County: 140-acre solar farm was rejected for water quality, noise, health concerns

A solar energy provider asked county leaders to clarify their reasons for rejecting a rezoning that would have cleared the way for a 140-acre solar farm.

 

THE COUNTY'S STATEMENT CAN BE READ HERE.

 

In April, Blackburn Solar, a subsidiary of NextEra Energy Resources, asked for 635 acres in southern Catawba County to be rezoned to a rural conditional zoning to allow for a solar farm along Hickory-Lincolnton Highway.

 

The request was recommended for approval by the Catawba County Planning Board, but the Catawba County Board of Commissioners unanimously denied the request.

 

The solar farm was planned to encompass about 310 acres of the property. The solar panels would sit on about 140 of those acres, according to the rezoning application. NextEra has been searching for a location and planning the project since 2018, a NextEra representative said in April.

 

The plans for the solar farm included a 125-acre donation to the Catawba Lands Conservancy. The land planned for the donation sat along the South Fork River and would have been part of the Carolina Thread Trail, a regional network of trails connecting area counties.

 

The solar farm was planned as a partnership between NextEra, Duke Energy and Wells Fargo, according to a release from Duke Energy in 2021. Wells Fargo planned to buy energy from the solar farm to offset half of the bank’s power usage in North Carolina, the release said.

 

County commissioners cited concerns brought by residents as reasons for rejecting the rezoning. Those concerns included runoff contamination from the project and proper land use.

 

At Monday’s Catawba County Board of Commissioners meeting, board attorney David Hood said Blackburn Solar sought to clarify why the rezoning was rejected.

 

“The applicant has since complained we did not adopt a planned consistency and reasonableness statement,” Hood said. “They have suggested they need that information in order to make a decision about a new application.”

 

A consistency statement is required by state law when making zoning decisions. The statement explains the grounds on which a request is approved or denied and whether the request was consistent with local development and land use plans.

 

The board adopted a statement on Monday, three months after the initial denial.

 

The statement said the rezoning to allow for the solar farm was inconsistent with the future land use plans for the area, which called for low-density residential use for the properties.

 

The rezoning was consistent with the Startown Small Area Plan’s recommendation for the conservation of land along the South Fork River, the statement said.

 

The commissioners said, as a board, they found the rezoning unreasonable because of the concerns for water quality next to the project, the concerns of noise pollution and concerns for health issues. The specific health issues were not specified in the statement.