Council member Sheehan presents draft solar zoning changes, prioritizes brownfields and farmland safeguards

Council member Liz Sheehan presented the work-group’s draft amendments to the county’s solar energy systems zoning ordinance at the Rural Land Conservation Board meeting on April 28, summarizing six months of research, public-interest considerations and model language her team adapted.

Sheehan said the draft keeps rooftop and integrated installations broadly allowed but clarifies scale tiers: small ground-mounted systems (up to 2,500 sq ft), intermediate projects (2,500 sq ft to 5 acres) and large-scale facilities (over 5 acres) with specific zone permissions and conditional-use requirements for agricultural zones. “Large-scale projects are about 300 acres to make them work,” she said, and added that the work group included council co-chairs and planning staff, and consulted the Kentucky Resources Council and American Farmland Trust for best practices.

The draft includes a local-preference cap described in the slides as 1% of county acreage and tied to a numeric acreage figure; Sheehan said that calculation in the presentation amounted to 827 acres, while board member Margaret Graves later referenced 1,827 acres when discussing the 1% figure, a discrepancy both…