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Planning commission permits: three community solar gardens, two small excavations and a home-based firearms component business approved
Summary
The county board approved planning-commission recommendations for three 1-megawatt community solar garden permits, two short-term aggregate/borrowing permits and a home-occupation permit for limited firearms-component work with conditions.
The Kandiyohi County Board on Sept. 16 adopted planning-commission recommendations to approve multiple land-use permits, including three reissued 1-megawatt community solar garden permits, two small aggregate/borrow operations and a conditional home-occupation permit for firearms components manufacturing.
Community solar gardens: Zoning Administrator Eric Van Dyken summarized three similar Community Solar Garden (CSG) applications by Veil Energy Solutions along the Highway 7 corridor in the county’s southwest (Holland Township and near Prinsburg). Two permits were reissuances of previously approved projects; the county attached conditions including a decommissioning plan and vegetative screening adjacent to a nearby farm site. Van Dyken said decommissioning plans direct that "everything gets put back to original condition" at the end of a project’s life and that panels and driven poles are often recycled rather than landfilled.
Small excavations/borrow: The board approved a short-term, small-scale rock-extraction permit on property near Green Lake (Craig Hansen/Chad Haugen site), limited to about five acres and a roughly 10–12 month window with required road and dust-control conditions and third-party road-repair obligations if township roads are damaged. A separate small clay-mining/borrow operation (Pierce family property) of about seven acres also received approval with standard reclamation requirements to return the site to farmable land.
Home-occupation permit for firearms components: The board approved a home-occupation permit for Logan Hansen to perform limited light manufacturing and assembly of firearm components at his residence in the Little Crow Park area. Conditions recorded by planning staff and adopted by the board include that the operator must be resident on site, there shall be no outside employees, the business must comply with Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) licensing requirements, no on-site test firing is allowed, and on-site face-to-face transactions are limited to 10 per year.
Board action: Each permit was moved and seconded following planning-commission findings and recommended conditions; votes were unanimous.
Why it matters: The approvals illustrate the county’s use of conditional land-use permits to balance economic activity (renewable energy and limited commercial extraction) with agricultural reclamation, road maintenance protections and neighborhood character controls on home businesses.
