Pennington County draws the shades on wind and solar with one-year pause on permits

For at least the next year, Pennington County is closed to any new wind and solar projects.

Citizen concerns surrounding aesthetics, the loss of agricultural land and health spurred the Pennington County Commission to vote 4-0 to place a moratorium on all conditional use permits for “utility-scale alternative energy” in a county that currently houses the largest solar project in South Dakota. Commissioner Ron Rossknecht (District 1) was not present for the vote.

“What you’re gonna hear from the community members that live out there, to include myself, is we don’t want the rural rolling plains of eastern Pennington County to be open to these projects,” said Jerry Wayne Derr, commissioner-elect for District 4. The eastern district consists of the majority of the county’s landmass, much of its agricultural land and the Badlands.

More than 450 citizens petitioned for the moratorium after the county’s planning commission issued conditional use permits on Oct. 28 for the Cheyenne River Ranch Wind and Solar Farm. The future site is located 7 miles south of New Underwood, 30 miles southeast of Rapid City, and 3.5 miles north of Highway 44.

The project plan consists of 10 wind turbines and 175,000 solar panels on an 1,124-acre site. According to the site plan, the actual footprint of the solar farm will take up 331 acres.

The moratorium goes into effect on Dec. 12 and will expire on Dec. 12, 2025 unless it is extended.

“They used the power of the political voice to impose a moratorium. I feel badly for Pennington County,” said Lyon Roth, chairman of Yarotek, the Florida-based company developing the wind and solar site.

Residents told the commission they don’t want any more projects like the future Cheyenne River Ranch or the existing Wild Springs Solar Project.

Wild Springs, also located south of New Underwood, is the largest solar project in South Dakota. It boasts a 128-megawatt capacity, enough to power 37,000 homes each year, according to National Grid Renewables, which owns the farm. Cheyenne River Ranch will have a capacity of 142.8 megawatts, 56 megawatts from wind energy and 86.8 megawatts from solar.

Derr said the moratorium is to “pump the brakes on these and stop any further developments.”

Commissioner Deb Hadcock (District 3), said the moratorium wouldn’t have happened without New Underwood residents Lindsey Mader, Jerry Mader and Justin Uhrig.

“This happened because your community stood together and it shows today,” Hadcock said.

Jerry Mader’s property is adjacent to the site on two sides. Site plans show a 1,000-foot setback from his property. He argued, however, that the site will affect tourism because of its proximity to Highway 44 and Interstate 90. There is a 3.5-mile buffer from the site and Highway 44 and about an 8-mile buffer from Interstate 90.

“Taking ag land out of production is always a negative result, I think,” Mader said.

The purpose of the moratorium is to allow time for the county to study, identify and consider land use regulations and evaluate whether the current zoning regulations reasonably address concern for public health, safety and welfare.

Commissioners and residents discussed at the Tuesday meeting the creation of a task force to review the county’s ordinances that involves members of the agricultural community.

Currently, conditional use permits go before the planning commission, but the county commission does not have to review the permits before they go into effect. Some residents expressed concern that the planning commission is not an elected body.

The county commission meets again on Dec. 3. The agenda has yet to be released, but commissioners discussed addressing the establishment of a task force or committee at that meeting.

“Hopefully people come around and realize that the cows are still being cows, and the horses are still being horses, and the crops a mile away are still growing like they grew before all this 'terrible stuff' happened,” Roth said. “To the extent that the objective of the commission was to deter other developers from pursuing projects in Pennington County, they succeeded. They deterred us from pursuing our second intended project in Pennington County.”

Roth declined to say where that second project would have been.