Planning commission recommends disapproval of rezoning and CUP for 20 MW Lou Jones road solar project

The Dinwiddie County Planning Commission on Oct. 8 recommended that the Board of Supervisors deny a rezoning request for a proposed 20-megawatt solar facility on part of an 890-acre parcel and also recommended denial of the project’s conditional use permit.

County planning staff introduced rezoning case P‑25‑12 and said the applicant seeks to change roughly 308 acres from A‑2 (Agricultural General) to SED (Solar Energy District) to host a utility-scale photovoltaic facility. The applicant is DW Lou Jones LLC, an Ampliform subsidiary; Ampliform representatives described the project as a 20-megawatt facility with a 35-year operational life and said it would use about 245–308 acres of a single 890-acre parcel identified as tax map 55‑31.

The project team told the commission the facility would include fenced arrays, wildlife corridors, a 75-foot setback from the project boundary with an additional 25-foot vegetative buffer on the road frontage, and a decommissioning plan with financial security. Panel arrays would be fenced (6 feet topped with 1 foot of barbed wire) only around the arrays; panels themselves were described as roughly 10 feet tall with a conditional use permit maximum of 18 feet noted in staff conditions. The applicant said the panels do not contain cadmium…