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North Carolina Town That Defeated Solar Plan Talks Back (newsobserver.com)
mdsolar writes with news that city officials in Woodland, North Carolina have taken issue with being ridiculed by the internet and want to set the record straight. According to the article: "Usually what happens in Woodland stays in Woodland, a town 115 miles east of Raleigh with one Dollar General store and one restaurant. But news of the Northampton County hamlet's moratorium on solar farms blew up on social media over the weekend after a local paper quoted a resident complaining to the Town Council that solar farms would take away sunshine from nearby vegetation. Another resident warned that solar panels would suck up energy from the sun. As outlandish as those claims seem, town officials say the Internet got it wrong."
I don't agree, but they are certainly entitled to their opinion, and if they want to block a FOURTH solar farm from being built around their two horse town, I really don't think we have any room to bitch.
How many solar farms does YOUR town have? less than 3 per 800 people, I imagine.
Because solar farms, while really cool-looking from the air, look like miles and miles of supporting hardware from ground level.
The plan is basically "turn a farm community into an island surrounded by several square miles of industrial plants." People move to the country to get away from such things, it's not surprising that they're resisting having their property values trashed because someone decides to take a bunch of government cash to build the darned things.
Jane Mann said she is a local native and is concerned about the plants that make the community beautiful. She is a retired Northampton science teacher and is concerned that photosynthesis, which depends upon sunlight, would not happen and would keep the plants from growing. She said she has observed areas near solar panels where the plants are brown and dead because they did not get enough sunlight. She also questioned the high number of cancer deaths in the area, saying no one could tell her that solar panels didn’t cause cancer."
It sounds to me like this backlash is mainly pretty deserved. Even if they had legitimate reasons to say no to this new solar, it is clear that those were not the reasons articulated by the people in question.
The zoning board meetings are where the NIMBYs and BANANAs rule the roost. Someone turned over the rock and all these creepy crawlies are running away on seeing daylight. Since no one ever bothers to follow these meeting they use any handy excuse they can think of. Even now other than saying "internet" is wrong, they are not denying that the used the reported reasoning to deny the zoning permit.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
This may surprise you, but different people find different things pleasant to look at. Some people LIKE looking at acres of tobacco, dilapidated barns and silos, etc. You can even buy artwork of such things. Some people LIKE to look at big cities, other people think they are as ugly as ugly can be. Who are you to be deciding what the town should or should not be looking at?
They didn't want to be surrounded by solar farms? Why not? That still doesn't make any sense.
Probably the same reason that people don't want to be surrounded by acres of parking lots or gravel-covered industrial zones.
People who live in small towns often consider nature to have a beauty worthy of preserving.
I am totally amazed at the fuckwits on slashdot that are shrieking "they hatez the solar because they rednecks" when this town probably has more solar energy panels installed than almost any other town in the country.
Contrary to your statement "They never told us WHY it got rejected." they clearly stated WHY. It is the 4th solar farm in the same small town of 800 people. It further states that the reason power companies want to build in these areas is because they can acquire land from not so wealthy people on the cheap, taking advantage of the financial situation many families are in (largely due to corporate influence on Agricultural business and economics at a much larger scale). It also discusses a professor who believes this causes long term damage to the agricultural industry.
Since I actually did read TFA, it makes me wonder who actually started the disinformation campaign.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Actions not Words.
Climate Change is NOW, boys and girls, and it cares nothing about your excuses. Nothing like 100 miles of Carolina coastline being inundated during an every 2-3 years "100 year storm" to give you deniers a wake up call ...
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