Council delays Hailey Pike landfill solar lease after questions about community benefits

The Lexington Fayette Urban County Council postponed consideration of a ground lease with Eden Renewables for a large-scale solar project at the Hailey Pike landfill on Feb. 10, 2026, citing unresolved questions about the community benefits agreement and lease language.

Council member Savigny moved to table the item for one week to allow staff and the applicant to clarify numbers and clean up contract language; the motion was seconded and passed by voice vote. The postponement schedules the item for the Feb. 17 work session.

The discussion focused on how the lease and a related community benefits agreement (CBA) would be structured and how much money the CBA would actually deliver. City staff identified a funding line in the lease and said the contract includes funding for a community benefits program, but that the full program design remains to be finalized and could be addressed later through pilot agreements or an IRB process. "The ground lease has a community benefits agreement as a contingency," city staff said, adding that the lease assigns a rate and that additional program details may follow in later agreements.

Council members raised two key arithmetic and drafting issues: whether the CBA amount in the paperwork was $1.25 per megawatt or $125 per megawatt hour in different places, and whether the per-megawatt language in the lease yields only a few thousand dollars a year rather than the five-figure totals some members expected. "The language does say $125 per megawatt hour," a staff member said; elsewhere staff acknowledged a misstatement in a chart and corrected a figure during the meeting.

Members also pressed staff on how lease revenue and other fees would be used. City staff said lease rent would go into the landfill fund to pay for landfill-specific expenses and that water-quality management fees would flow into the water-quality fund. "The rent's going to go into [the] landfill fund," staff said, adding that those restricted dollars fund repairs and operations at the landfill.

Developers and proponents described the financial constraints of building on a closed landfill. A developer representative told council the project is substantially more expensive to build on capped landfill cells than on greenfield sites and said it is unlikely to yield typical developer returns: "This project is 30% (more costly) ... we will not approach 10% [return]," the representative said.

Council members said they wanted the CBA funding level and contract language clarified before approving a lease that might lock in a low funding floor. The postponement gives staff and the applicant a week to revise the lease exhibits, confirm numeric calculations and provide clearer language about the CBA and related implementation steps.

The council did not take a final vote on the ground lease at the Feb. 10 meeting. The matter is scheduled to return on Feb. 17, 2026.