The opinions revolve around the proposed Grange Solar Grazing Center. Grange says the project is a 26-hundred-acre, 500-megawatt solar farm and sheep grazing center in Logan County.
LEWISTOWN, Ohio (WLIO) - Many Indian Lake residents voiced their opinions Monday night in Logan County about a possible solar farm coming to the region.
The opinions revolve around the proposed Grange Solar Grazing Center. Grange says the project is a 26-hundred-acre, 500-megawatt solar farm and sheep grazing center in Logan County. At the Washington Township Board of Trustees meeting in Lewistown, a large number of residents expressed concerns with the project. One person, who wished to remain anonymous, told Your News Now that they do not want this project and feel the proposed solar farm would put their tourist community at risk. In response, we spoke with Open Road Renewables about the Grange solar project to address the concerns residents have.
“Annually, in terms of tax revenue, it's about $5 million a year for up to 40 years of the project. Other things on the side, we're working on cleaning up part of the Great Miami River and making some large grants to the community as well. What we love, more than anything else, is the chance to actually sit down and talk through some of these issues. A lot of them are addressed by our application and just the nature of what solar is and isn't. It's a proven technology with a great track record around the world, even off the world in space, and it's totally safe and fine... but we still want to address all of those concerns. Concerns are always legitimate until we really kind of had it out and figure it out,” says Doug Herling, Vice President of Open Road Renewables with the Grange Solar Grazing Center.
At the Washington Township Board of Trustees meeting in Lewistown, a large number of residents expressed concerns with the project.
At the end of Monday night's meeting, we also spoke with the Washington Township Trustees on the board's stance on this possible solar farm in their community.
“We've had about a year, year-and-a-half of communications with our residents in Washington Township, trying to determine exactly where we should stand on this project. We are one of five townships involved in this project, so we had to take that into consideration, and we had to deal with the other four townships as well that's involved in that. Throughout all of our conversations with our local residents, we have found that the overwhelming majority seems to be opposed to the project, so we did make a decision to oppose the project,” says Jason Faulder, Chairman for the Washington Township Trustees in Logan County.
On March 10th at 5 pm inside Indian Lake High School, the Ohio Power Siting Board will hold a full-service, public meeting where residents can attend and voice their opinions on the solar project.
On March 10th at 5 pm inside Indian Lake High School, the Ohio Power Siting Board will hold a full-service, public meeting where residents can attend and voice their opinions on the solar project.
