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Commission reopens debate over 5,000-acre county cap for solar; some members urge stricter limits
Summary
Staff presented a 5,000-acre countywide cap with a 2,500-acre per-site cap for solar projects; commissioners debated lowering the cap, using Farm Service Agency cropping history to define farmland, and asked staff for maps to guide a future decision.
Commissioners spent a substantial portion of the workshop debating how to limit large-scale solar on productive farmland and what metrics to use.
Chairman Brian Davies described the acreage cap as a way "to mitigate" difficulty identifying prime soils across diverse county soils, explaining why the group proposed a countywide cap. Bill Myers urged lower numbers — "I'd say we take these two numbers and just cut them in half, 2,500 and 1,250" — and recommended using USDA Farm Service Agency production records as an objective determinant of whether land should be excluded. Vice Chairman Dave Gibney and others said the original 5,000-acre figure had been suggested by County Commissioners and argued it was a practical starting point; staff noted current site-constraint mapping that shows larger potential areas and agreed to prepare additional visual maps to inform the Commission's next decision.
No numeric cap was adopted at the workshop; staff will return with maps and more specific agricultural delineations so the Commission can decide whether to keep, reduce, or refine the acreage limits.
