“”The town of Ballston’s proposed solar zoning law would require solar farms larger than 25 kW on parcels over 60 acres to go through the town’s site plan review and special use permit processes. They would be subject to the proposed law’s vague restrictive siting requirements.
The proposed law ignores the state’s Article 10 law that allows proposed solar farms over 25 mW to be permitted solely by the new state solar siting board. This state board can effectively circumvent and ignore local zoning laws. The current state statute clearly incentivizes solar farm developers to seek state Article 10 approvals for large scale solar farms rather than seek local approvals for smaller solar arrays from town boards that can be easily swayed by a few vocal NIMBYs (not in my back yard).
It’s time for local governments to wake up to climate change reality. They need to pass solar laws that encourage small scale solar farms, up to 20 mW solar farms with reasonable siting requirements, or large parcels of land will be taken up by mega-solar farms (25-plus acres) that do not require local zoning approvals.
Leonard Berdan
Schoharie””
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Berdan, Leonard. Albany Times Journal 15 July 2021.