With word that NextEra Energy plans to submit its Preliminary Scoping Statement—essentially a plan for its proposed 50 megawatt East Point Energy Center solar project--“on or about September 28,” the Town of Sharon has begun its own effort to collect comments on the Route 20 solar farm.
Supervisor Sandy Manko has created a place on the Town of Sharon website to leave comments.
She’s also put up a white board outside her office in the Sharon Springs Free Library building.
To leave online comments, search “Schoharie County,” then go to “Local Government” at the top and click on Town of Sharon.
Residents can also sign up with NextEra as a way to receive updates on the proposal.
Search “East Point Energy Center” and at the top, click on “Public Involvement” and then “Join the Stakeholders List.”
The page also has a klink to the Department of Public Service website, where the can leave comments and concerns; the DPS is the agency collecting comments for the Article 10 review.
Comments the town’s already received come down on both sides of the solar issue.
There’s concern about what the project would do to the region’s karst limestone topography and the Route 20 Scenic Byway.
“Don’t ruin it [the byway] with solar panels,” wrote one person. “The small town is starting to come alive again.”
Another comment begged the town not to become a mirror of Route 30, Amsterdam “where they built a monstrosity,” [solar farm}, calling instead for windfarms, “which look beautiful—at least from a distance”.
Others comments voiced concern over clean-up at the site once the panels have out-lived their usefulness while still others called for more research.
Still other comments came from those supporting solar energy as an alternate to fossil fuel as a way to slow climate change.
One non-resident wrote that he’s reluctant to tell the residents of Sharon to just “put up with the changes” the project would make to their view, but also argued for solar” “There are ways to lessen that change.”
Today, Wednesday, Schoharie County Treasurer Bill Cherry, who has agreed to negotiate the PILOT NextEra Energy has requested for the project, and reps from the Town of Sharon and Sharon Springs Central School will be meeting with company officials to discuss the payment in lieu of taxes.
Preliminary projections show NextEra Energy paying a total of $24 million over the 15-year lifespan of the project.
If it remains fully taxable, however, total taxes could be two or three times that figure.
Project developers would make money be selling electricity into the grid and through NYSERDA tax credits.