Solar vs. Forests
Hart Hagan
This Friday, let’s discuss: Industrial Solar Arrays vs. Our Forests
What serves the environment better, a forest or a solar array? Many states and communities are choosing solar arrays over forests.
We will gather this Friday to discuss the costs and tradeoffs when communities choose solar over forests.
We might ask:
What do forests do that solar arrays do?
What do forests do that solar arrays do NOT do?
Here are two great articles by our friend Judith Schwartz, regarding the tradeoffs between solar and forests
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Our friend, Rob Moir wrote the following:
Judy Schwartz asked me to be the expert witness and report on the Shaftsbury Solar Project to the Vermont Commissioners.
Out-of-state investors purchased a 182-acre farm, outbidding two local families interested in working the land. They are developing (clearing and scraping away soil) 104 acres of fields and forests for a solar electric generation facility. The solar panels will cover 80 acres, while at least 24 acres will be used for temporary laydown yards, onsite gravel access roads, temporary access for heavy-duty vehicles, a stormwater management system, and the removal of shade-casting trees. I estimate 42 acres of Rich Northern Hardwood Forest will be lost.
The people of Shaftsbury are pleased to be doing their bit to fight climate change. A woman walking the site said proudly, “This old sugar maple must die so other maples may live.”
Unfortunately, they cannot see the forest for the trees. Once 104 acres are stumped and cleared, the exposed soil dies. It is scraped away and piled into berms, where it heats up, killing microbes and becoming dirt. This is necessary to prevent the heavy equipment from becoming mired in the mud. The problem is that when an inch of rain falls, the stormwater runoff fills the trout rivers with sediment. I describe how a smaller solar industrial development destroyed the West Branch of the Mill River in Williamsburg, MA, not a pretty sight. Suddenly, what happens on a farm smothers a community.
Before reading my extensive report, before knowing too much and still seeing relatively clearly, let’s explore how one changes a community’s perspective or, in the case of climate change, challenges many people's religious beliefs.
First, I wrote an article about robber barons coming to town, extracting the goods, and leaving the town at a loss. The piece was picked up by the Caledonian Record, a newspaper serving northern Vermont, but not the local Bennington Banner. Shaftsbury is adjacent to and north of Bennington on the southern slopes of the limestone and marbled Taconic Mountains.
Second, I wrote for the paper that people of Shaftsbury read. To tell this story, you may recognize a tale from Robert McFarlane’s book Are Rivers Alive?
Not a peep. People in Shaftsbury care and are doing what they can to fight climate change, heedless of the costs to forests, soils, and rivers. A Faustian bargain?
https://www.oceanriver.org/2024/02/26/report-on-the-shaftsbury-solar-project/
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Let’s gather Friday to discuss these issues.