohio — Clermont County Commissioners unanimously voted to ban large solar and wind projects in seven townships after a contentious public hearing on Wednesday where residents criticized solar and described one facility under construction as "almost 700 acres of pure hell."
"Don’t tell us what we need when you don’t live there. You don’t live there," said Mary Durbin, who lives in Tate Township where Nestlewood Solar is being built one street away from her home.
She urged solar supporters to drive out to her neighborhood "and see what you think about it and then ask yourself do you want to live next to that? I can guarantee the answer is going to be no," Durbin said.
Nineteen people spoke at Wednesday’s public hearing, a mix of solar farm developers, clean energy proponents and union workers who touted the economic development potential of solar investment. But longtime residents demanded that commissioners pass the ban and preserve their farmland, and way of life.
"They want you to sign these contracts. They are very lucrative contracts, trust me, I’ve got into the numbers with them. But the impact that it has on the land, and the community, it’s not worth it to us," said Austin Clark, who owns a 200-acre farm in Franklin Township that has been in his family since the 1790s, before Ohio was a state.
"We’re here because we love this land. This is our county. This is where we live, this is not where you live," Clark said, pointing at out-of-town solar company employees. "We do not want your help, we do not want your money … we have farmland to feed the people of this country."
At the end of the nearly two-hour hearing, all three county commissioners said that their opinions on the potential economic benefit of solar didn’t matter because they would vote the way their residents wanted them to: in favor of the ban.
"You have spoken loud and you have spoken clear," said Commissioner David Painter. "You didn’t elect me to force my opinion on you."
Commissioner Bonnie Batchler agreed, "We were elected to represent the majority of people … these townships have made it clear what they want."
Clermont joins nearby Brown, Butler and Highland counties which have passed similar bans as solar and wind development spreads across Ohio.
Two other townships, Goshen and Ohio, also passed resolutions banning large solar and wind farms, but their votes came too late to be included in the Wednesday public meeting and will be taken up by commissioners in roughly 30 days.
Trustee John Wilson of Tate Township, where the Nestlewood Solar facility is being built on land that straddles the Brown County line, said his residents call him three to five times a day to complain about noise, dust, traffic and the loss of farmland.
Washington Township Trustee Dennis Cooper said 75 to 100 residents came to a public hearing on solar farms this spring, "and there wasn’t one person who was in favor of solar."
But Cooper didn’t completely reject one potential project.
Texas-based Vistra Corp. wants to redevelop the retired William H. Zimmer coal plant near Moscow, into a hybrid facility for solar and utility-scale battery storage, with the capacity to generate 800 megawatts of power.
"There’s always competition for Vistra’s investment dollars from other states," and Ohio counties where the company operates other plants, said Brad Watson, senior director of community affairs for Vistra. "But we think the Zimmer site has great potential."
Andrew McAfee, vice president of the Clermont County Chamber of Commerce, spoke in favor of Vistra’s plan to redevelop Zimmer, which could bring in $600 to $800 million in capital investment.
"The Zimmer plant is an ideal location for it," McAfee said because it would have little to no impact on farmland, create hundreds of jobs and generate millions in tax revenue.
But Cooper, of Washington Township, where Vistra owns hundreds of acres and operates a landfill for coal waste from Zimmer and another plant, was skeptical of the redevelopment plans, after his residents are forced to smell“the stench that comes off that landfill every day.”
Cooper believes that Vistra wants to put solar panels on the farmland it owns up the hill in Washington Township because the Zimmer industrial site in Moscow isn’t big enough to generate as much power as Vistra is planning.
"Our residents don’t want to drive by there and see solar panels daily," Cooper said.
Cooper urged the commissioners to vote for the ban so that residents can have control of any future solar project. If Vistra presents a good redevelopment plan for Zimmer, Cooper said the township could come back to the county to ask officials to rescind the ban on a new project.
While the county ban impacts large-scale solar facilities, it has no control over the creation of smaller, or community-level, solar farms. Those smaller facilities also do not fall under the authority of the Ohio Power Siting Board and are entirely governed by zoning regulations at the township level. Many townships still do not have rules to govern solar and wind.
