Visit Schoharie County.
Where you can enjoy: farm stands, small shops, local produce, stunning vistas, museums, and thousands of acres of state land—and solar?
Not if a group of Cobleskill residents have their way.
Using words off Schoharie County’s own website to make her point, Anne Donnelly spoke for a crowd of about 30 “angry and anxious farmers, landowners, and small business owners” Monday when she asked the Town of Cobleskill not to allow a possible 6-8-MW solar project off Route 145, Lawyersville.
“Are we ready to re-brand Schoharie County?” Ms. Donnelly asked, pointing to the need for stable agriculture as some regions of the country struggle with fire, drought, and floods.
“We were the breadbasket of the Revolution,” she said.
“We may be needed again as we enter a new era of climate patterns.”
At issue is a memorandum of option that SWEB Development as Warner Slate LLC—an international energy company—has for 30-plus acres at the old Bryon Johnson farm.
Lori and Josh Davis rent the farm, which they call “Empty Pockets,” and run an agri-tourism business there.
No solar proposal or application has been filed with the Town of Cobleskill—yet, but Supervisor Leo McAllister told the crowd that’s not unusual:
Mr. McAllister said he’s talked with “five or six companies over the last five of six years,” but because the town requires both a PILOT and a decommissioning plan, none have gone further than talk.
“None of them have gotten to this board [town] or the Planning Board because they couldn’t agree,” he said.
“Nothing has come to me. Until that happens, nothing is going to happen.”
The PILOT—payment in lieu of taxes—and decommissioning requirements are part of a 2017 update to the town Zoning Code that also addressed things like aesthetics, wildlife, woodland removal, erosion control and water runoff and Ms. Donnelly thanked the Planning Board for its foresight.
“Please continue to act on behalf of the residents who actually live here, people who make their livelihoods off the [neighboring] properties…”
Ms. Donnelly blasted the state for trying to meet its green energy goals off of the back of rural landowners when it could accomplish more by electrifying its fleet and putting solar panels on “every office building, parking garage and SUNY campus.”
Mr. McAllister agreed.
The county’s PILOT of $20,000 a megawatt “is about six times what the state wants us to get,” he said.
“What the state wants us to get is nothing. Then they’ll try to get home rule phased out and they’ll set the PILOT.”
Because of its size, the Lawyersville project would be subject to local--not state review.
Under what was Article 10 and is now called 94-C, larger projects like the 50-MW NextEra Energy project now under construction in the Town of Sharon are subject to state review and approval.