Supervisors' no vote on Sowego is the latest blow for solar farms

Solar farm developers with an eye on the open spaces of Fauquier County are finding an increasingly difficult road to win approval even as demand for energy grows. 

The Fauquier County Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 Thursday night to uphold an earlier planning commission ruling which blocked construction of a proposed 80-megawatt solar farm in Bristersburg.

The decision presents a serious hurdle for the growth of solar energy in Fauquier County. Only one solar project has made it past the county planning commission since 2017 despite rising energy demand.  

“If we don’t want this, we’re kind of sending a message to the world that we don’t want a solar farm anywhere in Fauquier County, because I can’t imagine it coming together much better than this one,” Scott District Supervisor Holder Trumbo said shortly before the vote. 

More than 40 citizens turned out to speak both in favor and opposition to Torch Clean Energy’s planned solar array.  

So many turned out to speak, in fact, that they could not legally fit in the chamber and some had to be sent to an upstairs spillover room to watch a livestream of the proceedings.  

It is currently estimated that Fauquier County would need 12 solar farms the size of the Sowego Solar project that was proposed for Bristerburg to meet the county’s energy needs in the coming years.  

Under the submitted proposal, the Sowego Solar farm would have covered 466 acres and provided 80 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 15,000 homes for a year. Eighty megawatts is also the amount of energy needed to power an average sized data center. Only 195 acres would have been covered in solar panels. 

Residents who opposed the plan said they felt the solar array would create an eyesore. Developers argued that the plan included a 50-foot vegetation buffer in addition to a 100-500-foot setback from nearby roads depending on location.  

The Sowego proposal was defeated in both the planning commission and board of supervisors’ votes because officials said it was not in accordance with the county’s comprehensive plan. In particular, the solar project was found to be in contradiction with a provision meant to preserve farmland and open spaces, The plan also considers project scale and health and wellness concerns.   

"If this thing is approved, it will be a major blow to the agricultural integrity of Fauquier County,” said Greg Morgan, whose property runs along the proposed solar farm. “It’s going to open a can of worms.” 

Morgan then held aloft a Piedmont Environmental Council bumper sticker reading “Farmland lost is farmland lost forever.” 

“Nobody wants to see anything change, but it’s going to change,” said local farmer Bill Martin, who supports the Sowego project. 

“You see this as ‘Farmland lost is farmland lost forever.’ I’m 100% with that — 100% — but somebody put me in a pickup truck or a car and take me to a farm in Fauquier County within the last seven or eight or ten years that has been sold, that has been bought by a farmer and is actively being farmed,” Martin continued.  

Opponents to the solar farm also cited storm water runoff concerns about the solar panels, and there are questions about the effect solar farms have on runoff. However, agricultural farmland is also the largest source of nutrient and sediment pollution in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, according to the Chesapeake Bay Program. 

Both the planning commission and board of supervisor's votes rejected the proposal by a narrow 3-2 vote.  

At the same time that the Sowego solar facility was first voted down, the planning commission also rejected Open Roads Renewables’ plan for two facilities known as Alameda North and South. However, Open Road Renewables chose not to appeal the decision to the board of supervisors, instead choosing to return to the planning commission with an amended proposal.  

Open Roads Renewables’ updated proposal has not yet been submitted, according to Adam Shellenberger, Fauquier County community development’s Chief of Planning. Though the company recently held an open house for the updated project.  

Torch Clean Energy also has the option to resubmit a revised proposal to the county planning commission, though the project’s leaders have not yet announced a decision on the next steps for the project. 

The only solar project approved by the county planning commission was a 2017 Dominion Energy project built on the utility’s own land in southern Fauquier County.