Boone County is looking to move away from allowing the development of sprawling solar farms on rural land.
At a meeting on Tuesday, the Boone County Fiscal Court discussed creating a text amendment to the county’s planning and zoning code that would regulate the types of solar panel installations that could be developed.
“I believe that we need a solar energy text amendment countywide for all of unincorporated Boone County,” Judge/Executive Gary Moore said during the meeting.
He expounded on his opinion by stating that he wants Boone County to preserve its rural farmland for agricultural uses instead of for large-scale, ground-mounted solar panel farms. Moreover, Moore said he wanted to mitigate companies from purchasing large swaths of county farmland to convert into solar farms.
“I have concerns when you look at the bottom of western Boone County, when you look at the flat land, and then sometimes the sloped areas that slope to the right angle with the sun – I have concerns about some of our rural, tree canopy agricultural land properties being absorbed by solar farms,” he said.
Moore cited other communities around the commonwealth where he felt like this trend was prevalent, specifically Hardin County, a rapidly industrializing county southwest of Louisville where solar companies have purchased thousands of acres with the intent of installing ground-mounted solar farms.
Many Hardin County residents have spoken out against these large-scale industrial solar farms. Hardin County Citizens for Responsible Solar, a community group advocating against industrial solar farms, argues on their website that those types of developments could contaminate the environment and eliminate prime farmland for agricultural use.
Moore said he is a proponent of solar energy and acknowledged that areas in Boone County are suitable for it. However, he preferred that large solar installations not be developed on agricultural lands. Instead, he argued that solar installations could be installed on the rooftops of big box industrial buildings, of which the county has many. Another idea he posited is installing solar canopies over parking lots.
“We have big box distribution and industrial-type buildings that rooftop solar could be a great use of utilizing those areas, in some cases, making them look better from the air than they do now, but making them effective uses of energy production,” Moore said.
Some large companies in Boone County already make use of rooftop solar panels. Last year, Duke Energy and Amazon unveiled Kentucky’s largest rooftop solar installation on top of the Amazon Air facility at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport. The installation features over 5,600 solar panels that feed up to two megawatts of power directly onto the electric distribution grid.
Boone County Administrator Matthew Webster noted that the fiscal court’s public discussion of a solar zoning amendment was the legislative body’s way of taking a public stance about its desire to regulate specific types of solar energy installations.
The prospective amendment will be authored and deliberated by the Boone County Planning Commission’s Technical Design/Review Committee. The amendment will also need to be reviewed by Union, Walton, and Florence.
Boone County Zoning Administrator Michael Schwartz said that if the planning commission approves the amendment, it will return to the fiscal court for final approval.
