We are fighting a misplaced solar project in my county right now.
We have class one and class two agricultural soils deposited over centuries by a riparian system that our regional energy supplier wants to place a huge project on.
The TL;DR is, I think they figured all the old hippies in this county would greenlight it without looking at it too closely. 🙄
I do some small-scale farming in the area in question, and the soil is absurdly good. Putting it into solar would lock up beautiful, productive soil for at least two decades, and also create runoff (and flooding) issues, for those who live downstream as well as deposit who-knows-what particulates into the soil and fresh water.
I'm all for solar projects that don't sit on prime agricultural soil. I know that there is an ecosystem in this Nevada project that was affected by this array, but IMO, this seems like a *much* better site for a large-scale project than tying up prime farmland in the Midwest.
@arisummerland this story from California seems promising. Farmers here are exporting water in the most inefficient way possible, as Alfalfa. Solar can replace that? I’ve heard some crops and livestock actually do better under solar panels, which seems like a win.
https://grist.org/climate-energy/farmers-are-making-bank-harvesting-a-new-crop-solar-energy/